Chapter Text
It called itself a bar and restaurant, but boozer, boiler, shanty, cocktail lounge, wine lodge—they were all the same to Zoro: a place where a single alpha could get a drink, so he stepped inside and immediately noticed the omega standing at the bar. A male omega, which set the alpha’s heart racing. His back was to the small, low-lit room, but his weight resting on one long leg pulled taught his tight shirt and tighter trousers, defining the curve of his spine and the rise and fall of everything that came after. If they’d been courting, Zoro could walk up behind him and press their bodies together; gather up the fragile bowstring of his back and feel the succulent invitation of his pert, perfect arse. Because yes, Zoro was that supposedly rare breed of male alpha who fancied other males—including that even rarer breed of male omega—and he’d stopped giving a flying fuck about who knew or cared.
Zoro went to the bar and ordered straight, hard liquor, neat, stealing a discrete look at the omega as he did. He had a fair, angular face with high cheekbones and golden hair that hung to his shoulders and curled up at the ends, and he was drinking a glass of rosé. Definitely gay then; he had to be. Zoro took a shot.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
The omega started and spun, as if he’d been distracted and hadn’t known the alpha was there. As if he alone in the bar hadn’t felt the dominating pressure of alpha when Zoro walked in. His visible eye widened in surprise. Then his expression went cold.
“Why the fuck would I let you do that?” he said.
Zoro resisted the reflex to retaliate. “Uh, I don’t know…” he shrugged, keeping his tone calm and confidently unbothered, even if his insides were suddenly a rejected knot of hurt and anger. “Because you’re almost finished your wine and might want another?”
The omega glared at him. “I don’t.”
“Fine,” said Zoro, more incredulous than indifferent.
The truth was, he had more or less come to expect a limited range of reactions from strangers, which usually involved hostility, fear, lust, or some combination of the three. Even if he was doing something perfectly normal, like having a drink in a drinking establishment, people only seemed to see his height, strength, and scars and tried to start something. One whiff of his unencumbered scent sent them reeling, and one barking command sent them cowering at his feet. When he was younger, he’d liked it; even encouraged it. He’d liked the power of knowing that he made others uncomfortable, for better or worse. Now, though, he was a wealthy, world-famous athlete, who wouldn’t let strangers convince him he still had something to prove. And yet—
“Keep it up and you’ll set your brows on fire, Curly. I got the fucking message, alright? You’re not interested. But gods, I asked to buy you a fucking drink, not stick my dick in you.”
As rejection speeches went, it wasn’t his most graceful acceptance, but something about the omega riled him, and he wasn’t about to let some rosé-drinking, tight-laced little twink think he’d cowed Roronoa Zoro. To prove it, he took a long, slow drink of his own, head leant back and bare throat bobbing.
“What the actual fuck?”
Gods, even angry, the omega had such beautiful eyes: sea-blue and fanned in gold lashes longer than a girl’s.
“What?” said Zoro.
The omega’s eyes narrowed distrustfully. “So, you buy me a drink,” he said hypothetically, “and we talk, and flirt, and our hearts and stars and souls align, and then—?”
Zoro stared at him, at a loss. When you offered to buy someone a drink, most people didn’t immediately call you on the subtext, and he didn’t know if he wanted to punch the guy for it, or kiss him—or, both.
“Fucking-hell,” was what came out. “Alright, fine. I made an assumption and obviously offended you, so I’m sorry. I just thought you were pretty and you smelled nice, but I’m not going to force you up against the fucking bar, so you can calm the fuck down.”
A faint blush of colour tinged the omega’s cheeks. “You thought I was pretty?”
He seemed genuinely taken aback, soft and vulnerable for a fleeting second before a scowl interjected.
“You think I’m pretty and smell nice—? Yeah, okay. Very fucking funny. You can fuck off now.”
Zoro had had enough. He threw back the rest of his drink and stood. “What’s your problem? I tried to hit on you, you didn’t like it, I said I was fucking sorry. What more do you want?”
There was a moment of anxious silence as the omega traced the rim of his wineglass with long, thin fingers. Then, abruptly:
“This is a joke, right?”
Zoro frowned. “What part?”
“All of it!” The omega’s lips—gods, he had pretty pink lips, too—curled into a sneer. “You’re just—what? A big gay alpha? And you fancy me?”
“Yeah,” growled Zoro, stalking out the door, “my fucking mistake!”
Zoro left before anything else could go wrong; either he made a bigger fool of himself, or completely lost his temper. It wasn’t just the omega’s looks that had tempted him, but his scent: sweetly masculine, with the barest hint of arousal submerged in cologne. Zoro had been sure he was gay, too, or at least not completely straight, but he definitely wasn’t an expert in courtship rituals, homosexual or otherwise—not after nineteen years of being forcibly locked in the closet by his profession and pack affiliations—and he had definitely been wrong about this one. Or, he thought he had, until he heard:
“Prove it!”
Zoro turned. The enraged omega had followed him out.
“What?”
“You want me?” the guy challenged, standing proud at one-hundred-and-eighty centimetres and weighing all of sixty-five kilograms soaking-wet. Zoro would feel like a complete twat running away from him, but he was starting to worry that he’d tried to pick-up a certifiable nutcase. “Prove it!”
“What?”
The omega folded his arms across his chest, rigid as a lamppost. It wasn’t exactly a pose that said: Come and get it, big boy.
“I’m waiting, alpha. Show me just how gay you think you are.”
It was weird and wrong and exactly what Zoro had wanted since he’d locked eyes on those narrow hips, that fragile spine, that taut, restless body. It might be a trap, and the omega might scream or stab him, but ever since being gay had become undeniable to Zoro, his body had yearned fiercely for physical intimacy and had been denied of it too long and too often not to risk taking it now.
He had never kissed someone who seemed so opposed to being kissed while simultaneously inviting it, so, rather than overthink it, he moved on instinct. He closed the distance between them and slipped a hand around the back of the omega’s neck, sliding gently over the band of his collar and beneath the fall of silken hair, wondering how inappropriate it would be to pull it, when, suddenly, the omega moaned—soft and helpless and so fucking gorgeous. His lashes fluttered as his eyelids drooped and he rocked forward, falling against Zoro like he’d lost control of his own mobility. His lovely hands clutched at Zoro’s shoulders, clumsy and clinging and desperate for purchase, and Zoro suddenly felt strong and right and wanted like he never had before. And it was effortless, all instinct from there as he dragged the omega up, a bit rougher than intended, and made a cradle with his spare arm to hold him snug. Then he was bringing the guy’s head down, and the guy—fuck, Zoro didn’t even know his name—was tilting his head back to expose his collared throat and pale, moonlit mouth in welcome, and then they were kissing. Earth-shaking, fireworks-in-the-sky kissing that was endless and restless and unceasingly competitive.
The omega tasted like his scent suggested, like spiced gingerbread, which was not something you expected a male to taste like, but it only stirred the alpha’s long-supressed appetite. His beautiful taste and touch and scent all surrounded Zoro, drugging him, and, in that moment—nutcase or not—he didn’t want anything else.
“Take—me—some—where,” said the omega, breathless between kisses.
“My flat is—”
“I don’t care,” he interrupted, sharp and urgent in sudden surrender. “Just take me somewhere.”
It was another terrible idea, but the next thing Zoro knew they were in his car, flirting with a speeding ticket as it raced with a leonine roar down dark city streets to his flat.
A part of Zoro wanted to ask the omega what the hell was happening, because he sure as fuck didn’t know, but the bigger, baser part of him didn’t want to spook the guy, or make him reconsider getting into a strange alpha’s car. So, they sat in tense, anticipatory silence, because the omega was very obviously not interested in talking either. It made the whole thing weird, but not weird enough to stop.
“This is it,” said Zoro by way of welcoming the omega into his flat. It was a large, modern space, clean and geometric and stylishly minimalist by accident. Zoro spent more time sleeping in it than anything else, and had so few acquaintances that courtesy furniture for guests was nonexistent. As a rule, he didn’t like other people in his space. He preferred it to smell and feel full of him, and it did.
The omega hesitated in the door, instinct staying him and revealing a sliver of doubt, maybe fear, but—like before—it only lasted a second. He certainly was brave, for an omega; or, very, very reckless. Either way, when Zoro said: “Come here,” the guy did. He sort of tumbled inside, and Zoro caught him and kissed him as hard and deep and rough as he wanted. He splayed his hands across the omega’s back, slid down that supple, slender curve and grabbed his arse, grinding their hips and cocks and thighs together. The omega shuddered and his mouth went slack against Zoro’s, moaning and muttering what seemed to be a mantra of: “ohgodsohgodsohgods.” So, Zoro grabbed that, too. He sucked the words from his hot tongue along with the last bitter-sweet trace of cheap wine, leaving only the warmth of gingerbread to linger.
“Fucking love your taste,” he said.
The omega’s reply was a whimper, eyes so tightly shut it looked like he was frowning, his fingers latched into the dips between Zoro’s shoulders and biceps.
Zoro said: “Tell me what you want.” And the omega trembled and squeezed him, and said: “You.”
It made the alpha dizzy with joy and disbelief. Being allowed to touch other males was still a bit unbelievable to him. Every time he’d done it before—and got caught—he’d been punished for it in one way or another, from verbal lashings to physical ones to the stone-cold silence of disapproval and disappointment. But gods, it always felt so good. So right. And his partners had always seemed to agree. Despite his relative inexperience, the reaction he usually got was enthusiastic, but none had ever been like this. None even came close. It was honestly a bit amazing that this hot, angry, weird guy was letting Zoro put his hands all over him, and acting like he’d been waiting for it his whole life.
Zoro rubbed his cheek against the omega’s, then nuzzled up into his hair and nipped the shell of his ear. His skin was smooth and soft and dusted with such fine, pale hair it was barely visible, like dandelion fluff.
The omega tipped his head back, giving Zoro his collared throat. “You can…” Zoro swept his hot tongue over that vulnerable, shuddering column, producing a mewl. “…do whatever you want to me.”
“I want you out of those clothes.”
The omega pulled at Zoro’s t-shirt. “You first.”
Fair enough.
Zoro wasn’t a vain alpha, but he was a professional athlete and was proud of his physical strength. So were all his sponsors. And his publicist was nothing if not grateful to him for making her job of maintaining his popularity a lot easier by abiding by a very strict, very intense exercise regime. “It’s just training,” he’d argued once. To which she replied: “I don’t care what it is as long as you do it on camera to give every horny housewife and confused adolescent something to wank over.” Frankly, Zoro had been uncomfortable with that mental-image, but the image of the omega facing him now was very, very welcome.
He stared so long and so hard at Zoro, it was a wonder his gaze didn’t singe Zoro’s skin. After what felt like forever, he reached out a tentative, trembling hand and palmed one of the alpha’s firm pectorals with a look of awe on his face. Then he leant forward and pressed his mouth worshipfully to a hard nipple and Zoro felt the whisper of hot, wet breath when he said: “I’m so fucking stupid.”
Once again feeling like he’d lost the plot, Zoro petted the omega’s hair, as soft and silky as his gilded lashes.
“Don’t be like that,” he said in a low, husky rumble. “I know what I look like, but I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
The omega seemed not to hear. “I like the way you look and feel and smell,” he muttered, bowing his head, kissing the alpha’s scars. “And I’m so fucking stupid.”
Zoro took a deep breath. “Look,” he tried again, “if it makes you feel any better, I’m kind of new to this whole thing. I mean, I only started being gay, like, two years ago. How’s that for stupid?”
The omega’s head snapped up. “Wait. You mean you—”
“You still want to do this?”
The omega’s eyes flicked back down. Zoro took the hint and stepped back, only for a thin, pale hand to shoot out and grab his wrist.
“I want it.”
A bloom of pink coloured his cheeks, guilty and greedy and so full of longing that Zoro swept him off his feet and carried him to the bed in his den. He jerked the omega’s shirt off overhead, which resulted in the guy emerging a second later looking dazed in a tangle of cloth and fluffed-up hair. It had been a lot sexier in Zoro’s head, but then he saw the half-naked omega flustered and pushing down on static-wild hair that defied gravity and revealed two curling eyebrows, and it was so adorable that sexy became relative.
“Gods, you’re beautiful,” he blurted, a little by accident. But it was true. The omega was beautiful, all sleek and smooth skin, fair as white-gold, and brushed in choice places with softly curling hair and shining beads of sweat.
Zoro was all over him, hands and mouth and tongue, and the omega was letting him, twisting and moaning and chanting: “ohgodsohgodsohgods,” while the alpha stripped off the rest of his clothes. Then they were both naked. So very fucking naked. And, for a moment, neither of them moved. The omega’s breath sounded loud in the silence, and Zoro’s heartbeat pounded in his ears.
“Okay?” he asked.
The omega nodded.
“More?”
The omega nodded, again.
Zoro went to his knees and ran his hands up the long length of the omega’s legs, all lean, hard muscle on the outside, like a runner’s, but the inside was secrets: soft and tight and quivering as he pressed his lips to tender skin, then up the firm length of slick, velvet cock.
The omega covered his eyes with an arm, his back arching as he mewled “Oh—Oh—Oh” to the ceiling, until his body jerked with a climactic outcry to wake the neighbours. Then he just lay there, limp and spread and sacrificial, his chest heaving and his stomach silvered. After a moment, he pulled himself into a sitting position and stared at Zoro, blinking, as if waking from a dream.
“Okay?” Zoro repeated.
“I don’t know. Probably not. But right now I don’t care.”
It was another weird thing to say, but Zoro ignored it in favour of taking the omega’s wrist and drawing it to his mouth. It made him tremble again and spread his legs in invitation, encouragement, surrender. Whatever it was, it was hot as fuck, all that perfect skin and wet cock rallying for more, insistent and powerful and vulnerable all at once. Zoro wiped a bead of moisture from the tip and licked it: sweet, but undeniably male. The omega went rigid and his hips pressed forward, rising slightly to expose the deep, puckered hole of his arse. Zoro didn’t need asking twice. In went a wide, wet finger and the omega made a noise like a sob. One of his legs bucked up to rest on Zoro’s shoulder and Zoro held it there by the ankle, then stopped thinking about anything but the intoxicating scent and how to make the stubborn little spitfire squeak again.
“Oh gods! Stop, or I’ll—!”
Zoro pulled his fingers out, and said: “But I want you to.”
They were both breathing hard in the silence, now, both staring at each other, ragged and without fear.
“Fuck me,” said the omega.
So, Zoro did.
Or, he would’ve, except—
“Fuck.”
“What?”
“I haven’t got anything. Like, a condom.”
This time, the omega really did sob.
“Oh gods,” he moaned, not in a good way. He covered his face. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Hey, I told you I just wanted to buy you a drink,” said Zoro in self-defence. “I wasn’t expecting—”
A long, rather sulky whine cut him off, like a pup howling a temper tantrum. Or, a distressed omega in heat.
Zoro clenched his fists. “Okay, look… um. I can go out, okay? There’s a 24-hour chemist down the street.”
Gods, wouldn’t his publicist love that. What would he look like running in there half-dressed and half-hard at ten o’clock at night to buy extra strong condoms? That was the kind of gay that landed you in the tabloids. Or, porn. But if he had to do it, he would, because he wanted that angry, anguished note out of the omega’s voice. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.
The omega peeked up at him through splayed fingers, his incredulity plain when he said: “You’d really run to the chemist for condoms? That’s how much you want me?”
Zoro straightened, suddenly more determined than resigned. “Yeah. I’ll even grab you some chocolate while I’m there, ‘cause that’s the kind of considerate date I fucking am,” he joked.
“No, don’t—” Panic, then a pause. Then, softer: “Don’t go. I just… want to feel you. Just stay here… with me.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
The thing about male omegas was that they weren’t nearly as fertile as female omegas: a thirty-five to forty percent fertility rate versus a female’s ninety. Or, something like that. Okay, so it wasn’t a zero chance, but it was less than half, which meant, of all the male omegas in the world—statistically of which there were few—less than half of them got pregnant when an alpha knotted them. And didn’t they have to be in heat to conceive? This omega wasn’t in heat, even if he was keening and begging and slick to his knees with glistening self-lubrication. Zoro didn’t think he was, but he also wouldn’t have staked his life on it. He’d never fucked an omega before, much less one in heat, and, suddenly, he’d wished he’d paid more attention in class, because now he couldn’t remember the difference between pre-heat and post-heat and during what moon phase it was safe to put what where when—
A touch on his forearm.
Zoro looked down into the omega’s pleading blue eyes and, suddenly, a fifty-five percent on his high-school sex-ed exam was the last thing on his mind.
The omega reached and Zoro took and they fell together onto the unmade bed. The omega’s knees lifted to cradle Zoro’s hips, pulling their bodies tightly together, and Zoro happily drowned in soft, white-gold skin. Fragile but firm hands caressed his shoulders and arms and torso with exploratory tenderness, and a breathless voice whispered: “You feel so good. So warm. So strong,” and a firecracker of sensation went straight to his stiffened cock. The omega writhed under Zoro’s weight, nudging their cocks together in a way that made the alpha growl, then groan. “So safe,” he heard the guy say, almost sadly. Zoro kissed his chin and sharp jaw, all the way up to the fluttering pulse beneath his ear. He urgently wanted to bite the omega; sink his canines into the guy and mark him, claim him, and he resented the collar preventing it—which, he supposed, was the whole point of wearing the collar, so that strange alphas full of mating-lust didn’t claim him. Still, Zoro dragged his teeth across the fine leather and tugged it with an irritated grunt.
“Z-Zoro—?”
“Yeah?”
“Hold my hands.”
Zoro hesitated. The omega’s eyes opened and caught the alpha’s in a sea of transparency.
“Don’t hurt me. Just… hold me. Please.”
“Like this?” Zoro wrapped a big, warm hand around one of the omega’s wrists and pressed it gently into the mattress. The omega arched and whimpered, closed his eyes, and nodded. He offered his other wrist and Zoro kissed it before lowering it down. Those whip-thin wrists were supple and strong, used to moving and working. Zoro wanted to lick down the delicate cord of thin forearm, but couldn’t. He was just as trapped by the omega’s strong legs as the omega was by Zoro’s hands, their naked bodies locked together. So, instead, Zoro kissed his mouth, and kept kissing him until they were both gasping and full of groans and everything between them was hot and heavy and slick. The omega’s movements were twisted, almost acrobatic as he threw his head back into a pillow, all broken words and irregular breaths and touching Zoro everywhere with restless eagerness and helpless desire, maddening and beautiful. And Zoro told him as much:
“You’re so beautiful like this.”
Sweat made the omega’s hair stick to his neck and shoulders like curls of gilt on marble flushed with sunset.
“You want me,” he whispered, blue eyes like beacons in the dark.
Zoro kissed his nose, his cheeks, his lips.
“Say it. Say you want me.”
“I want you. I want to make you mine so fucking much.”
The omega took Zoro’s thick, throbbing cock in his hand and guided it to the wet heat of his entrance.
“Then take me,” he said.
Most of the males Zoro had fucked had left immediately after, which was precisely what Zoro preferred. But all of the males he had fucked were betas—and once an alpha—and this one wasn’t, so he didn’t. Maybe it was an omega thing, or maybe it was just a him thing, but, whatever the reason, he stayed, and Zoro was glad. He was loathe to say they’d shared something special, something that had never before felt so fucking right, but the evidence was hard to deny. Most of the people Zoro had fucked hadn’t let him knot them, because most people didn’t like it. The few who had had tolerated the experience at best, squirming uncomfortably, and feigning pleasure for his benefit. But the omega. Gods, the omega had purred as Zoro’s knot swelled and slowly emptied inside him, eyes closed and lips parted in exhausted bliss, as if the sensation felt just as good, just as right to him as it did Zoro.
Only omegas from now on, he’d thought, because, for once, porn was right, and omegas really were the best fucking sex of all the genders.
Only him.
He even slept beautifully. Not perfect or angelic or a spell-preserved glass prince, but beautiful just the same. Because more than letting the alpha knot him, his choice to stay afterward said I trust you with an instinctive honesty that even a—fucking phenomenal—fuck could never match.
Zoro knew it was creepy to stare while the guy slept, but there was something enchanting about him curled up like a comma in the half-light of breaking dawn. He looked young and gentle and definitely not unlike a fairy tale prince. Like a secret that only Zoro, now, knew. Carefully, he pulled the duvet over them both, because the omega looked like he needed all the warmth he could get. So skinny and sharp, yet soft and inviting; he was an annoying mystery of contradictions. Then Zoro brushed a lock of hair off that beautiful, slumbering face and realized that he was fussing. He, Roronoa Zoro—famous for beating the shit out of big, fierce alpha competitors for money—was fussing over a stranger, whose name he didn’t even know.
And yet, the omega felt familiar somehow. Which was stupid and impossible, because it was unthinkable that Zoro could’ve forgotten someone like him.
He must’ve pressed too hard then, or jostled him, because the omega suddenly awoke. He gave a distressed little murmur, not sure where he was, and abruptly pulled away.
“Oh gods, I… Oh gods.”
“It’s okay,” said Zoro, inviting him back down; trying to soothe with long, gentle strokes.
“I didn’t mean to… I mean. It’s just… I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
The omega gave a choked, humourless laugh and pulled the duvet over his head. After a moment, Zoro said: “Are you okay?”
It wasn’t anger or lust, but it was weird, which was, so far, pretty on-brand for the omega. Zoro was starting not to notice it.
“Saudade.”
“That a posh cabbage, or something?”
The omega snorted, muffled by blanket. “It’s a yearning for things that have never been. Like nostalgia, but sadder.”
“Oh,” said Zoro. Because what else could you say to someone who’d just told you he was sad after what you’d thought was phenomenal sex?
“I don’t know. Just ignore me,” the omega hastened to add, a note of distress in the timbre of his voice. “I’m tired and not making sense.”
Zoro didn’t know what to say, but he didn’t want to ignore the omega, so he laid a hand on the duvet between the guy’s shoulder-blades. He didn’t pat, or rub, or there-there; just left his hand there, glad to have a body tucked in beside him, especially one that was beautiful and naked and smelled of post-sex and him. Gods, knowing the omega smelled like him—was saturated in him—was almost enough to get Zoro going again, but he was tired now, too, so he sighed and relaxed into a pillow. Only once it was obvious that the omega had fallen back to sleep did Zoro carefully draw him closer, not wanting to let go just yet. The rational part of his brain knew he wouldn’t suddenly vanish like an actual fairy tale prince, but the sleepy, sentimental part didn’t want to take the chance; didn’t want to wake up in a few hours to find him gone without a word.
So, he held the omega close, pretending that they were more than strangers passing in the night, and slowly, peacefully, drifted off to sleep.