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He knows how it looks.
But Penguin would like to point out that there’s nothing inherently romantic or sexual or weird about two men sharing a bed, especially when they’ve been doing it on and off for years. It isn’t weird that he has Shachi curled up in bed beside him, his back pressed to Penguin’s chest, and that it’s so much easier to fall asleep with the body heat of another person beside him. Hell, it gets cold on the Polar Tang at night, so seeking out warmth is honestly understandable. So - his point is, there is nothing about the act itself that betrays any particular romantic intent or sexual desire; although none of it matters when your best friend has been accidentally grinding on you a little while you’re both barely awake and, maybe, just maybe, your body is reacting in a natural way.
There’s another movement at his chest and a sleepy, barely-there noise - Shachi turns until he’s facing Penguin, and all he can really hear over the rush of blood in his ears is please be asleep, please don’t wake up.
But, well, no gods are real - or if they are, they’re far from present - and Shachi makes a soft, questioning noise as he brings his thigh slightly up to press between Penguin’s legs. If he was more awake, maybe he’d have drawn away, excused himself, jerked off into his hand in the bathroom where he could easily clean away any evidence; instead, he stays still, swallowing the slight whimper that threatens to escape when the muscle of Shachi’s leg presses against his dick, almost fully hard in his shorts.
“Penguin?” he asks, voice rough in the way it gets when he’s just woken from a doze, propping himself up on one elbow with a click and a slight groan. “‘s that…?”
The noise he makes is accidental. It’s nervous, embarrassed, and Penguin opens his mouth to spill out - something, he’s sure, be it apologies or an attempt at explanation, before Shachi shushes him.
“No,” he says, “it’s okay, ‘s normal. D’you want a hand? Easier for us both, and you’re warm, I don’t want you to move.”
If Penguin were more awake, if either of them were more awake, they might notice the logical flaws in the suggestion, of which there are many. For one, both of them are straight and, while Penguin has at least considered the possibility of some latent bisexuality - he’s never cared that much about it - he’s pretty sure Shachi never has. On top of their heterosexuality, which is probably the biggest concern, the fact is that his best friend is offering to jerk him off in the middle of the night, in their bed.
“Yeah,” Penguin mumbles. “Yeah, man, okay.”
Penguin, it appears, isn’t very good at using his brain when he’s tired. There’s no hesitation from Shachi, though, who takes barely a second to pull him closer and reach down for Penguin’s shorts. His hand traces over Penguin’s side, his hip, leaves goosebumps in its wake, almost enough to try and convince him to lean more into the touch - it almost has him rolling his hips up into the touch, searching for more. It’s been a while, admittedly, since he slept with another person, and feeling someone fumbling for his shorts is… he’s having a normal response. Shachi laughs, soft, tired, his palm warm against his skin.
“Yo,” he says, lift your hips up a little bit,” Shachi says, pushing Penguin’s shorts down as he does. The air against it, when the blanket lifts around them, is cold and he whimpers a little as a hand is wrapped around his cock, dry, a little calloused, a nice, needed touch. “There you go, man, there you go.”
Yes, there he goes - Shachi strokes him slow and lazy, almost tentatively, and it’s harder than Penguin wants to admit to hold back the noise that wants to escape. He trades it in for something softer, an exhale that’s beginning to shape itself around a name, little ah’ s in the moments where Shachi’s grip on him changes a little bit; the way he’s touching him feels almost experimental, looking for what draws the best response, the reactions he’s looking for. There’s no noticeable method or routine to the changes, so Penguin lets himself be lost in the sensation of just touch.
It’s been a while, after all. Compared to some others he knows, not that he would name names, especially since one is currently doing him a favour, Penguin isn’t someone with an exceptionally high libido, and they haven’t exactly had a chance to stick around an island longer than a day for a good while. Exactly how long escapes him, but it’s enough that Shachi’s hand feels a little like heaven, that he might be concerned about stamina if it weren’t the point that comes in the middle of the night where every minute seems to melt into the others around it. Hell, if it were anything but the middle of the night, he’d be embarrassed about the high-pitched whine that comes from somewhere deep in his chest when Shachi stops touching him.
A soft laugh and a headbutt against his shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere,” Shachi says, sitting more fully up, a mostly-indistinguishable shape in the darkness, but Penguin half-deliriously thinks he might already know most of what he’d see if the lights were on anything but the darkest setting of the Polar Tang’s day-night cycle. Shachi, hair loose and a little wild where it’s been pressed into the pillow, bare-chested, ink circling his forearms and across most of his side, a wide and nasty scar across his stomach.
It’s without thinking that Penguin reaches out to touch, fingers skirting the edges of the scar - he can feel its raised edges, the way it curves and bends into itself - and he can hear the way Shachi’s breath hitches at the contact. In all honesty, it’s an ugly scar, jagged and messy from the wound itself all those years ago, only as neat and well-healed as it is through luck enough to be alive at the same time and the same place as Trafalgar Law.
Kiss it, part of Penguin’s brain whispers at him, and if he wasn’t so comfortable with the blankets covering him as he is, he might consider it.
“D’you want me to give you a hand too?” Penguin asks. “‘s only fair, I know it’s been a while for you, too…”
“You say that like you think I haven’t been jerking off,” Shachi snorts, one hand reaching up to clasp Penguin’s wrist, long fingers against the back of his hand, to the knuckles. “I mean, I… wouldn’t mind. If that’s cool.”
“It’s cool,” Penguin reassures him. Seas, he wouldn’t have offered it if it wasn’t.
“Okay, okay. Okay.”
Shachi’s shorts are a little tighter in the waist than Penguin’s own are, resisting a little when he tries to pull them down. When he does, though, it earns him a noise not dissimilar to the one he made himself as a reward, as well as the slight bucking of Shachi’s hips into his hand.
“Ah,” Shachi says, “th-that’s… mmh. I was getting some, uh… my hand was dry,” by way of explanation and excuse, but Penguin understands. He holds his hand outstretched to slick it up before Shachi lays down beside him again, suddenly faced with the task of having to navigate their tangle of limbs in such a way it doesn’t block Shachi’s own movements.
It’s a dilemma solved only seconds later, when Shachi curls and presses his face to Penguin’s chest, just at his shoulder. It means they’re all but embracing, that he can feel every breath that escapes Shachi on the skin of his chest, that their dicks are practically touching even like this, without two men jerking off to make it more likely. Like this, he can duck his own face, bury it in Shachi’s hair as he wraps his hand around his cock, as he feels a full-body shudder run through him.
“Oh, fuck,” Shachi groans, pressing a clenched fist against Penguin’s stomach, drumming his knuckles there. “Your hands are so nice.”
Penguin’s hands are calloused from years of work and fighting, swords having left his palms worn rough. He huffs out a quiet laugh against the top of Shachi’s head while, in turn, a shaking hand wraps around him, now-slick palm opening his eyes to a whole different world of sensation in that first second. It’s easy to rock his hands into it, to feel something tense in every line of Shachi’s body where they’re pressed against each other, almost every point of their chests touching one another. A little belatedly, after he’s already started to get into a bit of a rhythm - one that has Shachi panting and letting out soft whimpers - Penguin realises he’s trying to stop himself rocking his hips into the touch.
“Y’know you can move, if you want,” he murmurs. “I want you to feel good.”
“...this was supposed to be about you,” Shachi says, but some of the tension does melt out of him and he relaxes a little. Breathlessly, Penguin laughs, feeling something that might be a smile growing against his collarbone as Shachi picks up the movements of his hand, back into the pattern he’d established earlier that could, if he had less self-control, be drawing high-pitched and desperate whines from him.
“It is, it is. I want you to feel good too.”
Shachi groans again, in a way that Penguin suspects might have been a loud and undeniable moan if he hadn’t been intentionally keeping his mouth shut. Part of him wishes that he hadn’t bothered, that Shachi was open-mouthed and gasping for breath with every touch, that he could hardly get a word out around every whimper or desperate moan Penguin was drawing out of him. Fuck - it’s a hazy realisation, one that has him muffling his own needy whine into the mess of his friend’s hair, one that has the grip on his cock falter for a second before the pace picks up again - but Penguin wants to ravish him.
“That’s it, baby,” Shachi says in a low voice, “fuck, you make such pretty noises.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Fuck yeah. Just… so pretty, sweetheart, so good to know you feel good.”
This is unexpected, he has to admit, but the lazy praise and the ease with which it comes out of Shachi’s mouth does something to him, and Penguin can’t quite hold back the next whine that accompanies his next “a-ah, fuck, fu-uck”, can’t stop his voice from cracking over the curse. He can’t ignore the breathless laugh, either, can’t quite shake the way baby and sweetheart both echo in his mind; he can’t quite stop himself moving his hand faster, picking up the pace as he jerks Shachi off, the way it shortens each of his breaths until they’re sharp, short little pants.
If he weren’t so close - if there wasn’t a hand on his dick - Penguin would draw this out, bring Shachi to the edge with long, lazy strokes, hold him close as he hits it and wring every last bit of lust from him just like that. He would take his time, because that’s what he likes for himself, but the situation calls for something a little different, and he can’t quite stop himself moving quickly, eager to catalogue each sound Shachi makes as he does.
He’s still half-expecting the awkwardness to strike at any second, the embarrassment to come crawling in and leech into them both, but the whole thing still feels… sweet. The knowledge that it only started because Shachi had it in his mind to try and take care of him is part of it, he thinks, the fact that they can be there for each other even in a moment like this. Penguin whimpers again, noting down in the part of his brain concerned with Shachi, Shachi, Shachi, that it earns him a noise that’s evidently of pleasure in return.
“I don’t think ‘m gonna last long,” he admits, although it’s - he isn’t actually sure how long it’s been since they started, and he doubts Shachi is either. “Shachi, gonna come…”
“I heard you, baby,” and, oh, that must be what Shachi sounds like when he’s close himself, a little strained, his voice a little lower than he usually speaks, something barely-restrained in each syllable. “Good, so good, just relax for me, babe…”
There’s no point trying to hold back, Penguin decides, and his eyes close as he chokes out a moan and comes, hearing Shachi make a noise somewhere between curious and pleased when he does. It’s far more intense than he’d expected it to be, a full-body shudder running through him as he tenses, then relaxes, every muscle. Shachi’s hand is wet with his come for the last few, lazy strokes, and Penguin has to tilt his head up to gasp for a breath of cool air, the smell of him suddenly overwhelming.
“There you go,” Shachi’s murmuring, face turned to press against his throat instead, an echo of every word rumbling through him, spoken into his pulse, his heartbeat. “So good, baby, ‘s that better?”
“Yeah,” Penguin sighs, content and lax in a way that’s invited his exhaustion in like an old friend, already barely awake again. “Don’t move, Shachi, let me… let me.”
He feels Shachi shiver again, feels the subtle rocking of his hips into every movement of his hand, the way he must be biting down hard on his lip to keep from making a noise. It’s cute, almost, and he can’t imagine that Shachi’s come out of it unaffected by hearing Penguin come; he feels a twitch when he lets himself hum, an unconscious but oh-so obvious movement that betrays everything he needs to know about the state of his best friend’s control.
“Let me hear you, babe,” he breathes, bringing his other hand up to rest on Shachi’s back in a lazy half-embrace - and it must be the final straw, because the noise it earns him against his skin is caught halfway between a sob and a moan, as though it can’t decide which to be.
“Penguin,” he hears in it, and Shachi’s come is hot against his skin, leaving him messy, but content.
It seems to have left him in a similar state to Penguin himself, evident by the way Shachi practically just drops down onto his chest, curling in on himself. He wonders how close to sleep they both are - it’s reaching out to him already, certainly, as he reaches down to at least pull Shachi’s shorts up again, a belated return of the gesture coming moments later. Were he less tired he might consider going for a shower but, as the weight on top of him only shifts into a more comfortable position for them both, he finds that he can’t bring himself to give a damn about it.
“If y’ever need that again,” Shachi says, soft in the way he only gets between the two of them or in the company of Law and Bepo, “Penguin, if you ever need a hand like that, let me know. ‘kay?”
“Okay,” Penguin says, blissful, content, and relaxed. “Thanks, man. Same - same to you.”
“Mm hm,” Shachi hums. “G’night.”
Penguin wonders if, in the morning, he’ll remember to reevaluate his own sexuality, and whether or not he is, genuinely, attracted to men, or if it had just been a long time since he’d been touched by another person. He can’t bring himself to care all that much - it’s a concern for the future - and so he only wraps an arm around Shachi, holds him closer, lets sleep pull him down, and down, and down.
Goodnight, he might say, but he’s sure Shachi knows anyway, even if he didn’t manage to get it out before he truly does fall asleep.