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Zoro was halfway through a bottle of merlot (some cheap vintage, the cook wouldn’t miss it) when the kitchen suddenly lurched violently to the side, almost sending the swordsman out of his chair. He groaned, the alcohol sloshing uncomfortably in his stomach, making his buzz tip towards nausea. The storm they were sailing through was going to be a rough one. Probably better to call it quits and head to his hammock.
He stuffed the cork back in the bottle’s neck and returned it to the wine rack, barely avoiding catastrophe when another rock from the waves made the bottles clink dangerously, threatening to slide onto the floor. He spread-eagled to block their descent, then made his way towards the hatch, glad for his sea legs that kept him upright, even with the floor tilting and his head throbbing. He climbed down the ladder into the men’s cabin, breathing dark, familiar, stale air. Everyone seemed to be sleeping through the choppy waves, their hammocks swaying in time with the hull. But an unexpected sound caught Zoro’s attention, even before his feet settled on the planks.
It was Sanji, tossing awkwardly in his hammock, making the rope creak. He was talking, a soft shout under his breath that didn’t awaken his crewmates over the groaning wood and pounding rain. Their world was a myriad of sounds that would drown out one person’s nightmares.
“Ship! Help! Please! Please help—!”
When up on those deadly feet of his, the cook was far from helpless. But Zoro remembered a tale from the man’s youth, retold to him in Luffy’s bright verbiage. It made sense that stormy seas would unlock those memories for Sanji, even in his subconscious. Zoro secretly believed most children in the cook’s position would have perished long before a ship spotted their emaciated forms on that stony outcropping. The waiter was tougher than he looked, like the barnacles on the keel, annoying and persistent.
Zoro grit his teeth and tried to ignore the cries, hoping Sanji would wake himself up with his tossing and turning, but even after he removed his swords and set them lovingly on the couch, the blonde was still whimpering pitifully. Zoro found himself drifting towards the hammock and stood there: his mind clouded by booze and Luffy’s snores, the Going Merry trying to pitch him to the floor as the waves slapped up and over the deck above. He could curl up in his hammock, but now that he had heard Sanji, nothing else would swallow up his words. Like the buzzing of a single, small gnat, it would drive him crazy and keep him awake.
So Zoro leaned down and scooped the cook’s tall frame into his arms.
Sanji awoke instantly, blinking in alarm and twisting on instinct to get out of Zoro’s grip, but the shorter man held on. When he stopped flailing long enough to register who was holding him, Sanji gaped at the audacity.
“Put me down, moss head! The fuck are you doing?! Let me go, you fuckin’—!”
His voice pierced the steady cacophony of the ship, waking Luffy and Usopp in intervals, both of them looking over blearily from their hammocks but too confused to act.
Zoro ignored their stares and Sanji’s continued curses, carrying the man over to his own hammock and unceremoniously plopping him into it. He then climbed inside next to him, this game of musical chairs making sense to his alcohol riddled brain. When Sanji shouted, “Fuck you, you fucking marimo!”, and went to clamber out the far side, Zoro steadied him with a muscled arm, already closing his eyes to sleep.
“You were crying out in your sleep,” he explained (complained). “It’s annoying as fuck. Just shut up and let us sleep, will you?”
Said as if he weren’t spooning him.
Slowly the bristling turned to bemused acceptance in Sanji’s sleep-addled mind; maybe this was yet another bad dream. He drifted off to sleep in the gently swaying hammock, no longer crying out to ghost ships for rescue.
Three months later, thunder boomed ominously in the heavens. The wind picked up until there was no East Blue, only a turbulent wall of gray swallowing their merry vessel. This time, Zoro was already settled in for the night, wrapped up in a dreamless void, until a sound crept in and jostled him awake.
It was someone in distress. Zoro looked around, confused.
Again, it was the cook, his whimpers too soft to rouse the others, yet somehow feeling like a persistent whisper directly in his ear.
“Come on! Please! Ship!”
Zoro growled to himself, tugging his blanket off and letting it fall to the floor. He rolled out of the hammock, nearly falling at a sudden rocking of the ship, and crossed the room to Sanji’s. He looked down, considering it sleepily for a moment, before climbing in next to the cook, practically on top of him in the small space.
Sanji didn’t awaken—not fully—but his stupid eyebrows pinched in consternation, lips pursing as if around an invisible cigarette. The crying quickly ceased. A hand batted blindly at the swordman’s bare chest.
“Stupid marimo,” he muttered.
“Stupid waiter,” Zoro echoed, draping an arm around Sanji’s side and drifting back to sleep.
Usopp climbed down the ladder into the men’s room, but as he turned towards his hammock, an odd sight stopped him short.
In the darkness, it took him a moment to register what he was seeing. Sanji hadn’t suddenly doubled in size—Zoro and Sanji were sharing the cook’s bunk, Sanji half on top of the other man, his cheek resting on a pec. Laying on his back, hands behind his head, Zoro opened one eye to clock Usopp, then closed it again.
Usopp blinked in confusion, then raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I thought you two hated each other,” he said. Even if ‘hate’ was a strong word for crewmates who risked their necks for one another, they definitely didn’t seem the type to willingly share a hammock.
“We do,” Zoro answered gruffly.
“Big time,” Sanji agreed.
“Okay…” Usopp shouldn’t have to say it, but they weren’t. “Then why are you…?”
“He gets nightmares,” Zoro explained, eyes still closed.
“I get nightmares,” Sanji echoed pitifully.
“Okay, but that doesn’t explain—”
“Mind your business,” they both snapped without stirring.
Usopp threw up his hands. “Gladly! I love minding my business.”
He pretended not to notice as Sanji cuddled closer to Zoro’s side.