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A wave crashes against the Merry Go, and it jostles Luffy awake.
Wait. No.
The ceiling above his bunk on the Merry Go is a dark cedar. Wooden planks hammered with a craftsman’s love and sanded to perfection, decorated with Nami’s hand-etched stars (she’d brought them Coco Village’s sky, one rainy night) and clumsy wine stains (from the thirty-proof bottle he’d giggled over with Usopp). Luffy knows every inch of it.
The ceiling above him now is — “Sanji?”
Sanji grins — all teeth, no joy — and holds up Luffy’s hat.
“Hey!” Luffy shouts, accidentally knocking into Sanji’s skull with his own as he sits bolt upright. “Why’ve you got my hat?”
“Relax,” Sanji groans. He firmly stuffs Luffy’s hat back onto his head before rubbing the point of impact on his own. “That witch-doctor left it with me. I’m just givin’ it back.”
Luffy blinks. “Witch-doctor?”
“‘Witch doc —’ Yes, you fool, the one we climbed up this damned mountain to bring Nami to!”
“Nami!” It all rushes back — her shallow breaths against his neck, her too-warm body slung against his back, the last feverish smile she’d powered through, for him — as Luffy throws his bedsheets to the side. “Where’s Nami?”
“She’s fine. In the other room.” Sanji jerks his head in what must be the direction of this ‘other room.’ “Don’t bother going to see her. I already tried, and I think that witch-doctor broke a few more of my ribs for it.”
Luffy frowns. “Why? Nami’s our crewmate.”
“Yeah, but you’re injured.” Sanji flicks him on the forehead.
Luffy opens his mouth to argue — he’s awake, so he’s not injured enough to not want to see Nami — but he remembers something else, and crosses his arms over his chest before saying, “So are you. Why did you bury yourself in the snow?”
“Did you hit your head? It was so you could get Nami to the top, idiot.” Again, Sanji smiles — but it looks more like a grimace. “You’re welcome, by the way, for saving your ass.”
“I didn’t thank you,” Luffy says, and then flicks Sanji’s forehead for good measure.
Sanji winces at the — light — touch, and leans heavier against Luffy’s bed, jostling it again. “Well, then, you’re not welcome,” he mutters.
“Good,” Luffy agrees. “If you’d died and couldn’t cook for me anymore, I’d die too!”
“I don’t need my ribs to cook,” Sanji says with a roll of his eyes.
Luffy blinks. He can’t tell if Sanji’s joking or not, but either way — “You can’t even stand.” And then, after a look around the room, “Get into my bed.”
Sanji looks at him the same way he looks at each new fish they catch — like he’s dissecting Luffy, breaking him down, trying to figure out whether he’s working with something sweet or sour. “I have my own bed.” He even gestures towards it, all the way on the opposite wall, and forgets to not cringe in pain while doing so.
“This is an order.” Luffy scoots backwards to make room. “From your captain.”
To his credit, Sanji doesn’t argue further. He holds Luffy’s stare for a second more before he concedes, and works himself into the bed next to Luffy. Once he’s settled and Luffy’s pulled the cover over them both, he asks, “Happy?”
“Yes!” Luffy declares. “Now, I’m going back to sleep.”
Sanji snorts. “I thought you said people in cold climates would die if they fall asleep?”
Luffy considers it, but has a question of his own. “Are you cold?”
Sanji shrugs.
But Luffy reaches out and lays a palm on Sanji’s arm to check. “You are!” he discovers. Then, he curls his hand a little more, letting his arm stretch and follow as he traces a spiral all the way down Sanji’s arm ‘til it’s insulated by Luffy’s rubber self.
“Better?” Luffy asks.
“It’s certainly warmer,” Sanji replies.
Luffy grins. “Great!” He reaches out his other hand — shifting onto his side in the process — and envelops Sanji’s torso in the same way.
Sanji groans. “Careful,” he warns.
“I’m always careful.”
“That’s like saying you’re never hungry!”
“And you should be grateful! You’d be out of a job otherwise!” Luffy shifts once more to get comfortable, but he can already feel himself drifting off. “On that note, I hope there’s breakfast when I wake up…”
And Sanji sighs, like he’s finally settled into the situation. “I’ll do my best,” he promises.
His voice is softer than the bed, and Luffy slips into dreams soothed by both.
•
Luffy wakes to deep, even breaths against his neck.
For a moment, he panics, thinking he’s fallen asleep with Nami on his back. That he’s failed to take her to the doctor she needed, and that he even got Sanji killed along the way.
But… no. It is Nami, fast asleep, at his back — the scent of tangerines is proof of that — but her doctor’s here, too. Chopper’s snoring in Luffy’s lap: curled up, at peace, and with a line of snot dripping from his blue nose.
So Luffy takes stock of the rest of his body, too. He’s on the deck of the Merry Go, under a clear night sky and surrounded by empty, celebratory bottles. Zoro’s coiled up in his left arm, and Usopp in his right. He’s leaning against Nami, who in turn is leaning against the taffrail. There’s only one crewmember missing…
“HEY!” Luffy whispers across the deck, once he spots Sanji at the helm. Zoro stirs at his side, but only a little. “SANJI!”
Sanji looks Luffy’s way. “What is it?”
Luffy stretches his hands a little farther out and gestures with them. “I think I’m gonna call this move the gum-gum insulate,” he says. “What do you think?”
Sanji shakes his head. “I think you can do better.”
But Luffy looks around again at his crew, his
friends
— who all claimed Drum Island froze them to the bone, who let him try to warm them up, who keep him afloat as much as the Merry Go herself does — and has to disagree.