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It's a beautiful day in the East Blue. The sky is clear, the wind is fair, and aboard the deck of the Going Merry, Zoro and Sanji are yelling at each other.
“I know you have it, asshole!”
“Oh come on, I don't have your shitty whetstone!”
They’ve only been going at it for a few minutes, and it’s already a spectacle.
“Yes you do! Who else on this ship would take a whetstone?”
“I don't need your tiny baby tools for my swords, I have my own anyway!”
“Oh, so my best whetstone isn't good enough for the world’s stupidest talking mossball?”
“I never said that, and I don't care! Maybe your favorite toy fell overboard and I’ll never have to hear about it again! Who cares, just get a new one!”
“How dare you, that was a gift for my thirteenth birthday, and I haven't needed another one since! It's irreplaceable!"
“That's great. You know what's better? The fact that I still didn't take it, jackass.”
“Oh, you wanna go?”
And then, suddenly, a total subversion of the status quo occurs.
“Okay, no, stop, both of you!” Usopp shouts. He points at Sanji. “What the hell is your deal?”
For a second, Sanji’s entire train of thought sputters and dies on its tracks. Then it picks up again with ferocity. “My deal?”
“Yeah, your deal! You're the one instigating this entire thing! Like, way more than usual!”
“The hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means if I'm noticing something’s up with you, and Zoro isn't stopping me-” he jabs a thumb at said swordsman, who notably says nothing- “then the situation has officially gone from ‘normal Sanji weirdness’ to ‘intervention.’”
Sanji blinks. “I have ‘normal weirdness’?”
“It's an oxymoron, I know.”
“And nothing about you is normal,” chimes Zoro.
“I didn't ask the peanut gallery.”
“See, this?” Usopp swipes his hands between them. “We are stopping this before it becomes a health and safety issue.”
“Your face is a health and safety issue,” Sanji grumbles.
“Oh come on! Me now? Me?” Usopp pleads.
Zoro shrugs behind him. “You're the one who got involved.”
“And I'm regretting every second of it.”
“Don't take it personally, ‘Sop, he's just cranky ‘cause he hasn't gotten his beauty sleep.”
“I am not-!” Sanji’s mouth moves before his brain hears, and then he’s left sputtering. “You- how do you- that's not-”
Zoro, the bastard, doesn't even blink. “You smoked three cigarettes at the same time earlier on your break. Also, I take first watch every single night. You think I don't notice when someone's still up? How stupid do you think I am?”
Sanji glares at him.
“No,” says Usopp. “Bad cook. Leave it.”
“Don't treat me like a dog!”
Zoro smirks. “Stop acting like one, then.”
“Zoro, no!”
“I'll fucking kill you!”
The ensuing clash nearly takes Usopp’s nose off, but Nami manages to grab him before the worst comes to pass.
“Why?” she asks. “Why did you get involved?”
“There comes a time in every man's life where he has to decide whether he's going to die a hero, or a coward.”
“Well, you wouldn't’ve died as either.”
He looks at her, touched. “Because you'd save me?”
“Because you'd die an idiot.”
Ducking and weaving, spinning and kicking and blocking, Sanji feels his blood pumping properly, his mind clearing. Finally, he thinks. This is exactly what I needed. This is perfect. This is-
Wado’s hilt slams into his ribs.
“Fucking bullshit!” he yells.
He stumbles backwards, leaving a momentary pause in their clashing while he gets his bearings again. Zoro doesn't chase him. “What's the matter?” he taunts. “We both know you're faster than that.”
“Shut up, you moldy broccoli.” For good measure, he aims a high kick directly at that stupid, perfect jawline.
In a flash that Sanji swears is teleportation, Zoro’s hand catches his foot in midair. When he glances, confused as to why the man’s hand is even free to do so, he sees every scabbard on Zoro’s hip filled.
“You bastard,” he strains. “Not even gonna use one sword?”
“Don't need to.” He's barely breaking a sweat while Sanji pushes at him. “Not when you're like this.”
“Like what?”
Suddenly, Zoro pulls Sanji’s foot to the side, using his own momentum against him, and lets go. Sanji stumbles and nearly faceplants right there. His head is spinning.
“Barely standing,” Zoro says.
Sanji catches his breath, keeping his feet under him. “Fuck you. I can do this all day.”
From the sidelines, Usopp hisses. “Even I can do better than that.”
“Peanut gallery!”
“I'm not even here!”
“What I mean is,” Zoro cuts in, “I know what you're doing. I was just hoping you'd quit while you were ahead instead of making an ass of yourself.”
“Oh, really?” Sanji seethes. “Tell me then, oh wise and precocious moss ball, what am I doing?”
Zoro blinks, a mask of indifference. “You're stalling.”
Sanji stands there, breath cycling in and out, hoping the problem is a lack of oxygen to his own brain and not that the green-headed idiot has had a stroke. “What?”
“Stalling,” Zoro repeats unhelpfully. “You're hoping you can outlast it. Distract it. Run away fast enough that it can't catch you.”
“What can't catch me?”
“I dunno.” He raises an eyebrow. “Was hoping you'd tell me. But look where hoping got me last time.”
Sanji doesn't want to be here anymore. “You're a fucking idiot.”
“Past denial, now bargaining,” Zoro comments. “At least that's progress.”
“What the- those are the five stages of grief, moron! What could I possibly be grieving?”
Zoro moves, and on instinct, Sanji dances away from the space he seeks to occupy. Something catches the back of Sanji’s knee- Zoro’s leg- and when it collapses Zoro catches him around the waist. He lifts up, over his own knee, and in a dizzying second Sanji slams onto his back, breathless on the deck. Zoro remains on top of him, one hand pinning his heaving chest. His eyes betray no sympathy, but no pity, either.
“Your dignity.”
“Come on, Zoro, the poor guy’s already exhausted and defeated!” Usopp calls. “Did you really need to humiliate him too?”
“‘Course not.” Zoro shifts, removing his weight and his hand. “He did that himself.”
Usopp shivers. “Ruthless.”
“Men and their posturing,” Nami sighs.
A moment passes of Sanji just breathing there on the deck, like a worm left out in the sun. His head is still spinning.
“Alright,” Zoro says. “Fun’s over.” A hand cuts into Sanji’s vision. “You okay?”
Sanji blinks. Swats the offending digits away. “I'm fucking fine.”
Zoro says nothing. Just crouches there, watching as Sanji sits up. At length, he asks again. “You sure about that?”
Yes, he wants to say. Yes, he’s fucking sure, and he'd be doing a lot better if the dumb plant had decided to go along with the plan instead of derailing everything with his weird, intense eyes and his fucking attitude. He doesn't need lip from a bastard with green hair, or to have his ass handed to him in a spectacular display of weakness by the same. He'd had his fill before he could even tie his shoes. Was already sick of being useless, unwanted, and pathetic by then.
He's supposed to be better now. Stronger, more capable, more level-headed and talented and to have one fucking thing he can do right, except he can't do that if he can't even see straight from the heaviness pulling at every inch of him, eating him alive, and he would love to fix that, he's been trying to un-fuck himself for days, but he keeps closing his eyes and waking up with a scream caught in his throat for someone, anyone, please help him, he's sorry-
He groans, curls forward, tugging at his hair. Stop it. Just stop.
“Hey, are you guys done?”
Down from the heavens like his own personal guardian idiot, Luffy bounces onto the deck from the rigging, where he had apparently been watching everything. “Did Sanji lose?”
Zoro clicks his tongue, and surprisingly, says, “That didn't count.”
Luffy takes that in. Then nods. “I see. So you weren't fighting.” It's his turn to crouch in front of Sanji and stare at him. He even repeats Zoro’s original question. “Are you okay?”
Sanji looks up. There's that face of his- that blank, unreadable look, like he's taking in everything in front of him without judgement, without pity. It's a look that Sanji always expects to make his temper rise when directed his way, but does nothing but put him at ease. It gazes past every posture, every insult, every indignant flap of his hand. It was the same look he had when telling Sanji he “refused to accept his refusal.”
Sanji finds he doesn't want to lie to that look. Perhaps it's because he knows there's no point.
“I…” And no, oh fuck no, God please no, why is his throat tightening? Stop it. He swallows. Tries again. “I'll be fine. Just…”
He's still searching for the way he can put it without sounding like a toddler when Zoro blurts, “He’s tired. Hasn't been sleeping. It's been a few days.”
Everyone reacts.
“A few days? What the hell, Sanji?”
“Why didn't you lead with that, meat-head?”
“Can it, witch! I thought it was obvious!”
“It was, but details like that are kind of important!”
But all Luffy says is, “Why?”
And this is exactly why Sanji didn't want to talk about it. Because eventually, unavoidably, somebody would ask, and he'd have to give some sort of answer. Not answering is almost as telling as answering, and possibly worse, because it leaves their imaginations to run wild. Knowing Usopp, he'd probably conclude he was terminally ill.
A flash of a pale smile under tired eyes and the scent of antiseptic. Did you cook this for me?
Fuck, maybe he is.
He doesn't even know what triggered the nightmare in the first place- the first one, that is, several days ago. He tried to go back to sleep after, he really did, but it was always the same- seconds and hours and days stretching against slate gray, damp and cold walls, exactly where he left off. Time grew long, his stomach grew empty, shrinking to nothing, as he wondered why he was left to die here, what he did wrong, how he could be better.
Nobody came to feed him or remove his mask. His skin tightened over his bones, muscles atrophied, eyes gone dry and stale from watching the same wall beyond those metal bars, hoping for rescue. But there was none- no Reiju to patch him up after his brothers, curling out of the shadows like wraiths, would get bored and tear him apart like a butterfly to rip the wings off of.
The last time he slept, he dreamed they broke all of his fingers, one by one, crushing the bones into stark white fractals he could see splintering out of his flesh. Then they used a butter knife to cut his hands off at the wrists, and he could still feel them as they spasmed on the ground in front of him, every agonized nerve crying out for mercy he would never get.
So no, he didn't try again after that.
“Sanji?” someone says, and there is a hand on his wrist.
It tugs gently, but insistently, and Sanji opens eyes he hadn't known were closed to find Luffy inches away. The hand does not belong to Luffy- it's Usopp, crouching on one knee to his left. To his right, Zoro sits, and behind him is Nami. She's saying something.
“I don't know if you should just grab him, Usopp.”
“I'm just trying to- oh, hey, you back?”
Sanji blinks. He went somewhere. “Uh. Yeah.”
Usopp sighs. “Yeesh, you're freaking me out here, man. Just tell us what’s eating you already, you look awful.”
It's now Sanji realizes the hand Usopp had grabbed has been tugging on his hair, taking a few strands with it. It's a little greasy, he thinks. He's due for a shower. He's definitely sweaty after getting his ass handed to him by the worst person in the world in front of everyone.
… Everyone who is looking at him worriedly. Fuck.
He hangs his head, lets his hair cover his eyes. “Sorry,” he finds himself saying. “I didn't mean to…”
“It's fine,” Luffy says. “Just tell us what's wrong so we can help.”
He doesn't want to. “I, uh. Don't really-”
“Wait, hang on, we’re crowding him,” interrupts Nami. “We don't have to do this like an interrogation.”
“You love interrogating people,” Usopp mutters.
“First of all, your debt just increased by a thousand berris- and second, that's so not the point right now.”
“Um,” Sanji says. He's saying that a lot today.
“Fine, you're right, priority one should be actually getting him to rest first. I mean, look at him.”
“Hey,” he says, which is better than ‘um’ at least. He really is tired.
“Oh, yeah, still here. Sorry.” To his credit, Usopp seems sincere.
“Nami’s right, Sanji doesn't have to tell us if he doesn't want to,” Luffy says. “If he isn't sleeping on his own, we just have to make him.”
Usopp jumps. “No, no no, we are not doing that, no.”
“Why not?” Zoro asks far too sincerely.
“Yeah, why not?” Nami also asks. “If it'll get him to stop flipping his lid over whetstones, I’ll try anything.”
“My whetstone!” Sanji suddenly remembers. “Oh my God, I still don't know where it is.”
“Did you forget?”
It takes a second for him to say, “No.”
“Wow. You really are running on fumes, aren't you?” Usopp observes.
“Fuck off.”
“Only two words, huh? Yikes.”
“We can find your whetstone after you sleep,” Luffy cuts in. “You need sleep first.”
“I said the talking moss has it.”
“For the love of God, I don't have your stupid whetstone, cook.”
Luffy looks between them. “He doesn't have it, Sanji.”
“I don't believe him,” Sanji doesn't pout.
“Ok, can we all just-” Usopp claps his hands together and takes a breath. “Luffy’s right, you need to sleep first. We’ll all look for your whetstone after you look less like a zombie raccoon. Is that a plan? Can we all agree on a plan?”
“Hm. Yeah, alright, I like that plan,” Nami says, cracking her knuckles. Zoro starts stretching.
Usopp practically combusts. “No, no, nonlethal, Nami, nonlethal!”
“Hey, we're not beating up Sanji!”
Everyone turns to look at their captain. “We're not?”
“Nuh-uh!” Luffy says. Suddenly, Sanji is imprisoned by two very enthusiastic rubber arms. “We’re having a cuddle pile!”
“... A what?” Sanji doesn’t squeak.
Usopp brightens. “Hey, not a bad idea!”
“Oh, like with a fort and stuff? Bellemere used to do that with me and Nojiko all the time.” Nami looks wistful. “I guess I do kinda miss it… But can we really do something like that?”
Luffy’s answering grin is a thousand watts. “I don't see why not!”
Before Sanji can ask again, Zoro beats him to it. “The hell are you guys talking about?”
“A cuddle pile, duh!” Luffy says. “You know, like if you get sad or hurt or don't feel good, so everyone gets all their blankets and pillows and cuddles in a big pile, and sometimes you build a fort so nothing can get in!”
Sanji looks at Zoro. Zoro looks at Sanji. Zoro shrugs. “Alright, I'm in.”
“No, hang on,” Sanji doesn't panic. “You- you can't just do that!”
Luffy blinks. “Why not?”
“B- because- it just- it's not, like, allowed!” he stutters. They're all looking at him again, like somehow he’s the crazy one.
“Who says it's not allowed?” says Luffy. “I'll punch ‘em.”
“Yeah, didn't we all come out here so no one could tell us what to do?” Usopp points out. “Why get hung up on stuff like that if we don't have to? It's not like there's even anyone else out here.”
That’s not even close to what piracy is, you’re all juvenile and insane, and I refuse to participate, Sanji says, but he pronounces it like, “But- I- you- you can’t- that’s not- it- but-”
“Aw, he's blushing,” says Nami. “Nevermind, I love this idea.”
“Anything to torment the cook,” Zoro smirks. “Plus, I run warm, so blankets shouldn't be that big of a problem.”
“And with my guidance, the Usopp Pirates built the best forts seen across all four seas, so you can leave that part to me!”
“I have nail polish if that's something we wanna do, too,” Nami adds.
Luffy whoops. “Awesome!”
Sanji sighs. “You're all ignoring me again.”
“Yes,” Nami says, sweet as arsenic. “Yes we are.”
He isn’t quite sure exactly how it happens- again, he’s very tired, and he’s being held hostage by a rubber maniac- but eventually Sanji finds himself in the ship’s bunk room in a pile of blankets and pillows. Usopp is arranging some of the chairs from the galley and laying blankets over them to form a canopy, Nami is stripping the bunks of anything soft, Zoro looks like he’s already asleep, Luffy is somehow the one untying and removing Sanji’s shoes, and Sanji has no idea what to do with himself.
“I can do that,” he protests tokenly.
“Why are you still awake?” Luffy ignores. He throws his left shoe into the corner and starts untying the right. “Go to sleep already.”
“The fort isn’t even done yet, Luffy, give him a second,” says Usopp.
“I don’t need a fort to fall asleep.”
“Yes you do, now shut up and get comfy,” says Nami, and throws a blanket at him.
The sound of cloth settling is accompanied by the thud of something heavy and very un-cloth-like hitting flesh. “Why?” Sanji yelps. “Why do we have rocks in our blankets?”
Nami, of course, yells back. “I dunno, you tell me! Why do you have rocks in your blanket?”
Sanji grumbles, rummaging around for the object that so rudely struck him. When he finally lays eyes on it, though, whatever complaint he was about to throw back dies on his tongue.
It’s his missing whetstone.
A wave of relief crashes over him, followed quickly by confusion. When did I…?
And then he remembers. That first night, he’d lain awake in his bunk for hours, too strung out to close his eyes. He’d stared at the ceiling, a squirming sense of wrongness under his skin, and needed something. Anything, really. Anything to chase away the shadows and bring a feeling of comfort, of safety- anything to correct whatever had unseated itself in his chest. He’d gotten up, made his way quietly to the galley, and rooted around in the drawers until he found it. Brought it back to his bunk, sat down, and just… held it. Felt the weight, the smooth edges, and tried to hold onto the memory of warmth it gave him when he first laid eyes on it.
It was too soon when he heard stirring from Luffy’s bunk- his signal to get up and start breakfast. He must have thrown it aside and left it there in his haste. It stands to reason- he hasn’t been back since. Just relied on his oldest friends in copious amounts- cooking, caffeine, and nicotine. Adrenaline via starting a fight with the overgrown moss was his last ditch effort. Either it’d give him the energy to power through another night, exhaust him enough not to dream, or the brute would hit him hard enough he’d have the exciting new problem of a concussion instead. Maybe enough hits to the head would fix whatever was born wrong with him, who knew.
None of that happened, though. Instead, he’s… here.
Zoro behind him, warm and sturdy. Usopp constructing a shelter around them. Nami ducking under a blanket, holding what looks like some of Sanji’s most comfortable pajamas- how did she know? Luffy, the hare-brained idiot with the idea to do this in the first place. Who’d looked at him all that time ago like he’d hung the moon just because he knew how to do one thing right. Like he deserved to be looked at like that.
Like he deserves any of this.
“Oh no,” says Zoro, very not asleep. “Luffy, why is he crying?”
Usopp ducks in after Nami, who looks a little alarmed herself. “Why are you asking him like he knows?” he snipes, though he sounds concerned too.
Who’s crying? Sanji thinks. Then he feels his breath hitch, the wetness on his cheeks. Oh.
“Sorry,” he gasps. “I don't know what's- uh- wrong with me?”
Luffy laughs, warm and bright like sunlight. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You're just tired, dumb-dumb!” He kisses his cheek. “It's okay, we don't mind.”
Sanji cries harder.
It takes a while for him to be done. Like, embarrassingly long. But once he starts, it’s like he can’t stop- like every second, every hour of stress and tiredness and it’s not fair, I just want to be okay, why can’t I just be okay? comes pouring out at once in a giant, ugly torrent. It doesn’t help that they all just sit there, close by, offering comfort and hugs and reassurances and solid, steady support while he’s just a complete and utter mess for no reason at all.
Or maybe it helps a lot. Who can say?
Certainly not Sanji. He can’t say much at all, once the tears finally run dry. He’s kind of half-lying on top of Zoro, who has one arm secured around his shoulders, giving him a gentle squeeze once in a while. Luffy is at his back, arms looped around Sanji’s middle, face buried into the back of his neck, breaths making the little hairs there stand up. Usopp is playing with his fringe, and Nami left a few minutes ago, saying something about water. He feels empty and wrung out, but oddly peaceful. Like the rain has gone and there’s just that earthy smell and the glittering of puddles in the sunlight.
Or something. He really is very tired.
“You good?” Usopp asks.
Sanji makes an affirmative noise into Zoro’s pectorals. “That feels weird,” the swordsman comments.
Usopp starts poking Luffy. “Get off him, he needs to change. Actually, we all do.”
Sanji and Luffy both make the same unhappy noise.
“You can go right back when we’re done. I dunno about you, but I wouldn’t wanna wake up in the same sweaty, disgusting clothes I wore while I had a meltdown over a kitchen tool.”
“Wasn’t a meltdown,” Sanji mumbles.
Nami chooses that moment to come back. She’s in her pajamas, and she has a glass of water. “Come get your water, grumpy butt.”
Luffy giggles, arms finally unwinding. “Grumpy butt.”
Sanji resents that. “Not that funny.”
Usopp pokes him upwards. “Sit up, grumpy butt, you’re dehydrated.”
“Yeah, grumpy butt!”
“Fine, just stop saying that.” Ponderously, he gets upright, and instantly the headache he’s had for the past two days stabs him directly between the eyes. He winces.
“Your head hurt?” Nami asks. He makes an affirmative noise. “Thought so,” she says. “That’s what this is for. Drink.”
Sanji has never disobeyed a woman before, and he doesn’t intend to start now.
“There,” she says. “Feel better.”
“Was that a reassurance or a command?”
She flashes Usopp a smirk. “Both.”
After a little more poking and a lot more bickering, the five of them are all back in the fort and in clean pajamas. Nami was first, given she changed first, so she had her pick of the comfiest corner and was half asleep by the time Zoro lumbered in. He summarily ignored almost every blanket and pillow, instead opting to starfish in the center of the structure and immediately begin emitting chainsaw noises. By this point, everyone is so used to it that it’s gone from annoying to comforting, and Usopp exemplifies this by practically crawling into every inch of the swordsman’s personal space, oozing into his side and using his bicep as a pillow. Luffy is only last because he’s dragging along a noodle-limbed Sanji, who will never admit the help he needed undoing the buttons of his dress shirt.
Sanji doesn’t so much as get comfortable as get arranged by Luffy, a process everyone has been taking turns with to get him to move around in this state. His eyes had closed somewhere between giving his empty cup back to Nami and pulling on his pajama pants, and haven’t opened since. Short sentences rapidly became single words, and by now are just noises.
“C’mon, Sanji, you liked laying on Zoro’s boobs, right?” Luffy says, pushing him back into place.
“Mh,” Sanji says, not hearing any of that. He faintly registers his head laying on something very comfortable, and something squirmy settling in behind him.
Luffy giggles. “Yeah, Zoro’s boobs are comfy.”
The last things Sanji is aware of are rubbery, warm arms wrapping around his middle, a soft kiss to the crown of his head, and an overwhelming sense of safety. Something at his very core stretches, unwinds, and relaxes, like a cat bathing in a patch of sunlight. Finally.
“Sleep well, Sanji.”
And for the first time in what feels like forever, he does.