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Zoro had never needed much sleep.
He could sleep anywhere, through anything, at any hour of the day, but it never lasted. An hour or two, maybe three if he was lucky, and then he was awake again. He'd made peace with it years ago. The hours between were good for training, or thinking, or just sitting in silence until Luffy or Usopp needed him for something.
Tonight he'd made it maybe an hour before he woke. He lay still for a few minutes, trying and failing to fall back asleep, listening to the oceans and the creaks of the ship, then gave up and swung his legs over the side of his hammock.
He wandered the ship aimlessly, up the stairs, across the deck, then back down again. He finished a slow circuit of the lower level, and that was when he returned to the sleeping quarters and saw Sanji sleeping peacefully.
He didn't know why he stopped. He'd walked past his hammock a hundred times, but this time, Sanji just looked so calm. He was asleep on his back with one arm thrown over his face, blanket pulled up to his chest. He looked more relaxed than Zoro had ever seen him.
The hammock swayed slightly with the ship. Zoro stood over Sanji for a long moment. He'd had a lot of stupid ideas in his life.
Up close, Sanji looked even softer than he had from the doorway. His chest rose and fell slowly. Zoro had reached out without thinking and then caught himself, pulling his hand back before making contact. He stood there a second longer, then sat carefully on the edge of the hammock, then lay down before he could change his mind, facing away, keeping to the very edge with his arms folded against his chest.
Zoro woke up several hours later. Sanji hadn't moved an inch. He was still on his back, arm still thrown over his face, breathing slow and completely unaware. Zoro stood over him for a moment, then turned and walked out.
It didn’t count. He barely even touched him. It had only been for a few hours, and if it never happened again, he could just forget all about it.
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He lasted five days.
Five full days of sleeping badly, of lying in his own hammock staring at the ceiling, of wandering the ship at odd hours with nowhere particular to go. He was even more exhausted than he was before. He had dropped a weight during training that day, then snapped at Usopp for looking at him weird afterwards.
On the fifth night he was lying awake again when he glanced over and saw Sanji sleeping like a log across the room. He stared back at the ceiling for a while, then he got up.
He was even more careful the second time. He crossed the room, stood beside the hammock, and lowered himself in with his weight distributed evenly, holding perfectly still until the swaying stopped. Sanji didn’t wake. Zoro exhaled through his nose and stayed on his side, back to Sanji again, trying to take up as little space as possible.
Then, his arm shifted back slightly, and his elbow felt the warmth of Sanji's side through the blanket. He immediately flinched, but when he got no reaction, he leaned back slightly. He quickly relaxed and was asleep in less than five minutes.
He made it four days after that before he went back. Then two. Then one.
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By the time it became a nightly routine, he'd stopped trying to justify it to himself.
Getting more sleep made him a better swordsman. In a sense, he was doing everyone a favor. That was all. He’d wait to get in until Sanji had been silent for twenty minutes, then sneak out before the sky started to lighten, and in between he’d get the best sleep of his life.
He learned a lot about Sanji in the brief periods he was awake. Sanji slept heavily the first half of the night and lighter toward morning. He shifted onto his side sometime around three, usually toward Zoro, which meant Zoro had to shift too or risk getting elbowed in the ribs or worse, caught.
He also learned that Sanji talked in his sleep. One night, maybe two weeks in, he was lying awake in the early hours when he heard Sanji murmur something beside him. Quiet enough that he almost missed it. He turned his head slightly.
"Zoro."
Zoro’s stomach dropped.
Sanji's eyes were still closed. His face was relaxed, turned slightly toward Zoro, his breathing completely unchanged. Fully asleep.
Zoro turned back to the ceiling. His heart was racing. He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth, closed his eyes, and stayed completely still. His pulse eventually calmed back down, but he resolved to stop after that night.
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He didn't go back the next night. He lay in his own hammock and stared helplessly over at Sanji. It wasn't that hard. He just wouldn’t get up.
He lay there awake for a long time. The ship creaked. He closed his eyes and told himself this was fine, this was how it had always been, he'd slept alone his entire life without issue and a few nights of making minimal physical contact weren’t going to change that.
He rolled onto his side and faced the wall. His eyes burned. He kept his breathing slow and even and waited for it to pass, as he lay there in the dark feeling like the world's biggest idiot.
By morning he was in a terrible mood. Training was bad. Dinner was worse. He sat at the table with his jaw tight and his eyes on his plate and when Sanji set his food down in front of him, he said nothing, not even a complaint, and Sanji waited for just a second before he moved on. Nami didn't talk to him at all. Luffy tried once and then gave up.
He went back the night after that.
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One night, somewhere past the three-week mark, he lay awake watching Sanji sleep. He wasn't tired yet, he’d just climbed into the hammock out of habit.
He'd been working on his excuse for a while. Some explanation that would make sense to Sanji, if it ever came to that. He'd gone through a lot of options. He could say he'd gotten lost in the dark, but then he could never risk coming back. He could say he'd sleepwalked, which Sanji knew he had never done in his life. He could just do nothing and take whatever beat down Sanji would give him. He probably deserved it.
Sanji shifted slightly beside him, turning closer the way he always did around this hour, and Zoro went still on instinct even though Sanji was deeply asleep and had never once woken during the night.
Zoro looked at the ceiling. He looked back at Sanji. He thought about what would happen if Sanji opened his eyes right now, what he would actually say in that moment with no time to think, and came up with nothing. Whatever the feeling in his chest was, he had no words for it and no explanation that would work on Sanji.
He knew he was going to have to come up with something eventually, but Sanji's hand had somehow ended up touching his. He’d figure it out tomorrow.
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The guilt had never really gone away, even approaching the one-month mark. He wasn't used to doing things like this. He never snuck around. He never took things that weren't offered. Every morning he left before Sanji could stir, padded back to his own hammock, and told himself tonight he'd just stay put. He never did.
It had started showing up during the day too. He'd be in the middle of something, eating or training or just sitting on deck, and Sanji would walk past or say something to him and Zoro would feel an uncomfortable twitching feeling in his stomach. He handled it the only way he knew how, which was to be difficult. He picked fights over nothing. He gave snippy answers. Once, Sanji had accidentally brushed against his arm to grab something off the table at dinner and Zoro had stood up and left the room entirely, and he'd caught Nami watching him on the way out.
The nights were different. For all his flaws during the days, everything became easier the moment he lowered himself into Sanji’s hammock. He'd started on the very edge, back turned, arms folded, but that was long over. First, he'd stopped folding his arms. Then he'd stopped keeping quite so much distance, letting the natural movement of the ship do what it wanted. Then one night he'd turned over without thinking about it and woken up facing Sanji, close enough to feel the warmth coming off him, and hadn't gone back since.
Now he slept with his hand resting loosely against Sanji's arm most nights. Eventually he'd stopped noticing when it happened. He just woke up and it was there, and Sanji was still asleep. He would feel incredibly guilty for a moment before the warmth won out and he closed his eyes again.
One morning he woke up and he felt warmer than usual. Then he realized he had worked his way on to Sanji's side of the hammock, his face was pressed into Sanji's shoulder and one arm across his chest. Sanji's hand was resting loosely on his arm, fingers slack with sleep.
Zoro didn't move for a moment. He just lay there and registered what was happening before he felt the guilt hit harder than it ever had. He pulled back carefully, slower than usual, and got out of the hammock and left without looking back.
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Several weeks into his new sleeping arrangement, Zoro woke up before dawn, as always. He lay still for a moment, getting his bearings. His neck was fine. His shoulder felt good. He'd slept deeply and his head was clear. He shifted slightly, preparing to ease out the way he always did, slowly rolling toward the edge.
He couldn't move.
He looked down.
For the first time in over a month, Sanji had moved more than a few inches. He had wrapped around Zoro at some point in the night, one arm slung across his chest, the other tucked somewhere beneath them, his face pressed against Zoro's shoulder, one leg hooked over his. He was dead weight in all directions. Zoro tested it carefully, trying to shift, and Sanji's arm tightened on reflex without him waking.
Zoro went very still.
He tried again. The arm tightened again. Sanji made a quiet sound and pressed closer.
Zoro stared at the ceiling with his heart racing. He couldn't get out without waking him. He could either wake Sanji and start the most awkward conversation of his life, or he could lay there panicking for hours waiting for Sanji to confront him. He'd been so careful, every single night for over a month, and now he was just stuck, held in place by a sleeping cook, and there was nothing he could do but lie there.
Zoro barely breathed. His heart was racing and wouldn't slow down no matter how long he stared at the ceiling. He thought about every morning he'd gotten up quietly and walked out and told himself it was the last time and could only hate himself for his weakness.
Then Sanji stirred. Zoro felt his stomach drop through the floor. He had maybe ten seconds and he had nothing prepared. This was never going to end well, but maybe he could come up with something if he had just a bit more time. Instead, he wasted the little time he had feeling guilty. Sanji took a long breath and lifted his head.
He looked at Zoro. His hair was a mess, and his eyes were still tired, but he didn’t look remotely surprised.
Zoro opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Sanji looked at him for a long moment, then said, "Hey. It’s ok."
Zoro stared at him.
"You've been climbing in and out of my bed for a month," Sanji said, voice rough from sleep. "If I didn’t like it I would’ve said something."
"You knew," Zoro said.
"Since the first night, yeah. You have no idea how much I missed you those nights you never showed up. I felt you leave almost every time." His thumb brushing back and forth against Zoro’s arm “I just didn't say anything."
"Why."
Sanji was quiet for a second. "Because you were actually sleeping," he said. "I don't know if you noticed, but you were pretty miserable before that. You looked terrible." A pause. "I didn’t want to risk you stopping, and you look cute when you sleep."
Zoro stared at the ceiling.
"I kept waiting for you to bring it up," Sanji said. "Thought eventually you'd walk in and say something and we'd figure it out. But you kept showing up and you kept leaving and you never said a word, so I didn’t want to freak you out.”
"You should've said something," Zoro said.
Sanji gave him a flat look. "You probably should’ve said something first."
Zoro reached up and caught the back of his neck and kissed him, and Sanji made a quiet sound against it and kissed him back, slow and easy, wrapping his legs even tighter around Zoro. When they finally pulled apart Sanji dropped his head back onto Zoro's shoulder and reached down to pull the blanket up over both of them.
"This doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. You owe me a date," Sanji mumbled into his shoulder. "A real one."
"Fine," Zoro said.
"I'm serious. Next island."
"I said fine."
Sanji didn’t respond. Zoro tilted his head and saw that he had already fallen back asleep. Zoro stared at the ceiling, smiled, and closed his eyes.
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It was only after years of being constantly pushed, kicked, and prodded in his sleep that he came to two realizations. First, over all the years he knew Sanji, the cook had never been a calm sleeper. Second, he had been sleeping with Sanji in a communal room full of his friends, and nobody said a word.