Archive of Our Own

“Zoro, are you sure this is the way to the castle?”

“Of course he isn’t sure, Nami-san,” Sanji grumbles from the back of the group. He’s supposed to be keeping rear guard as they trek through the endless shadows of dripping pine trees, not that he’s much good protecting anyone when his only useful weapons keep sinking half a foot deep in mud. Sanji rips one shoe out with a disgusting squelch and takes another step, shuddering as dirty water runs between his toes. “He has no idea where we are.”

“I lived here for two years, Curly. I know where I’m going.”

“Then please, enlighten the rest of us so we all can get out of this fucking forest before the ladies freeze to death.”

“I actually find this weather quite pleasant,” Robin muses. Her quick steps never seem to sink more than a centimetre into the ground; in the brief moments where the weighty fog thins, Sanji can see fingertips curling out of the mud beneath her feet. “Quite a treat to have a breeze after all those hot nights at sea.”

It’s not a breeze. It’s a goddamn storm gale, and the tree cover is the only reason they’re not getting buffeted by the rain that’s been pelting since the moment they stepped foot onto Kuraigana Island. At least Nami and Usopp are on his side, both shivering and sputtering every time a branch dips and dumps another curtain of freezing water on their heads. Poor Nami is soaked to the bone, and he doesn’t even have a spare coat to offer her. His own clothing is in equally bad shape after hours of walking in circles, and he doubts draping her in a drenched suit jacket will help with the cold.

“Whatever intel Mihawk has for us, this better be worth it,” Sanji mutters.

From the head of the column, Zoro turns his head back to sneer at Sanji. “You’re the one who decided to tag along, so why are you complaining?”

“I only came because I wasn’t going to let you drag two beautiful women out to some horrible castle in the middle of nowhere to meet a man who, in case you’ve forgotten, tried to make mincemeat out of your intestines the first time we met. I’m simply here to protect Nami-san and Robin-chan’s honour.”

“What about my honour?” Usopp asks hopefully, but Zoro cuts him off.

“Mihawk’s a swordsman. He’s got more honour in his right pinky than you’ll ever have, Shitty Cook. Don’t worry, he isn’t going to hurt one of your precious ladies.”

Sanji scoffs. “Didn’t realise you were such a Mihawk fan nowadays. What happened during those two years together—did you finally accept you couldn’t beat him and start begging him to sign your autograph book instead?”

Zoro’s mouth curls into a nasty grin as he turns on his heel and stalks to the back to get up in Sanji’s face. “Starting to think you’re the one who’s scared of the big bad swordsman, Curly.” He taps Sanji’s cheek lightly; Sanji swats him away with a scowl. “You’re shaking.”

“Because it’s fucking cold, asshole,” he says, but his chattering teeth blunt the impact of his retort. Zoro’s grin widens, utterly unintimidated. Sanji’s about to push his stupid mug into the muddy water and hold him down till he shuts up permanently when Nami’s hands come out of nowhere and shove both of them apart. 

“I am not sleeping outside in a puddle tonight, so can you two save your pissing contest till we actually find Mihawk’s castle?” Sanji immediately mumbles an apology, while Zoro snorts and scuffs his foot against a rare patch of solid ground. “Okay,” she says, running a hand through her wet hair in a way that would be very alluring if Sanji wasn’t also drenched and exhausted, “new plan. Zoro, you’re relieved of duty. Sanji, get up above the trees and tell me what you see. I’ll get us there.”

“An absolutely perfect plan, Nami-san! I’ll go right this minute,” Sanji says, sparing only the time for a self-satisfied smirk at Zoro before kicking up into the air. He doesn’t even care about the miserable weather anymore, not when Zoro’s been demoted and Nami’s enlisted his help instead. He feels perfectly warm, buoyant even. He’s quite literally floating on air.

That is, until the moment he breaks the treeline and gets smacked in the face by the full force of the storm. Sanji just barely spares himself an undignified crash back down to earth by twirling in place, balancing haphazardly on one foot as the wind spins him around. By the time he manages to get his balance again he’s so dizzy that he can barely make out the castle spire in the distance, its slender peak tilting wildly against the dark sky—or maybe that’s just his rattled brain losing track of which way is up. 

Not a single inch of Sanji is dry by the time he lands again. His pants are more black than grey now, and his soaked sleeves are ripped from his descent through the branches. Even his underwear is wet, chafing at his thighs as he falls back into step beside Zoro at the rear while Nami leads the group towards their new destination. 

“I can still hear you chattering, Cook,” Zoro leans over to say. “Better get those nerves under control, unless you want the monkeys to find us.”

“The only monkey I see around here has an ugly green haircut,” Sanji spits back, but embarrassingly, his voice shakes a little on the last word. He grits his teeth, determined not to let the shivering cold get the better of him, especially not when Nami, in her capris and sleeveless shirt, is soldiering on without complaint. “And what the hell are you talking about anyways? Why would there be monkeys in a boreal forest?”

Apparently, there are monkeys in this boreal forest. Big fucking monkeys. The end of their journey to Mihawk’s castle becomes a full-on sprint, the shrieking of their pursuers only matched by Usopp and Nami’s own high-pitched yells of terror. Sanji doesn’t shriek himself, thankfully, but he does take a moment to shout at Zoro as the two briefly spin to take out the closest monkeys on their heels.

“Why do they have swords?!” 

He doesn’t get a response, which is infuriatingly typical, but he has enough experience kicking through Zoro’s blocks that taking down an oversized, scimitar-wielding monkey or two isn’t a big challenge. They deal with the fastest of the pack in short order and manage to catch up to the rest of the group at the base of the castle door. Robin slams the door shut the moment Zoro and Sanji are through, cutting off the bluster of the storm and the howls of the monkeys and dropping them all into eerie, uncertain silence. 

“Mihawk... does know we’re coming, right?” Usopp asks nervously, eyeing the unlit braziers surrounding the edges of the massive entrance hall. A blue-gray gloom seeps from the ceiling-high windows, broken only by scattered flashes of lightning. The sole whisper of sound is a soft patter of water dripping from hands and noses onto the pristine carpet. 

“He’s the one who contacted Luffy,” Nami reminds Usopp, but she doesn’t move any farther into the room. The absence of any welcome makes Sanji uneasy as well. Mihawk had told them to come at once, but should they have called to let him know when they arrived? Maybe Mihawk assumed they’d take longer to get here than they originally promised, but some of Franky’s recent adjustments to the Sunny sped up their progress (and truthfully, the fact that Luffy wasn’t aboard for the trip also helped keep things moving.) 

He’s not sure he wants to know what punishment a testy Warlord might mete out to unwelcome guests. As much as Zoro vouches for Mihawk now, he does think he has good reason to be wary of the man: the first time Sanji met him, he was staining the docks of the Baratie with Zoro’s blood. Sanji isn’t inclined to trust anyone that could hurt one of his crew that badly, even if the stupid Marimo was asking for it. And as much as Zoro teased him for it on the walk over, he wasn’t joking about coming along to keep a protective eye on the group. If this meeting sours, he needs to know that Zoro won’t just challenge Mihawk to another one-on-one duel and get himself and the others killed when he loses again. 

Unfortunately, his plan for corralling Zoro goes south at the earliest possible opportunity. The idiot is halfway across the room by the time Sanji realises he’s gone, one foot already planted on the towering staircase that leads to the next level. 

“Oi!” Sanji shouts, “get back here until we figure this out! I don’t want you deep-frying us all when you set off a tripwire or something!”

Zoro pauses, rolling his eyes so hard that Sanji can see it across the room. “Mihawk doesn’t use booby traps in his own house. Stop being so paranoid, moron.”

He turns and takes another step, and promptly gets blown backwards by an onslaught of firecracker detonations. Zoro lands hard on his ass as the pastel explosions cascade up the steps, rose and purple and aquamarine illuminating each step with a hailstorm of shimmering lights. Amidst the flashing and the rising smoke, Sanji catches the outline of pale figures weaving in and out of the barrage, a chorus of spectral phantoms that would be terrifying if they didn’t seem so... familiar.

Above the din, he begins to hear a cackling laugh. It bounces between the stone walls, growing in volume until the haunting sound fills the entire room.

Ho-ro-ho-ro-ho-ro~

Ho-ro-ho-ro-ho-ro~

And then Sanji sees her: a girl standing on the precipice of the staircase, clad in a ghostly white frock and pink head thrown back in laughter. 

“Mihawk let me take care of the defences while you were gone! What do you think of my redecorating project, little swordsman?”

“I think I’m going to kill you,” Zoro growls as he picks himself up off the ground. The girl giggles at the threat, but a hand creeps out of the darkness and lands heavily on her shoulder, stilling her laughter.

“I’ve let you have your fun, Perona. Now, I am going to greet my guests properly.”

Every brazier in the room flares to life in an instant, revealing an imperious Mihawk standing behind Perona, every bit the image of a stern, kingly father in a royal portrait. One of Perona’s ghosts drifts lazily over his shoulder; he brushes it away with the casualness of a man flicking lint from his collar, golden eyes unblinking as he stares down the staircase at their huddled, sodden group. His scowl darkens as he takes in their ruined clothes, their mud-soaked legs, their scratched faces from the final sprint through the trees, and Sanji’s gut twists. As much as he distrusts Mihawk, there’s a potent discomfort in his appearance being observed and found wanting. This is not the show of strength he’d hoped to give on their arrival.

“The table’s already set,” Mihawk says at last, eyeing Zoro with a chiding look, as though he alone is to blame for their evening arrival (which, in fairness, he is). Zoro glares back, and part of Sanji is relieved to know that Zoro hasn’t lost all his bite around Mihawk despite their new student-teacher relationship. He doesn’t care to find out what happens when a snappish dog’s loyalty is divided. “Come up to dinner, and we will have our discussion.” 

Mihawk doesn’t turn to leave. He continues to peruse their group from above, thin lips pursed with displeasure. Sanji rankles, anticipating some comment about their dirty clothes being unfit for the dining room, but his eventual complaint is on an entirely different subject.

“Is Luffy not with you?” 

He isn’t, which Luffy had assured them would be perfectly fine, but judging by the coldness in Mihawk’s voice, his absence may be more of an insult than Luffy anticipated. Sanji cringes as he waits for whatever inadequate excuse Zoro is about to make, but thankfully Robin beats him to the pass.

“Our apologies, Mihawk-san. Our captain very much wanted to be here, but I’m afraid...” 

Robin launches into an eloquent explanation of the extenuating circumstances—a conflict during their passage that Luffy couldn’t abandon, strained relationships with the World Government that needed to be smoothed, how Mihawk must surely understand the delicate balance of it all—as she shepherds the group up the stairs with a gentle hand on the small of each back. 

Sometimes Sanji forgets that Robin spent years sidestepping the whims of a far more volatile Warlord. He admires the artistry of her words, deferent enough to soothe a wounded ego but not so syrupy as to be patronising. By the time they reach the dining room, their host seems perfectly satisfied that there’s nothing Luffy could have done to make this meeting despite his best efforts, but that the rest of them would be immensely grateful for his assistance.

And what a dining room it is. It might be more appropriate to call it a dining hall: the space is four times the length of the lone table, with soaring arches and chandeliers hung from three different points in the room. The windows once again stretch from floor to ceiling, creating a waterfall effect as rain sheets down beyond the green velvet curtains. The table itself, set for an immodest twelve, is equally magnificent: marble-topped, with gold filigree twining along the sides and down the legs. The gilt pattern matches the armrests of the plush armchairs that Perona darts forward to pull out, ushering each of them to their place with a weightless curtsy and a freezing prod on the shoulder. 

Sanji perches uneasily on the end of his seat as he glances up at the lofty ceiling and the stone walls. The room is overwhelming in its enormity. Castles like these are designed to make everyone besides their king feel small, and Sanji knows too well the kind of man who feels the need to take up so much room with his singular existence. He wishes that Perona hadn’t seated him facing the windows. The emptiness at his back sets his teeth on edge as much as the cold still clinging to his bones.

But while Mihawk takes the seat at the head of the table, he doesn’t loom like a monarch presiding over his court. Instead he slouches, tapping the table impatiently as he waits for Perona to stop messing with the chairs and moving around empty plates and glasses in growing despondency.

“I think table arrangement can wait until we actually have food,” he grumbles.

“I think you should have told me how many guests we were actually having before I made all these pretty place settings,” she moans in return. “Now nothing’s symmetrical! I’m going to have to start all over—”

“You’re going to do nothing of the sort. I intend to eat dinner before dawn,” Mihawk says, but seems to reconsider the harshness of his tone when Perona’s lip starts to tremble. “...You’ll have plenty of time to figure out a better arrangement for breakfast tomorrow.” Perona’s eyes shimmer, unshed tears glimmering on the edge of dark lashes. Sanji instinctively reaches for his napkin in case an opportunity arises to offer it to her. “...We can even have tea later on, if you’d like.”

Perona claps her hands together in delight, her face abruptly composed into a cheerful smile with no hint of former distress.

“Really? You’ll have tea with me?” 

“Yes,” Mihawk says with all the enthusiasm of a man who’s just agreed to drink cobra venom. “If you make it strong. Now, about dinner—”

“Coming right up!”

Perona is gone in an instant. A literal instant: Sanji blinks and she’s disappeared, along with her ghosts. The rest of them eye Mihawk warily across the table, except for Zoro, who’s already reached for a bottle of red and poured himself a glass. The image of Zoro—with his muddy robe and rain-plastered hair and bloodied forearms—sipping wine from a delicate chalice is so incongruous that Sanji almost laughs. It’s like someone dragged a feral child indoors and tried to raise him as a nobleman. 

He sneezes instead, then sneezes once more for good measure. The sound reverberates in the emptiness, and Mihawk’s raptor-like gaze is upon him at once. His yellow eyes sweep down Sanji’s body slowly, cataloguing his soaked jacket and ruined pants. He’s not afraid of Mihawk—fuck Zoro for putting the thought into his head—but he still shivers at the intensity of his stare. All Sanji can think about is the dirty water pooling into the red brocade beneath him, the wet patch he can’t avoid no matter how far forward he sits on his chair. It’s going to leave a stain and there’s nothing he can do about it. 

“My apologies,” Mihawk says. “I should have allowed you all the chance to refresh yourselves before we ate.” 

“It’s alright,” Nami says quickly. “We don’t have a change of clothes anyway.” She tactfully doesn’t mention that that’s because Zoro said it was a few hours’ walk to the castle at most, easy enough to make it here and back to the ship before dark. 

Mihawk’s sharp gaze turns to Nami, which Sanji likes even less than being watched himself. He tries to think of something to get Mihawk’s attention again—a crude joke, a comment about the terrible weather, a wine glass he can ‘accidentally’ tip—but before he can open his mouth, Perona returns with a jingling silver cart trailing behind her. She swiftly deposits a plate in front of each of them: steak that was probably hot an hour ago, plain steamed rice, and some well-seasoned, if rather wilted, vegetables. Nothing too fancy, but definitely passable fare. He wonders what kind of cooks Mihawk keeps on staff—he can hardly believe a Warlord would stoop to making his own meals—and if he can sneak away to meet those cooks sometime tonight, maybe give them some tips on how to keep meat at a standard temperature during an unpredictable service. At the very least, it would be nice to spend some time by a hot oven. His toes are starting to ache inside his waterlogged shoes.

Perona dumps herself into the unoccupied seat across from Zoro, at Mihawk’s right hand, and pulls her own plate forward before their host has the chance to pick up his fork. Zoro wastes no time as well; by the time Mihawk delicately spears his first carrot, Zoro has shovelled half his steak into his mouth and is making inroads in the mound of rice. 

The rest of them look at each other and shrug, then dig in. 

It’s far from the most comfortable dinner Sanji’s ever been a part of. Between the eerily enormous hall, the shivers he can’t seem to repress, and the awkward nature of their visit in general, he’s desperately looking forward to the evening being over. But he’s not about to turn up his nose at food, no matter how lukewarm, and there are a few bright spots—mostly in watching Perona subtly torture Zoro. 

At first, he’s not sure why Zoro is scowling so fiercely. Sanji figures he must be tired—he does tend to get into moods when he doesn’t get enough sleep—but then Sanji drops his napkin (the fact that the tremors have reached his hands is a worrying development) and when he ducks beneath the table to retrieve it, he finds Zoro’s black boots and Perona’s blocky heels engaged in a spirited kicking contest. 

It isn’t a fair fight, which is the only reason he’s not angry at Zoro for hitting a girl, even an incorporeal one. Her ghosts keep weaving between his legs like sultry cats, and whenever one drifts through Zoro’s calf his leg muscles freeze, stunning him long enough for Perona to land a particularly nasty hit with the flat of her ankle.

Sanji grabs the napkin and sits back up, grinning despite himself. This is the first time in hours he’s felt like smiling.

The rest of the dinner passes by without requiring much from Sanji. Mihawk shares the intelligence that was too risky to pass over a transponder snail; Sanji’s not familiar with the names of the Mariejois residents he mentions, but Robin’s eyes sharpen in recognition, so he figures she’ll be able to adequately convey the severity of the situation to Luffy. Despite the days-long journey, the whole purpose of their visit is over in ten minutes.

Over the politics talk, Perona and Zoro are still bickering. Someone must have won the kicking contest, because they’ve moved on to petty name-calling above the table. It’s almost adorable, the way Zoro’s shoulders scrunch up when Perona tells him how much fun she and Mihawk have been having since he left, how happy she is not to have to see his dumb face every morning at breakfast. He trades her back insult for insult, but he’s not really upset. Sanji knows him well enough by now to tell the difference: there’s an amused curl to his lip that he recognizes from their own sparring sessions. Underneath the snarling animosity, he’s enjoying the taunts. A truly angry Zoro gets quiet, or vicious. This is the closest Zoro gets to playing. He makes a mental note to tease him about little girls pulling pigtails the next time they’re alone. 

Sanji glances at Mihawk, curious what he makes of Perona and Zoro’s contemptuous dynamic. 

Mihawk is looking right back at him. 

Sanji’s heart jolts. How long has Mihawk been staring? Why is Sanji still being singled out? The pointed attention makes his skin crawl. He doesn’t mind being looked at—not usually—not if it’s a pretty lady—but men like Mihawk don’t pay attention to Sanji unless he’s pissed them off somehow, and he can’t figure out what the hell he did to offend him. 

“Yes?” he says when it becomes clear that Mihawk isn’t going to be the one to break the stalemate.

“Those clothes are ruined,” Mihawk says with neither distaste nor concern, a purely flat observation that tells Sanji nothing about his mood. “I’ll lend you something of mine.”

Sanji starts to protest—as tall as he is, Mihawk still has a half foot over Sanji and the proportions to match. Anything from Mihawk’s wardrobe is sure to drown him. But Perona perks up at the mention of clothes and immediately starts cajoling Robin and Nami to come steal from her own closet, and he doesn’t want to interrupt her excitement so he closes his mouth.

“Do you two require anything?” Mihawk says, ostensibly to Zoro and Usopp, but his eyes are still fixed on Sanji. The attention has now gone beyond disconcerting to alarming, but when he looks around nobody else seems to notice anything odd about Mihawk’s stare. 

“Oh, I’m fine,” Usopp says, plucking at the overalls that look as dry as when they set out this morning. “Waterproofed these babies months ago after one of Franky’s cola barrels exploded on me.”

“Think I’ve still got some old stuff stashed in the training room,” Zoro says, and finally Mihawk’s gaze drifts to Zoro and Sanji can take a breath.

“Then we shouldn’t waste the opportunity. Come, I’d like to see what progress you’ve made without my supervision.”

Sanji expects Zoro to protest just for the sake of being difficult, but he snaps to Mihawk’s order eagerly, grabbing his katanas from the back of the chair and immediately starting for the door. Mihawk stands as well, but pauses before following.

“Ah. The matter of sleeping arrangements.”

Everyone regards each other awkwardly. Sleeping here had never been part of the plan, and if Mihawk’s frown is anything to go by, he hadn’t accounted for the situation either. His eyes flicker between the women and the men, assessing, and Sanji can already feel where this is going and he doesn’t like it at all. This castle is fucking creepy, and their host is creepier, and he’s not letting Nami and Robin get sent away into some secluded, vulnerable spot where Mihawk and his unyielding stare can follow at his leisure. Preventing that was the entire point of his coming along. 

“I’m sure we’d all be perfectly comfortable camping out here in the dining room...” he says, but trails off at Nami’s pointed glare. 

“Sanji-kun,” she says tightly, “let’s let Mihawk finish before we volunteer to sleep on a stone floor, please?” 

Mihawk nods in approval. “I have far too many unused bedrooms that could do with airing out. They should serve for the night. Perona can show you where they are.”

Sanji looks between Mihawk and Nami, trying desperately to think of a new excuse that will satisfy the latter without offending the former.

“Well, if there aren’t enough rooms to go around, we could always share. Maybe the ladies and I—” he offers weakly, but Mihawk cuts him off with a hand.

“I assure you, that won’t be necessary. I am more than capable of providing a bed for each of you.” His voice has the authoritative ring of finality. This is the final word on the matter. There’s no point in arguing. Sanji shuts his mouth.

Mihawk drifts past his side of the table as he follows Zoro towards the door. As he passes, he leans in to murmurs in Sanji’s ear, so soft and so brief that his words could be mistaken for another stormy breath slipping past the window panes. 

“Do help yourself to a bath before bed. I’d rather you didn’t spend the whole night shaking.”

And then he’s gone, leaving Sanji as cold as the evening began, but somehow doubly as unsettled. 

There’s a bundle of clothes waiting for Sanji when he gets back from the bathroom. He eyes them with suspicion, but the wet shirt and pants he reluctantly dragged back on after his shower are already starting to freeze to his skin. Without a better option, he strips and pulls Mihawk’s shirt over his head, arms briefly tangling in the laces around the neck. When he finally gets the shirt on, the white fabric falls well past his hips, almost to mid-thigh.

This isn’t a shirt. It’s a goddamn nightgown. 

The leggings aren’t any better. The black material is pleasantly soft, but the waistband is too wide for Sanji’s narrow hips, and the shirt’s abundance of laces are nowhere to be found when he really needs them. Groaning in frustration, he kicks the leggings off into the corner of the room and resigns himself to his humiliation. Iva would probably be delighted to see him like this, bare-legged and shivering in a beautifully appointed castle bedchamber. At least he doesn’t have any amorous pursuers trying to corner him here.

Unbidden, Mihawk’s piercing eyes flash behind his own, and Sanji shakes his head. No. He is not fucking afraid of Mihawk. It’s just been a long, exhausting day and his nerves are rawer than usual. He’ll light a fire, get some sleep, and any lingering anxiety about their host will be gone by the morning.

As far as the room goes, he really doesn’t have much to complain about. Everything is covered in a thin film of dust, but there’s a bed with a rich silk coverlet and neatly tucked sheets, wider by two hands than the hanging bunks of the Sunny, and a fireplace with wood already stacked inside. There’s even an armchair in the corner, and a dresser for guests with the better sense to bring a change of clothes along. The floor is made of the same freezing stone as the hallways, but at least there’s a rug beside the bed. He steps onto it before the floor can sap the last of the brief warmth he got from his shower through his bare feet. Mihawk apparently took the time to install modern plumbing in his ancient castle, but not knowing if the women had had a chance yet to take their own baths, he hadn’t dared run a full tub and use up all the hot water. 

The only thing that bothers him is that the bedroom has no windows. Which isn’t really a problem, obviously. The boys’ dorm on the Sunny doesn’t have any windows either. 

(But he doesn’t sleep alone in that dorm.)

He’s glad, honestly, the more he thinks about it: less cracks for drafts to slip through. 

(And the walls of the Sunny are made of wood, not stone.)

He should get a fire started. The sooner he does, the sooner he can get under the blankets and finally go to sleep. He kneels on the floor in front of the fireplace and rearranges the wood into a fragile lean-to: the fuel is bone-dry and bits of bramble crumble away in his hands, but it should be enough to warm the room at least.

His lighter won’t light.

He flicks the wheel till his thumbjoint aches, but the wick refuses to catch. Maybe the lighter got too wet in his jacket pocket, who can say, but the point remains: no flame, no fire. He’d go beg a match from Nami or Usopp, but he has no idea where their rooms are. Perona dropped him off first, since his is apparently the closest one to the dining room.

(“You look like you’re probably the same kind of stupid as Zoro,” she’d explained as they walked, which is probably the meanest thing anyone has said to him in recent memory. “So let’s put you where you won’t get lost, okay?”)

Sighing in defeat, Sanji picks himself up off the floor and cracks the door open a little so at least he has the dim light of the hallway to see by, then throws himself into bed. He just wants this shitty day to be over, and being unconscious is the quickest path to that goal. He pulls the blankets over his shoulders and curls towards the wall, waiting for his body heat to turn the chilly sheets into a toasty cocoon. 

Except, that doesn’t happen. Even after ten minutes of tucking the sheets as tightly as he can under his chin, he’s still freezing. He presses one foot and then the other into his bare calves, trying to ease the icy prickles in his soles, but all that does is transfer the cold to the rest of his legs. The coverlet might as well be tissue paper for all it’s helping: the lightweight silk, like so many expensive things, looks pretty at the expense of providing any actual utility. He’d give anything for a scratchy wool blanket and a rice-filled sock, heated in the oven, to tuck beneath his feet. 

Sanji rubs his thighs together for a little friction, cringing as exposed leg hair catches against the slippery sheets. He hates sleeping with bare legs. He hates how the nightgown-not-shirt keeps riding up under his hip, exposing even more of his skin to the mattress below. He hates how the thin fabric clings to him everywhere else, forcing an acute awareness of his body when all he wants to do is shut down his mind. Sleep feels impossible. Every time he starts to doze off, another chill runs through his legs, and then he shifts and suddenly there’s a crack in the cocoon and a little more cold air seeps in and he has to start the incubation process again. 

Exhaustion wins out over discomfort only after a half hour of tossing, and even then it’s an uneasy sleep. Sanji drifts between half-lucid thoughts as he dips in and out of consciousness: he should get up and steal some towels from the bathroom, he should go back to the dining room and get a candle to light the fire, he should find Nami and beg her to let him stay in her room for a little while, he should ask the guards if they would give him just one more blanket, please, the iron gets so cold at night—

He gasps awake to the sound of unoiled hinges creaking open.

Sanji goes very still. For a moment, he's back in his little cell in Germa, staring sightless at a stone wall and praying that the footsteps in the hallway are only the sound of breakfast arriving, not his brothers searching for a bit of fun before morning lessons. Hoping that if he holds his breath long enough, he’ll disappear into the darkness entirely.

But he’s not in a cell, he remembers slowly. He’s in Mihawk’s castle, and the bedroom isn’t completely dark. There’s a growing patch of light from the doorway spreading across the wall. In the light he sees the shadow of a man’s body, and trailing from the shadow’s hand is a line of perfectly poised black. He squints, trying to focus his bleary eyes on the thin shape.

It’s... a sword. 

Every muscle in his body tightens. He’s not in that cell anymore, but the same instincts take over as when he was eight years old and knew absolutely no one was coming to protect him. Don’t move. Don’t react. Don’t panic. Panic makes you stupid. Panic just encourages them— him. Mihawk. God, he was right about Mihawk. This was a trap, no wonder he wanted them in separate rooms, no wonder he wanted them alone. Together, the group might pose a challenge, but now the Warlord has the whole night to hunt them down one by one. 

Sanji clenches his hands in the sheets. Maybe if he moves quick enough, he can kick the sword away. Get him down for a few seconds, enough of a head start to run and warn Nami, Robin, Usopp, Zoro—

Zoro. Zoro, who went to train with Mihawk, alone. 

Too late. He can’t think about that, can’t think about (Zoro hurt, bleeding—) anything else but the fact that the shadow is moving, stepping closer, raising the sword—

Sanji throws himself onto his other side, leg hinging and dragging the blankets forward in an arc to meet where the shadow’s arm should be, but his kick is too slow. The silhouette stumbles out of reach into the too-bright frame of the doorway, cursing as he goes, a string of crude expletives Sanji could never imagine someone as elegant as Mihawk uttering. 

He does know one swordsman who talks like that, though.

“Zoro?”

The shadow stops moving long enough for Sanji to register the outline of broad shoulders, the tinge of green haloing its head, the sword still in its scabbard, like its owner had only taken it off his sword belt to set it down on the chair.

“What the fuck are you doing in my room?” Zoro snarls. 

Sanji’s body flushes hot, then cold: relief, confusion, rage all flying by in quick succession. 

“This is my room,” he snarls back. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”

“This is my room,” Zoro says again, dumbfounded, like Sanji is the one talking nonsense.

“No, it isn’t.”

“It is.”

“What are you, three years old? Stop repeating yourself. This is my room. My room. Perona personally showed me to the door.” A maddeningly obvious realisation hits Sanji, and he narrows his eyes. “You got lost again, didn’t you?”

“No, I fucking didn’t,” Zoro says. Sanji would laugh at his petulant tone if he wasn’t so angry. 

“How the hell do you even get lost in a castle you lived in for two years, Marimo?”

“I didn’t. I know where my own goddamn bedroom is.”

“Obviously you don’t, since you’re standing in mine.”

As Sanji’s eyes adjust, he starts to make out more details in the darkness, and he can see that Zoro looks like he’s about two seconds from hurling the sword, scabbard and all, at Sanji’s head. Honestly, he’d welcome a fight. The adrenaline of what he thought was about to be a life or death struggle is still coursing through his body, and he’d be perfectly happy to make Zoro’s idiotic face its new target. A few bruises would serve him right for making Sanji think he was about to be murdered in his own bed: emphasis on his.

Unfortunately, Zoro isn’t done arguing yet. “You don’t even have a room here! This is my house!”

“Your house?” Sanji scoffs. “Did Mihawk put you on the lease? Adopt you when I wasn’t looking? Or did you just decide that on your own?”

“Squatter’s rights,” Zoro snaps. “This is my home too and I’m telling you to get out.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’m hauling your ass downstairs and throwing you out the front door.”

“You couldn’t even find your own bedroom,” Sanji says. “How are you going to find the front door?”

Zoro grins savagely. “Windows work too.”

He tosses the sword on the chair and steps forward, arms already curved to pick Sanji up and toss him over his shoulder, blankets and all. Sanji’s just about to fling the covers off and jump into the rush of a good brawl when he remembers what he’s wearing. 

Or, more precisely, what he isn’t wearing, which is anything from the thigh down. The skimpy outfit is mortifying enough on its own, but fighting Zoro means kicking Zoro, and kicking Zoro means giving him a full-on peep show with every strike. That is not an option. 

“Wait—” he tries to say, but Zoro already has one knee on the bed, determination clear in his eyes. This is not Zoro playing around: this is Zoro frustrated and tired and done with arguing. “Fucking— stop, just go somewhere else, you can sleep anywhere—”

“Up you get, Curly,” Zoro says, grabbing the edge of the blankets and trying to rip them off. Sanji holds on for dear life, clinging to the sheets and his dignity with all the strength that adrenaline affords, which is apparently a lot. Zoro can’t budge him. He grunts in frustration and tries to shake the blankets loose but Sanji just curls up tighter around the sheets. He’ll become an armadillo for the whole night if he has to: Zoro is not getting him out of this bed. 

“...Fine,” Zoro says after a solid thirty seconds of fruitless tugging. “It’s too late for this shit.” He lets go of the blankets and shoves Sanji away. Sanji doesn’t get a chance to savour his victory because the next thing he knows, Zoro is flinging himself down beside Sanji. He has to scramble backwards towards the wall to avoid getting shoulder-checked. 

“What are you doing?” he says, panicked. Zoro grabs the edge of the pillow and drags it out from under Sanji’s head, shoving it beneath his own. Sanji doesn’t have the free hands to stop him.

“We’re sharing.”

“Like hell we are!”

Zoro grunts and turns over on his side away from Sanji, facing the door. “Night, Curly.”

“Hey, this is not a solution! Only your idiot brain would think this is a solution!”

“Shut up and go to sleep.”

Sanji kicks him through the blankets, hard in the small of the back, and Zoro curses before flipping back over to glare at Sanji.

“Do that again and I’m smothering you with the rug.”

“Get out,” Sanji says. He kicks again, this time aiming for his stomach, but before his foot can connect Zoro’s halfway on top of him, pinning his hips to the bed with one heavy thigh while his arms wrap around Sanji’s shoulders and lock him a wrestler’s hold. With the blankets still twisted around him, he has no hope of wriggling free. His cocoon has become a straightjacket. 

“You ready to settle down?”

Sanji pushes against Zoro’s chest, but he can’t get any leverage with his arms trapped between Zoro’s body and his own. 

“Fuck you,” he says, and knees Zoro in the balls.

The hit isn’t as devastating as it should be: with enough windup he could permanently destroy Zoro’s chances of future fatherhood, but he only has a few spare inches to manoeuvre beneath the sheets. It’s hard enough to make Zoro yelp though, and Sanji feels a smug satisfaction as Zoro’s pained breath wheezes out of him into the stolen pillow. 

It always feels good to get the upper hand in one of their spats. The only problem is, Sanji can usually collect his win and leave before Zoro has a chance to recover. There isn’t a kitchen to hide out in while Zoro licks his wounds. There’s just this bed and the wall at his back and Sanji can’t hide himself in either of them when Zoro’s eyes finally open and focus with murderous intensity. 

Maybe he is going to get stabbed to death tonight after all.

“Sorry,” he grits out as the self-preservation instincts finally kick in and he realises that he may have pushed an already-frustrated Zoro over the edge. Sanji doesn’t even bother fighting back when Zoro roughly grabs him around the waist and yanks him away from the wall: he’s made his bed, quite literally, and he’ll take the beating he’s about to get with as much stoicism as he can manage. Not like he doesn’t have the practice. He grimly hopes Zoro will leave his face alone at least. Sanji doesn’t really want to find out how hard Mihawk will stare if he shows up to breakfast with a swollen black eye or split lip. 

But to Sanji’s dull surprise, Zoro’s fists don’t start flying. Instead, he drags Sanji backwards into his chest, encasing him from behind in a crushing pinion that leaves his lungs struggling to expand. Maybe this is Zoro’s revenge plan: squeeze him like a python till his ribs shatter? Before he can even think of kicking himself free, Zoro’s legs wrap around the bundle of blankets and interlock in front of him, trapping Sanji completely in a cage of limbs. Zoro’s breath blows hot against his neck, the only part of his skin left exposed, and Sanji can’t help but shiver. There’s something about the position that makes his mouth go dry, a memory of too-strong arms holding him still before someone else’s boot collides with his stomach. Before violence, there’s always a moment like this: a flash-freeze of motionless anticipation. He tenses, not knowing yet where to expect the first blow. 

“Relax, you moron.”

The order vibrates against his neck, low and deliberate. It has the opposite effect: Sanji flinches even harder, and Zoro groans.

“Stop fighting me. You won’t win.”

Sanji knows he’s right. Knows he should just surrender and let Zoro do whatever he wants to do, knows it’ll probably bruise less if he does, but he doesn’t know if he can stop fighting. His body remembers how to take a hit just fine, but he doesn’t remember how to lie there and take it. It’s been too long. 

Except... Zoro isn’t doing anything. Just holding Sanji in place, arms and legs wrapped around his body. He can feel every breath Zoro takes, the rise and fall of his chest slowing slightly between each exhale. When he speaks again, his voice is a rumble against Sanji’s back.

“That’s better,” Zoro mumbles softly, and exhales once more into Sanji’s neck. The arms holding him grow impossibly heavier. 

It takes Sanji a moment to realise that he’s fallen asleep.

He’s seen Zoro pass out in a lot of improbable places: upright against the mast, facedown in Chopper’s lap during a physical, literally underwater (one of the rare occurrences he’s had to rescue a non-devil-fruit-user in their crew from drowning, not that Zoro thanked him for it). But Zoro has never been the clingy type when he sleeps—he’s not like Luffy or Usopp, who will spool around any body that gets too close, like plants furling instinctually towards the light. The only thing Zoro curls up around is his swords, because he’s a freak that prefers hugging a pile of sharp, dangerous metal to a perfectly normal pillow. 

The point is, Zoro doesn’t do... this. Cuddle, or whatever the fuck you call the death grip he currently has on Sanji.

He must be faking it. Trying to get Sanji to let down his guard. Sanji decides to test the limits of his cage, lifting his elbow to see if Zoro reacts. He does, but it’s only to chuff against Sanji’s neck and tighten his bicep, forcing Sanji’s elbow back down to where it was. A gentle, steady reverberation starts up between Sanji’s shoulder blades. 

...Zoro’s snoring.

Vertebra by vertebra, muscle by muscle, Sanji lets his body unclench. 

He’ll give it an hour. An hour, for Zoro to sink into the kind of deep, prolonged unconsciousness it takes a full-scale Marine battle to wake him from. Then he’ll slip out of bed and find the discarded leggings, knot them if he has to to keep them on his hips. Get back into bed before Zoro’s any the wiser. 

It’ll be a boring, uncomfortable hour of waiting, but at least he’ll survive the morning with his pride intact. Plan in place, Sanji closes his eyes and starts counting down the longest sixty minutes of his life. 

He makes it to four before he drifts off.

Sanji wakes up cold, and alone. Not an unusual sort of wakening, other than the vague impression that he’d gone to sleep with something warm and heavy draped over him and that that had been nice. But the weight is gone now, and the chill is seeping into his body again. 

He doesn’t remember a time in his life where his bones held onto warmth: it melts from his body like flesh from a corpse, sloughing off from every bit of skin he leaves exposed. Probably a side effect of starvation—those days on the rock trained his body into seeing heat as an unnecessary expenditure. So long as his organs still function, keeping everything else warm is an indulgent luxury. Even the fire in his leg comes in short, brilliant flares: swift and intense, an explosion rather than a controlled burn. Enough to win the fight, nothing more. 

He didn’t sleep so deeply this time that he’s entirely forgotten where he is, but he still startles at the sound of stumbling footsteps by the bed and a rough, sleep-addled voice muttering.

“...the hell is your lighter, Cook...”

Zoro. Right, Zoro was here. Is still here. Sanji turns over carefully, pulling the blankets back up to his ears as he looks for Zoro’s silhouette in the dim light seeping from the crack beneath the door. He doesn’t remember either of them closing it before they fell asleep, but maybe a draft swung the door shut: more foibles of old architecture. 

He can’t make out anything past shuffling feet, but whatever the hell Zoro is doing, he doesn’t seem to be succeeding at it. Sanji weighs the entertainment of letting him struggle against the intense desire to pass out again without a clumsy swordsman banging into every piece of furniture in a five foot radius and waking him back up.  

“...Can you please finish whatever it is you’re doing somewhere else?” Sanji grumbles. The shuffling stops, leaving Sanji with the unsettling awareness that there are now eyes—well, eye —staring at him from an unknown point in the darkness. 

“You didn’t light the fire.” Even with his gravelly, sleep-deprived voice, Zoro still manages to sound like a whining teenager. 

“Lighter wouldn’t start,” Sanji says, eyelids already starting to droop again. “Too wet.” He almost tells Zoro to get back in bed before he remembers that he doesn’t want Zoro in bed with him; he wants Zoro to go away so that Sanji can actually get some proper sleep, alone.

“It’s fucking freezing in here.” 

“Then go find someplace warmer,” Sanji mumbles. He’s not getting out of bed to defend his own fire-making skills to a man who can’t even figure out how to light a stove in broad daylight.

He’s halfway back into a dream when the mattress dips, tipping him towards the centre of the bed. There’s a sensation of soft fabric skimming across his shoulders and legs, and then a burst of cold air hits the back of his calf. The temperature drop startles him awake enough to realise what’s happening, but not quickly enough to stop Zoro from pulling the blankets off his body. In a panic, he grabs the coverlet and yanks: the surprise attack earns him a precious few inches of bedding back, but it also earns him a frustrated huff from Zoro.

“I’m not going to steal them all, idiot. Just let me have half.” 

Sanji shakes his head frantically, but since Zoro can’t see him he takes Sanji’s silence as assent. For the second time that night, Sanji is helpless to stop Zoro from climbing into bed with him, except now he doesn’t even have the barrier of blankets to separate them. The sheets lift as Zoro crawls inside Sanji’s former cocoon of warmth and safety, and Sanji tries to shimmy away but there isn’t anywhere to go, not unless he wants to press his entire body up against the freezing wall.

It’s fine, he tries to reassure himself. He’ll just stay at the very edge of the blanket and... hold really still. For the entire night. He can do that. He has excellent body control. Perks of needing to maintain a steady core while spinning on one foot. 

Unfortunately, he doesn’t account for the gravitational pull of Zoro’s not-insignificant weight when he finally settles down into the mattress. Like a marble on a slanted floor, Sanji trembles on the incline for only a moment before tipping directly into Zoro’s chest. 

Sanji freezes, but Zoro laughs, not bothered in the slightest. 

“Guess this bed isn’t big enough for two people?”

“It would be if you stopped putting on ten pounds of muscle between every island,” Sanji bites back, trying to figure out how to push himself out of the valley without feeling Zoro up in the process. He puts a hand out blindly and hits solid, breathing muscle. Sanji snatches the hand back to his own chest, heart racing. 

“Oi, don’t start hitting me again, Cook. Remember how well that worked out for you last time?” Zoro playfully hooks a leg over Sanji’s knees, pressing them down without any real force. “I can still...”

Zoro trails off. Sanji squeezes his eyes shut.

“Why are you naked?”

If Sanji had any hope Zoro was going to let this pass quietly, it evaporates in an instant. 

“I’m not naked,” he hisses, but Zoro doesn’t wait for him to finish before he’s pawing at Sanji’s chest to confirm. Sanji slaps his hand away and crosses his arms against any more incursions. “Everything important’s covered, I promise, so keep your pervert hands to yourself.”

“Pretty sure the pervert’s the guy who was sleeping balls-out this whole time without saying anything.”

“What, did you want me to give you an itemised list of everything I was wearing before you, let’s not forget, forced your way into my bed?”

“My bed,” Zoro corrects him, and Sanji is going to kill this man if he doesn’t kill himself out of mortification first. 

“Then blame your shitty teacher for giving me a nightgown instead of real clothes! He’s the real perv here.”

“Wait, Mihawk didn’t give you pants?”

For the first time, a tinge of confused sympathy slips into Zoro’s voice, which does not make Sanji feel any better.

“...They didn’t fit,” he admits sheepishly.

Zoro snorts, then that snort becomes a full-chested laugh. The bed shakes from the force of it, and Sanji cringes, face flaming with embarrassment. He’s used to Zoro making fun of him, but the insults are much easier to brush off when he’s dressed and confident and in his element. Zoro’s mockery can’t hurt him when he knows there’s nothing in his appearance or presentation to criticise: he holds himself to impeccable standards, and he lives up to them. But knowing that Zoro’s laughing at him now for exactly what he is—half-naked, messy with sleep, too slow to fight off even playful attacks—he can’t swallow down the curl of shame in his throat. 

“Yeah, ok,” Zoro says when his laughter calms down, “that makes sense. My next guess was that you asked Perona if you could raid her closet with the girls instead—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sanji says, pressing his hands into his eyes. He knows that Zoro has no idea what happened on Momoiro, can’t possibly know what kind of closets the residents of the island dragged him towards ( unless he’s had his own suspicions as well— nope, not touching that thought), but it all feels too familiar: like someone is stripping him and scraping what’s been exposed open with a spoon to see what humiliating secrets he’s been hiding. 

“Will if you make me,” Zoro says in a familiar call to action, but Sanji can’t summon the will to fight him again. He’s already been bested twice tonight, and now that Zoro knows about his state of undress, he’ll definitely use it to his advantage. His modesty is one weakness that Zoro has thankfully never had an opportunity to exploit, but he’s sure Zoro’s not above taking away the last of Sanji’s dignity if it could win him one more petty brawl. The thought of ending up completely naked at Zoro’s feet is genuinely nauseating in a way that Sanji doesn’t dare look at too deeply. 

The silence of his absent response drags so long that Sanji hopes that Zoro has fallen back asleep. That hope is foiled when fingers wrap around his wrist and pull one of his hands away from his face. The pulling isn’t tight and painful like a sparring grip: more of a curious tug, like someone turning a stone to see what sea creatures live beneath.

“You’re actually upset,” Zoro says. With one eye uncovered Sanji can just barely make out the confusion in Zoro’s expression in the dim light. “Why are you upset?”

Sanji blinks incredulously. For a quasi-hysterical moment, he realises they match: just two lone eyes staring at each other, both equally befuddled.

“Perona didn’t really try to force you into her clothes, did she? Cause she tried that with me once. Said I had to let her play dress up since we got rid of all her creepy ass toys on Thriller Bark—”

“I’m not upset about Perona, you idiot,” Sanji forces himself to say before Zoro can invent a whole new hypothetical scenario for him to be demeaned in. “I’m just...”

“What?”

“Embarrassed, okay?” He tries to cover his face again but Zoro won’t let him take his hand back. ”I know this is all incredibly funny to you, but it’s not fun for me to be around you like this. It’s fucking humiliating.”

“Wait, shut up—what do you mean, ‘like this’?”

“Are you being purposefully dense? Like this. Half-dressed. Pants-less. ‘Balls-out,’ as you so eloquently put it.”

Zoro frowns, then lets go of Sanji’s wrist. 

“You’re serious? That’s why you’re upset?”

“Don’t know why you’re acting so confused when you were laughing your ass off about how stupid I look two minutes ago.”

“I wasn’t laughing because you look stupid, I was laughing because it’s you.”

The burning in his throat flares, and to his horror Sanji feels his nose start to burn too, like he’s about to start fucking crying just because Zoro’s typical blunt-hammer speech is hitting a few tender spots tonight. 

“Ah, good. That makes me feel much better,” he says, telling himself his voice is rough from tiredness and nothing else as he rolls over to face the wall. 

“You gonna let me finish before you have your tantrum?”

Sanji shrugs, not really caring if Zoro can see it. Zoro sighs.

“Why would I think it’s stupid to sleep in just a shirt? Hell, I’m sure most of us would do it if we didn’t have to worry about getting attacked in the middle of the night. And Franky walks around without pants every day.”

“Franky does look stupid though,” Sanji mumbles into his arm.

“Thought you were letting me finish.” Sanji huffs, but lets Zoro continue.

“I laughed because I know that’s not your thing. We could be sailing through a volcano and I bet you’d still be wearing a full suit. So... I don’t know, it caught me off guard. Thought it was funny, I guess, like when Chopper tries on our clothes and they’re too big on him. It’s cute.”

Sanji immediately rolls back over. Zoro’s looking right at him, with no hint of mockery in his expression no matter how long Sanji searches for it.

“Cute,” he deadpans, disbelieving.

It’s Zoro’s turn to shrug. “I guess?” he says. “Not really used to seeing you like this. Not all buttoned up, just... you, without all the layers.”

“Not much to see,” Sanji reminds him. “It’s pretty dark in here.”

“It doesn’t have to be literal, dumbass.”

Sanji almost makes a joke about how Zoro probably doesn’t even know what a metaphor is: how he’s an ingrate who’s never picked up a book in his life, so why’s he pretending to talk pretty now? But in the absence of any real provocation on Zoro’s part, the response doesn’t feel like fun banter. It just feels... mean. 

Sanji is acerbic by habit, perpetually on the verbal offensive because he knows that something sharper will always hit him in the back if he doesn’t strike first. But if this is a battle of words, Zoro isn’t holding up his side of the bargain. His jabs tonight have all been glancing blows, so light Sanji isn’t even sure anymore if they were punches at all, or if it’s just that every hand that reaches towards him looks like a fist. 

But if Zoro’s not trying to hurt Sanji, then what are they even doing? Having a friendly little chat beneath the covers, like he imagines (with no small degree of jealousy) Robin and Nami do at night? Is he supposed to open up his heart to Zoro now, tell him that yes, he’s uncomfortable with his body, yes, he doesn’t like people seeing enough of it to pick out the all-too-obvious flaws? That those flaws are clinically diagnosed and written up in some yellowing lab report halfway around the world, but that the real self-hatred is the work of his own careful evaluation of the last decade or so? Is Zoro supposed to reply that actually, Sanji’s hairy legs and spindly ankles and too-slender feet are perfectly fine and he should take more pride in his body, when Zoro’s own body—proportionate and sculpted, unfailingly strong, the exemplar of a masculine ideal—is right there for side-by-side comparison? 

Zoro twists beside him, stretching his arms above his head. Sanji’s been quiet too long, so Zoro must be getting ready to go back to sleep. He’s gotten bored with whatever this conversation is, or was, supposed to be. Sanji is relieved for an excuse to step back from the precipice of whatever he was about to admit to, but the anticipation of the drop still lurches in his stomach, anxiety radiating from every unsaid word that he gathered and then abruptly forced back down. 

Something soft lands on his shoulder, interrupting his reverie. Another blanket, maybe? But where would Zoro have gotten another blanket? He drags it beneath the covers, trying to feel out the shape in his hands. A longer piece of fabric, with two shorter pieces attached...

It’s a shirt.

“There,” Zoro says, “now we’re both half-dressed, so you don’t have to feel weird about it anymore.”

Zoro’s shirt.

“Don’t worry, I changed after sparring with Mihawk, so it’s not muddy or sweaty or anything.”

Zoro’s shirt in his hands. 

“So, think you can stop freaking out now?”

Zoro’s shirt that is not on Zoro’s body.

“I—what?” says Sanji. 

Zoro’s right, the shirt isn’t damp or dirty—a little musty, maybe, from sitting around unworn in an ancient castle for a few months, but otherwise clean. Sanji chooses to focus on the material while his brain processes the rest of the situation (shirtless man in bed with me). Probably a t-shirt—come to think of it, Zoro never took off his robe when he got into bed, so he must have left it behind somewhere (shirtless man three inches from me) . Does Mihawk have a laundry? Was the bastard holding out on Sanji? (it’s fine it’s not weird it’s—)

“Just figured we’d, uh, be even, like this.” The unexpected awkwardness in Zoro’s voice pulls Sanji out of his rapid spiral. He forces himself to look back up. 

The light from beneath the door glows around Zoro’s bare shoulder, outlining the hunched shape in soft amber light. If Sanji didn’t know better, he’d almost think Zoro’s body language was self-conscious. Which doesn’t make any sense—Zoro confidently walks around the ship bare chested all the time, on hot days or when he’s working out or just because he’s too lazy to wash his share of the laundry. Sanji won’t let him into the galley without a shirt, but it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, and Zoro knows that. Unlike Sanji, he’s got no reason to be shy.

“Thanks,” he says quietly. What else can he say? The gesture is fucking bizarre, but he can almost see the logic from Zoro’s straightforward perspective. You have to fight fair or the fight doesn’t mean anything, so if Sanji’s at a disadvantage, Zoro needs to put them both back on even ground. Sanji would prefer that even ground involve less nudity, but that Zoro would make the offer is undeniably thoughtful. Almost sweet, in a way that he’d never have thought Zoro capable of before tonight.

“No problem.” Zoro clears his throat. “I know we fight a lot, but I don’t actually want you to feel like shit, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Sanji says, and he’s surprised to realise that he means it. He’s known for a long time—maybe since Thriller Bark, and all the disturbing discoveries he made about Zoro’s capacity for selflessness during that hellish trip, but maybe even longer than that. Maybe since the first time that Zoro definitively won one of their sparring sessions and, with a blade to Sanji’s heaving sternum, hadn’t pressed the final inch to draw blood. 

There’s a reason Sanji enjoys his fights with Zoro, even though he used to dread the pointed cruelty of his brothers or the more sidelong contempt of some of the Baratie cooks. Zoro tries to beat him, but he doesn’t try to beat him down. Any wounds he inflicts heal in a few days at most: a few bruises, an injured ego, but no broken bones or concerted campaigns to remind Sanji how little kindness or respect he deserves. And so the wear-and-tear, the hopeless exhaustion never sets in; Sanji always knows that the next time they squabble, there’s a chance he’ll be the one to leave the bruises.

Sanji fingers the soft shirt in his hands, thinking back on the rest of the evening. Would Zoro really have stripped him if they’d gone at it earlier? Or was that worry just the memory of stone walls and cold iron creeping into his brain, reminding him that the only armour he has is thin fabric, that his unhardened skin is all too easy to exploit? 

The mattress shifts again; Zoro pulls the blankets up over his bare shoulder. The cocoon closes over them both, sheets held taut like a bridge between their bodies as they make the most of every inch of cover they have. 

“It’s still fucking cold in here,” Zoro mutters, an unnecessary explanation that Sanji doesn’t quite believe. Zoro should still be running hot from sparring with Mihawk, and the narrow slot of space between them radiates with the shared heat of two bodies: whatever Zoro loses, Sanji returns. 

“Maybe you should have kept your shirt on then,” Sanji says. “Not your smartest move, Marimo.”

Zoro scoffs softly, but he doesn’t pick up the baton of gentle ribbing like Sanji expects, nor does he try to steal the shirt back from Sanji’s hands. Instead, he lies still, watching Sanji with an expression that he’s not sure he could read even if he had a roaring fire to see by. As Zoro’s silent observation drags on, Sanji’s face begins to heat. He almost never knows what Zoro’s thinking—generally, he assumes Zoro isn’t thinking about much at all—but the uncertainty is more nerve wracking when they’re in close quarters like this. It’s not the same nervousness as when Sanji was bracing for a hit, but there’s still a tension in the air: a lack of resolution, of some final word or action to put the conversation to rest. 

“Can we do it like we did before?” Zoro says at last.

“Do what?” he asks uneasily, no idea what Zoro is referring to.

“Sleep.” Zoro inches closer, fingers brushing the shirt in Sanji’s hands as he pulls himself forward on the mattress. “You were warm.”

Sanji’s heart rate jumps as a rough palm skims up his arm and he finally pieces together what Zoro wants. He goes rigid, and the hand stops just below his shoulder. 

“I wasn’t warm,” he chokes out, hoping to give himself a moment to think before Zoro does anything else. “I was freezing.”

“You felt warm to me.”

Sanji’s heart thumps again. Breathless, he waits for Zoro to lose patience with his hesitation, to start manhandling him back into the hold he had him in before. But Zoro’s hand stays paused over his shoulder, resting on the long sleeve of Mihawk’s shirt, not pulling or dragging, just...waiting. Anxiety swirls in Sanji’s stomach, the swooping dizziness of missing a step and finding yourself poised over open air. 

He’s going to say no. He has to say no. Zoro’s never going to let him live it down if he doesn’t say no. 

(Zoro is the one who asked.)

And besides, he hates it when other people get too close, when they touch him. It makes his skin burn.

(Not Nami or Robin: he’d happily sleep curled up in their arms if they’d let him. And Luffy and Chopper’s hugs are nice too, and he doesn’t mind when Usopp slings an arm around his neck or Franky bumps his shoulder. Would it really be so much worse with Zoro?)

And besides, why should he let Zoro selfishly slump all over him and take his heat, like a stupid green lizard basking on a rock, when Sanji is the one who was cold to begin with?

(Zoro felt warm too.)

Sanji shrugs Zoro’s hand off and rolls over to face the wall again. Zoro doesn’t try to stop him. 

He lets out a long, slow breath.

“Well? You chicken out or something?”

“Hah?” Zoro says.

“What are you waiting for, a written invitation?” he says as he reaches behind him and grabs Zoro’s wrist, dragging Zoro’s arm over his shoulder. “You’re so needy, it’s embarrassing.”

Zoro hesitates for only a moment before the arm tightens around Sanji’s chest. He swears he can hear the grin in Zoro’s voice when he replies.

“Least I didn’t beg Mihawk to let me have a slumber party with the girls because I was too scared to sleep alone.”

“Yeah, you just begged me to sleep with you instead. You’re a paragon of courage.”

“Mhm,” says Zoro, humming his agreement as he snuggles into Sanji’s back. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect your honour from the big bad swordsman.”

“Like I need you to protect me.”

“Whatever you say, Curly.”

Lacking any immediate retort, Sanji lets the conversation drop. Still grinning—seriously, how can Sanji actually feel Zoro smiling behind his head?—Zoro takes the acquiescence as an invitation to burrow himself into every crevice of Sanji’s free space, tucking his knees up tight behind Sanji’s and hooking his chin into the crook of Sanji’s neck. 

Once he gets over the unfamiliarity of having another body so close, the pressure isn’t... horrible. Strange, sure, but not that different from a heavy blanket that happens to mould itself perfectly to his shape. The chill in his spine vanishes almost immediately, absorbed into the broadness of Zoro’s chest. With a blanket on one side and Zoro’s body on the other, he feels enclosed but not trapped, like there’s a waist-high wall separating him from the rest of the room and the silent hallway beyond. The feeling of security reminds him of something, a distant memory floating on the edge of his consciousness, but it flits away as Zoro snuffles sleepily against his ear. The sound is closer than he’s used to, but still comfortingly familiar. He’s used to hearing similar noises from the cot above his whenever neither one of them has an evening watch.

(He’d never admit it out loud, but Sanji actually likes sleeping in a dorm. He hates the mess and he hates the lack of privacy, but he likes the reminder that there are other people alive in the vicinity when he closes his eyes. Having a separate room at Baratie was a perk of his sous-chef position—and, he now quietly suspects, a rare indulgence of Zeff’s affection for him—but there were nights he almost wished he could stay with the rest of the cooks in their crowded bunkroom. Taking up smoking helped: when he couldn’t sleep he could blame his late-night wandering on the habit, and it gave him an excuse to duck his head into Zeff’s office and see that the old man was still there, passed out in a whiskey bottle or tallying inventories late into the night. But if Zeff caught him out of bed, he’d get tossed back into his empty room with an order to stop skulking around and sleep, and then he’d be alone again till morning.)

Sanji is still holding Zoro’s discarded shirt. He is intensely aware of its absence at his back, just as he’s sure Zoro is cognizant of the bareness of his own legs, but between the two of them there’s enough clothing that no skin is actually touching. The sharp knobs of Zoro’s knees are softened by the leggings he must have taken from the training room, and the exact grooves of Zoro’s chest are lost in the loose folds of Mihawk’s nightdress-not-shirt. Still, there are some details that are hard to ignore: the slight tackiness of Zoro’s unwashed skin from dried sweat and rainwater, the tickle of bristly hair against his ear, the hem that rubs against Sanji’s thigh each time Zoro shifts, reminding him how little coverage he has. He has to clench his fingers to stop himself from reaching down and tugging at the hem. That would just call more attention to the line between clothing and nakedness, though maybe Zoro isn’t as worried as he is about how easily that barrier could slip. He’d be able to feel it, if Zoro’s heart was thumping as hard as Sanji’s own. 

Shit, can Zoro feel his heart too?

He just needs to calm down and go back to sleep. He’s only overthinking because he hasn’t done this before: slept with another person in the same bed. It’s just a new experience, so of course he’s going to notice every little thing. But people do this all the time. Parents and children, husbands and wives. Nami and Robin. How many times has he daydreamed about Nami curled up at his side? About how soft her skin would feel, how gently she’d look at him before whispering goodnight? The fantasy has gotten him through many nightmare-ridden nights, running his hands over the empty sheets of his cot and imagining how wonderful it would be if she was there.

The pang of loneliness is sudden and visceral, somehow more intense for the arms wrapped around him. It figures that the first time he’d actually get to have this kind of company, it would be with a man, a man who didn’t even want Sanji in his bed to begin with. 

Except... no.

This isn’t the first time.

There’s a memory creeping in, intruding from the periphery of his mind, planting roots in every parallel sensation between the past and the present. He was wet from the rain then too, and there were scratches on his arms. His feet hurt from a long walk, but he didn’t mind, because he was warm and safe and happy beneath a mound of thick white blankets that smelled of antiseptic and fresh laundry. Someone was humming in his ear as soft fingers trailed up and down his arm: a woman’s voice. Nami—no, Nami never sang to him like this, even in his daydreams, and the long hair fanned across the pillowcase wasn’t copper, but an achingly familiar gold. 

He could never stay a full night, but he remembers now, in an abrupt and unsettling rush, how his mother would fold him in her arms in her hospital bed, tucking him in and kissing his hair and letting him talk until his eyelids were too heavy to lift. How she’d remind him that he was loved with every gentle squeeze.

“Hey, Cook?” 

He never saw that bed again, after the funeral. Judge probably had it incinerated. No sentimentality for anything that’s outlived its purpose.

“Are you still cold? You’re shaking again.”

He hears Zoro’s voice distantly, like a murmur through opaque glass. The memory, so real in one moment and so immaterial the next, starts to slip away, but he can’t escape the prickling absence it leaves on his skin. He wishes he hadn’t remembered. It’s better to want something you never had than to miss something you can never have again.

“C’mere, you’re gonna keep us both awake.”

A hand starts to scour up and down his arm, chasing away the goosebumps along with the last vestiges of the memory. Zoro’s calloused grip is nothing like his mother’s light touch. Each movement is forceful and determined as Zoro rubs at Sanji’s skin in short, staccato motions. The friction is this side of painful, and Sanji wants to tell him to stop, but maybe he doesn’t want that at all. Maybe he wants to feel something outside his imagination for once, something that isn’t a fantasy or a dream from a past life.

“Never going to make fun of your stupid layers ever again,” Zoro grumbles, but he keeps rubbing warmth back into Sanji’s skin with a focus that rivals his intensity on the battlefield. He doesn’t let up on his task for a second. There’s no room for longing or remorse; Sanji can’t think about anything else while Zoro’s hands continue to rove, seeking out unsoothed patches of cold, and the quietness is a welcome relief. The heavy pressure on his skin keeps Sanji’s mind firmly in the present, and for once he’s grateful for the reminder that his own body exists. 

It’s just like Zoro to accidentally stumble into the solution for a problem while facing the opposite direction. But even if he doesn’t understand the full shape of Sanji’s newest breakdown, Zoro’s still trying to fix things. He could have just fallen asleep and let Sanji struggle his own way to slumber like he always does.

I don’t actually want you to feel like shit, you know?

He thought he did, but maybe he didn’t know the full extent till now.

“Didn’t realise you cared so much,” Sanji says quietly. He’s not sure if he gets the teasing tone quite right, but at least his voice is finally steady, and he figures Zoro will take it that way even if a little honesty slips in. 

“Yeah, right,” Zoro says. “I just can’t sleep while you’re all wound up like this. Anyone ever tell you you’re a shitty pillow? You’re all bones. Like hugging a spikefish.” But Zoro still gathers Sanji back up as soon as he’s satisfied that he isn’t shivering anymore, covering as much of Sanji’s torso with his arms and back as he can, like he’s worried Sanji will turn into a popsicle again if he doesn’t give him every ounce of body heat he has to spare. 

Stupid Marimo, he thinks as he settles back into Zoro’s heavy embrace, thinking he’s got to solve all the world’s problems on his own. Where does he get off acting like the hero, like the princes from the storybooks Sanji used to love, always so eager to keep the blushing heroine warm on a dark and stormy night? That’s supposed to be his job. He’s the prince, not the damsel who needs saving.

But maybe since Zoro hasn’t read those books and can’t tease him about it, Sanji lets himself close his eyes and imagine, just for a little while, how safe the heroine must feel wrapped in her prince’s strong arms. Maybe he can set aside the worries and anxieties for one night, trusting Zoro to guard the door at his back while he sleeps.

Sanji reaches for his coffee cup gingerly, shoulders aching beneath Mihawk’s borrowed shirt. The walk from the bathroom to breakfast had been a limping affair: even if the last few hours of sleep were relatively comfortable, he’s still feeling the predictable effects of a restless night on an unfamiliar bed. Hopefully a good half hour of stretching once they get back to the ship will sort the kinks out.

To his annoyance, Zoro looks completely comfortable. Now seated across from Sanji as a result of Perona’s newly-revised table setting (that she apparently took much of the night to plan out—there were even little calligraphed name cards waiting at each of their new places), Zoro’s careless slouch holds no indication that he’s any worse for wear for their pretzeled sleeping arrangement. That’s probably because he wasn’t the one who woke up with two hundred pounds of deadweight slumped over his chest. Warm as Zoro is, he’s also fucking heavy. Next time Zoro bugs him for an extra snack after dinner, Sanji’s going to have second thoughts.

He chews on a piece of toast while he listens to the rest of the group chat about their nights. Nami and Robin seem to have enjoyed picking out real nightgowns from Perona’s collection, and Usopp’s got some grisly new ghost stories to add to his arsenal, which will probably delight Chopper when they reunite and then immediately give him horrible nightmares. 

Mihawk sips a glass of sweet port between bites of porridge and says little, but he does take the time to ask if Sanji’s new clothes served him well. Sanji politely lies through his teeth. He carefully does not look at the swords sitting on the floor beside Zoro’s chair, or the conspicuous lack of a belt to connect them to his hip. Zoro had flung said belt at his head that morning before pushing his way past Sanji to, supposedly, beat him to breakfast. (Even after a detour to the bathroom to wash his face, Sanji still made it to the dining room first.) It’s currently the only thing keeping his dignity intact.

Sanji tries not to look at Zoro at all, lest his expression betray anything of the lingering uncertainty he still feels about what happened between them last night. They didn’t exactly discuss it in the morning, just clumsily pulled themselves apart and went their separate ways. Still, his eyes keep flickering over the table involuntarily, checking to see that Zoro isn’t looking back at him. He almost wishes they’d started the day cursing and spitting at each other like they normally do, so he could have some tangible proof that everything will go back to normal and Zoro isn’t going to be weird about things going forward.

Weird how, he’s not quite sure; his worries are undefinable and therefore impossible to brush aside.

“How was your room, Sanji-kun?” Nami asks, and because it’s Nami asking, his tongue unlocks instantly.

“Oh, it was lovely—though not as lovely as if I’d had your company, my dearest.”

Zoro snorts loudly into his glass. Sanji’s smile freezes as he realises that this is exactly what he was afraid of: now that they’re back out in the real world instead of the strange intimacy of the bedroom, Zoro’s got no reason to be outwardly considerate to Sanji. They’re back on even ground, so embarrassing secrets are fair game again. Like the fact that he’d had plenty of company last night, with or without Nami. Like the fact that he’d let Zoro comfort him, even if it wasn’t just from the cold like Zoro assumed. Like the fact that he’d woken up before Zoro but hadn’t pushed him off until Zoro woke up too, too caught up savouring every last moment of weight and warmth.

But when he forces himself to look at Zoro, to see what he’s planning to reveal to Nami, all he gets is a raised eyebrow and a useless little smirk before Zoro’s diving back into his eggs. 

“I’m glad you liked the room!” says Perona, and the moment is done, and Zoro didn’t reveal anything at all. “I was afraid it would still be a big mess, but I didn’t have time to check it over.”

“Why would it have been a big mess?” Sanji asks, genuinely curious. The room was dusty, but not anything close to what he’d call a mess.

“Oh, cause you know, it was Zoro’s room before.” 

Sanji drops his fork. “It... it was?” he says faintly. 

(don’t look at him don’t look at him don’t—)

“Mhm!” Perona says cheerfully. “But I knew there was no way he’d remember where it was, so I figured it was fine to give the room to you.”

Zoro’s chair scrapes backwards across the stone floor as he lunges for Perona’s collar, but with Robin’s chair in the way, she’s just out of reach, maybe by design. “You little poltergeist—”

“Was I wrong?” Perona asks sweetly, chin resting in her hands as she glances between Zoro and Sanji with round, innocent eyes. Sanji suddenly has the unsettling suspicion that Usopp was right about seeing ghosts in the hallways after they’d gone to bed. 

“Nope,” Sanji says. “You were absolutely right.” He scoots forward slightly and delivers a swift kick to Zoro’s leg beneath the table. Zoro collapses back into his chair with a dirty look but without saying anything incriminating, which is good enough for Sanji. “I’m sure Zoro ended up passing out in a closet or something.”

Sanji bites back a yelp when a boot collides with his shin. He glares at Zoro, then kicks him right back. Zoro meets his glare with a fiery gleam in his eye, and Sanji’s world finally realigns. He didn’t need to worry after all: he and Zoro are going to be just fine, just like they always were.

Sanji accepts the challenge with a tilt of his head, and aims his next kick at the tender slope between calf muscle and knee socket. His aim is dead on.

Zoro may have learned more about Sanji last night than he’d intended, but Sanji came away with a few lessons too. He knows every inch of Zoro’s body now, and so long as they’re even, everything’s fair game.