He's curled into your arms with his limbs snaking around your chest and constricting your legs, his breath hot and heavy as he snores against the crook of your neck, drool puddling on your skin. Beyond the nasal snoring, and the moments where he gargles out some sentence about meat, he is quiet, he is asleep, and you are struggling to do the same.
He shifts in his sleep, and you battle with his iron grip to do the same. Your arm is stuck somewhere beneath his ribcage, and his body weight is making your arm fall asleep. Careful, and slowly, you pull it out, and situate it under his neck. You wrap your other arm under his arm, perhaps pushing him in too close, and link your fingers. He snorts under his breath and nuzzles his face even further in your shoulder, his lips parted and pressed soft on your skin as he breathes. You press your face into his dark, unkempt hair and take a deep sigh, feeling the heat of his mouth pushed against you.
The way his heart is beating against your chest is far too distracting, at least, for you to be able to sleep. He is a far too hot a blanket you are discovering. He mutters something against your body and it's gibberish. But his heartbeat is slow, and his body is warm, and the heat of his chest pressed against yours makes it so hard to think, all you can really do is bury your face in his hair and breathe. You're so familiar with the way he smells that it just runs down to your chest and fills your whole body with the scent of his hair, that you can't really describe, because it's salty, but sweet, and heavy while being light all the same time, and it makes you smile so wide you have to fight off a giggling, idiotic grin. He laughs in his sleep, and you can feel it. Right it your ribs, piercing straight through your heart, riding up through your throat and leaking out as a chuckle of your own.
You unhook your fingers and run a thumb down the edge of his shoulder blade, tracing the bone, feeling the dip in his skin. He shivers in your arms and tightens his hold on you. You pull your body closer to his, running a hand through his black hair, and listen as he sighs, lips closing, pressing against you as though he were kissing you. And you shudder, tracing a finger down the back of his neck, trailing the spine with the palm of your hand before you settle for a few chaste kisses to his scalp, closing your eyes and settling against him.
At nights like these you cannot help but feel thankful for your existence. He sleeps well next to you. He makes it obvious enough that without you, he could not sleep a full night. And thinking of how you are his sanctuary, away from the nightmares… your chest swells. It fills you with unimaginable pride, and you are so happy to be able to be as close to him as you are. Perhaps the circumstances are not so happy. But for now, he is, and you have never felt more useful, not ever.
He shifts once more and you can feel the every change of his muscle as his hands unhook from behind you, and instead begin to slide up your chest. His heartbeat feels a touch faster, his face pushing away from the burrow of your neck.
"Hey, Usopp…?" You crack an eye open and look down to him. His eyes are half-lidded, and he bares a sleepy smile, a trail of his own drool glinting off the light from the corner of his lip.
"What's up?" You whisper in between a yawn. His left hand snakes up your neck, reaching in the strands of your hairs, pushing your head closer to his as he kisses you. His aim is off, and he only manages some of your bottom lip and mostly only getting the hairs on your chin; but it is soft, and heavy at the same time, and every bit as earnest as kisses coming before. He pulls away grinning from ear to ear and you can't stop from grinning as well.
You kiss him as well, but it is softer, and on his lips. He lingers there and you do not try to pull away. You feel him sigh, as he massages his fingers against your scalp once, before pulling them away and once more wrapping themselves around you. He digs his face once more in your neck, planting soft, chaste kisses wherever his lips may lie, and whispers a muddled 'goodnight' between each one, before curling his whole body around you and falling asleep.
You wish your captain a goodnight as well, and rest your chin on the top of his head, closing your eyes and feeling the beat of his heart on your chest, and the warmth of his on your neck, and the heat of his body on your hands.
You think back on a time where he would wake from slumber screaming in horror, and you cannot help but feeling this is right. This… lying here, with him- this holding him- this feeling every shift and every twist of his body, this hearing every snort and every mumble from his throat. This keeping him close; and keeping him safe. Safe from himself, and safe from his dreams.
You close your eyes and breathe.
You can't help but think, that this? This is enough.