Make No Mistake

by dickyang

College AU. This is an account of a series of events poorly defined as the best days of their lives. Zosan/Frobin

4. November

Chapter 4: November

---

Robin paused for just a moment outside of the conference room door, taking in a deep breath before she knocked. Keeping her mind clear would be critical over the next several minutes. On the exhale, she rapped her knuckle. She was ready.

"Come in," a woman's voice called to her. She instantly recognized it as belonging to the assistant dean, Tsuru. With a calm confidence, Robin opened the door and stepped inside.

Tsuru immediately rose to her feet, her weathered hand beckoning to a chair at the end of the long table. "Please, have a seat, Professor." Her friendly tone was as artificial as her smile.

"Thank you," Robin said, returning an equally controlled smile. As she sat, Robin fluidly slipped her black leather messenger bag off of her shoulder, letting it rest against her leg. "I appreciate you all taking the time to see me on such short notice."

She had actually only expected a couple of people to be there. Tsuru and Dean Garp were a given, but every seat at the long conference room table was occupied. Looking down the line, Robin recognized them as being the university's entire executive committee.

My, how intimidating.

Of course, the daunting line-up wasn't for her. But whoever was responsible for setting it up was certainly a little sadistic. The open seat was at the end of the table, so whoever was sitting there would feel eight pairs of eyes on them, as they got grilled by various questions. And the chair was adjusted so that it sat a little lower than the rest of the chairs.

It was sadly juvenile, and if the set-up had been meant for Robin, it would have been fairly unsuccessful. This was child's play to her—but to some, it would've surely caused a great deal of stress.

It was peculiar that they were going through these formalities for a non-tenured professor, honestly. That man must've really rubbed someone the wrong way, at some point in his career.

Oh well. It was time to get to work. She had a lot of insincere social pleasantries to cycle through before they could get to the point.

Tilting her head disarmingly, Robin turned her gaze to Tsuru. "We haven't spoken often lately, but I've wanted to ask, how's your grandson doing? Surviving his first semester of law school?"

"Yes. Although he's quite busy, I heard," Tsuru smiled thinly. Politely. Tsuru saw through what Robin was starting—although she likely hadn't guessed what Robin's agenda was just yet.

"I bet. Such an impressive accomplishment, for him to get into Harvard. You must be quite proud." Robin folded her hands on the table in front of her.

"Indeed, I am." Tsuru sat up a little straighter in her chair.

Robin knew quite a few things about Tsuru's personal life, actually, so she was at no loss for things to say. If it was just Tsuru and Robin, they may have been stuck at an impasse of insincerity for some time before Robin could make her next move. But Dean Garp—he was probably oblivious to their subtleties. Garp only knew how to respond to confrontation. She needed him to speed this along.

At the appropriate moment, Robin turned her attention to Garp. "I just saw your grandson a few days ago, here at the school. He seemed quite energetic."

Garp grit his teeth a little; Robin knew this was a topic he preferred to avoid. "Yeah, I suppose."

"He often comes to the art and music hall to sit in on the more interesting classes." She studied him carefully, noting the involuntary twitch in his brow. This was going to be quick. "Unfortunately, I've never had the pleasure of having him come to one of my lectures."

"Yeah, and hopefully you won't. I've asked him to stop doing that," Garp muttered lowly. "But if you'll excuse me, Robin—uh, Professor—we're a bit limited on time right now. Could you tell us what you want?"

Her smile increased indiscernibly. Quick indeed—even quicker than she could have hoped.

"We have a disciplinary proceeding we need to begin in a few minutes," Tsuru added, attempting to smooth over Garp's brusqueness. "From what I understand, you indicated you needed to see us quite urgently, which is why we agreed to speak to you now, rather than waiting until after the meeting."

"But of course." Robin reached into her messenger bag. "I'll do my best to be as brief as possible."

---

Franky closed his eyes and struggled to focus on breathing normally. Even though he'd been just sitting there for what felt like hours, his heart was pounding like he'd just run a mile. Opening one eye, he glanced down at his watch for probably the hundredth time.

He usually didn't even wear a watch.

The normally punctual dean—or assistant dean, because Franky was pretty sure she was the one who kept Garp on track—was over fifteen minutes late starting their meeting. Or was it a proceeding? Hearing, maybe? God, that sounded scary, he didn't want to think about that.

Whatever it was, Franky had arrived early as well, so now he'd been sitting in an uncomfortable plastic lobby chair for over thirty agonizing minutes, with nothing to do but imagine what was about to happen. And everything he imagined was pretty damn awful.

He felt kind of sick—like his stomach was doing flip-flops. He'd barely been able to eat this morning. He was pretty certain he was going to throw up when all of this was over. Where was the most private place he could go for that, anyway? Oh, there was that back storage room in the lab—with the door closed, it was pretty hard to hear anything coming from inside of there. He'd tested it before. No particular reason, just because why not. So, okay, that was the plan—

But what if he never got the chance to go back to that nostalgic little lab room ever again?

Okay, he was definitely going to be super ill. He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow—was his hand actually shaking a little bit?—before he checked his watch yet another time.

It seemed like the minute hand was moving a little bit slow, now that he thought about it. He'd definitely been there a lot longer than the watch claimed. Maybe he'd take a look at it later. He might have a lot of spare time on his hands—his stomach clenched a little.

The echo of high heels from the hallway wrenched him away from his distressed thoughts. It might be someone finally coming to get him. As Franky nervously adjusted his tie—good, he hadn't unconsciously pulled it loose yet—he wondered if he looked as disheveled as he felt. He hated ties—they were dumb and constricting and made him feel like he was being strangled.

Swallowing with difficulty—his mouth felt so dry—he quickly smoothed back his hair as he looked up at the person approaching him. He expected it to be one of the office admins, so he was more than a little surprised to be facing his colleague, Nico Robin.

Well, his colleague for now—his stomach did another flip.

But for some reason, she had a soothing effect on him. It felt a little easier to breathe and he felt his racing heart slow just slightly. He wasn't sure why it was the case, but she was sort of a calming person. She had these cool, clear eyes. Her graceful, confident gait—even when she was wearing those shoes with the thin, spiky heel that he was pretty sure must have been extra hard to balance in. And her crisp, collected appearance, with not a single seam of her clothes twisted or a hair out of place.

Oops, he was staring, he realized, so he started to turn his head away—when unexpectedly, she looked right at him.

Their eyes locked for a moment, and a slight smile crept across Robin's face.

Franky felt the breath hitch in his throat. It was a little weird, the impact it had on him—like the uncomfortable knots in his stomach turned to butterflies and he could suddenly breathe normally again. Robin had momentarily pulled him away from his anxiety with her smile. Franky was pretty sure he'd seen her make that expression before, but there was just something about that secretive smile, aimed straight at him.

In fact, he quickly glanced to his left and right, just to make sure—and nope, no one else was around. She'd definitely smiled at him.

Then she was gone, and Franky felt like he'd gained at least a little bit of his wherewithal. Good, at least now he could speak intelligently in his defense. He looked at the watch one more time. Twenty-five minutes late starting the meeting.

At the thirty minute mark, he was finally summoned. He clenched his hands into fists as he rose to his feet, gathering all his courage. This was it. He was ready.

… And after all that, the meeting was less than ten minutes long.

"C-can you repeat that?" Franky stammered, his hands gripping the arms of the low chair a little too tightly.

The oppressive tension in the room was stifling. It was taking every ounce of effort for Franky to keep from loosening his tie. Like, he'd had to stop himself no less than eight times so far.

"I said, you're being permitted to keep your job," Garp frowned, his jaw visibly clenched. "For the time being, anyway."

Franky sucked in a deep breath, openly slumping back in his seat. He felt like something had snapped inside of him, instantly releasing all of the mounting tension.

"There are going to be a few conditions, of course," Tsuru broke in, her cold eyes narrowing.

Conditions? Man, that was fine—ten or twenty or a hundred conditions, as many as they wanted, he could keep his job. Franky's mind was reeling; this was far too good to be true. He hadn't quite known what to expect, but at the very least, he thought he'd have to plead his case—justify his actions and apologize. Defend his student. Defend himself. Something.

As Tsuru went down a list of things Franky was no longer allowed to encourage in his class—including the creation of any weapons, projectiles or anything that could be even faintly misconstrued as a weapon, Franky's eyes swept down the table. The entire executive committee was glaring at him, each one of them showing varying degrees of repugnance.

Franky swallowed hard, realizing his throat was a little bit dry. His heart had fallen into his stomach when he first saw them all sitting there. But now that he was being told he could stay, their presence was super confusing.

Finally, Tsuru ceased talking, and Garp leaned forward, resting his elbows on the heavy oak table. "And let me tell you, Franky," he started, speaking in a way that reminded Franky of just how much power he wielded, "we're going to have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to things like this now. If we so much as get the slightest hint you're breaking any of these rules, you're gone."

"I understand," Franky replied, sitting up straight. "You won't have a single problem with me from now on, I promise."

"I doubt that," the dean muttered.

"I suppose it goes without saying that this is going to affect your consideration for tenure in future years," Tsuru added coldly.

Franky nodded. "Yeah, I understand."

Tenure, geez. That was honestly the last thing on his mind at the moment. He still had his job and he still had no idea how things had turned out this well.

"And you better be grateful to Nico Robin for what she did for you," Garp added, leaning back in his chair.

Franky pursed his eyebrows as Robin's secretive smile flashed across his mind again. Franky's gaze flitted down the table again. It really didn't make sense that they'd be here unless they were doing a full-blown disciplinary hearing.

"The only reason you have your job—and I mean it, the only reason—is because she threatened to leave hers," Garp said flatly. "It put us in a very difficult position."

Franky felt like the floor had fallen out from underneath him and for a few fleeting seconds, he literally lost the ability to form words. If Garp and Tsuru hadn't continued to tag-team lecture him, he seriously would've only been able to gurgle a couple of random syllables because wow, he had no idea how to process that information.

Why the heck would Nico Robin even—

Suddenly the keys to his laboratory were returned to him and his mind was too flooded with emotions to actually think about it anymore. He was pretty sure he was going to cry—yep, he was gonna cry, this was so wonderful, and he barely managed to keep it together before he escaped the stifling conference room.

The first thing Franky did was go to the lab. His lab. The lab he'd missed so terribly much for the last five days. There was a print-out on the door announcing that classes were canceled for the day, and he had to stop himself from ripping it down. But no, it was okay, because tomorrow they'd start up again. He ran to his desk to grab a sharpie so he could scribble a note underneath that classes would resume November 6th.

After pausing for a moment, he drew a happy little dancing figure next to it. It didn't look too bad. Franky was actually pretty good at doodling.

Then he closed the lab door behind him, letting his gaze sweep across the room, totally flooded with relief and happy feelings because he would still get to come back there every day. He looked at all the brilliant and super cool inventions from his past students and big fat tears openly rolled down his cheeks.

He was back. And shit, he was so freaking happy about it.

He sank down into one of the student workstation chairs, his legs suddenly feeling weak underneath him. Closing his eyes, he took in several deep breaths. Beyond the sterile smell of the room, there were also hints of burnt wires and machine oil. He ran his fingertips along the cool, sterile work table. The texture was a bit lost on him—he'd had a, uh, careless accident when he was younger involving a lot of electricity that had damaged the nerves in his hands—but even if he couldn't feel the tabletop's texture, he felt the realness beneath his fingers and that was enough.

He was back. What a fantastic feeling.

The only reason you have your job is because she threatened to leave hers.

Garp's words flashed through his mind. Eyes snapping open, he jumped to his feet and ran out of the lab, clutching at his pocket for his cell phone. Then he remembered he was still wearing that stupid watch, and he checked the time.

Her class in the science and engineering building had ended about fifteen minutes ago, so it was unlikely she was still around. She didn't have a devoted classroom like he did, so she had probably headed back to her office. Where would that be, anyway?

Still running, he finally reached the doorway and leaned into it, hands pressed against the frame, panting slightly. He totally expected the classroom to be empty.

His heart skipped a beat when it wasn't.

Nico Robin was standing at the front of the deserted room, her back turned to him, erasing elegantly crafted words from a whiteboard. Wiping the last section away, she neatly set down the eraser and turned around, looking wholly unsurprised to see him.

"You... What did you... No, before that, why?" Franky stumbled, the incomprehensible sentence lingering in the air for a long moment.

"I'm not sure I understand the question," Robin replied calmly. From her tone, Franky wasn't sure if she was annoyed or amused.

"What the heck did you do?" he blurted.

Robin smiled thinly—politely. It wasn't quite the same as her earlier smile. "Did everything go well for you today?"

"Of course, because of whatever you did. But I don't understand why—"

"I'm glad to hear that," she cut him off smoothly. "Will you be starting back right away?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess so. I mean, they already canceled the class I was supposed to teach this afternoon, but tomorrow I'll be back."

"That's great news."

Franky smiled, running his fingers through his hair in relief. "Yeah, I'm really glad."

Robin's smile increased just slightly—now that was more like the look from earlier. Franky's chest tightened a little bit. Man, she was even more of a knockout than usual when she made an expression like that.

"I have a meeting with a student back at my office in a few minutes, so I'll be leaving," Robin said, walking toward him, making a move to slip past him into the hallway.

"Oh, okay." He took a step back from the doorway. "But, uh, wait a second."

"Yes?" She stopped in the doorway, standing just a few inches from him.

"If you have time later, could we maybe..." Franky fumbled over the words, not sure the right way to ask the question. "Well, you know. Go somewhere. Show my appreciation."

"For what? All I said were few words in your favor."

Franky almost laughed—man, she'd done a hell of a lot more than that.

"I'm free this evening," Robin added.

She actually sort of took him by surprise. "What?—Uh, I mean, yeah? That's great."

"Would you like to join me for a drink?" she asked.

Franky's mouth hung open in surprise for a moment—she'd sort of beat him to the punch. "Yeah, that'd be super," he grinned widely, suddenly feeling like the blood was rushing to his head.

That evening, Franky stood back near the doorway as Robin went to get them a table. Franky watched her walk toward the hostess, with that same fluid grace he was really starting to admire, when he noticed a man's head turn hard out of the corner of his eye. Franky's eyes shifted over to the stranger.

A red-haired man, who was sitting on one of the waiting area benches, was very blatantly staring at Robin, his eyes flitting up and down her body. Franky frowned. Although Robin didn't draw attention to herself, once she was noticed, it was pretty hard to look away. At least, that was Franky's impression of her.

But okay, even if it maybe wasn't totally his business, this jerk was really obviously checking her out and Franky couldn't help it. He was annoyed.

Standing up a little bit straighter, he took another couple of steps into the restaurant, pointedly clearing his throat as he glared at the redhead. It was more than enough to catch his attention. The redhead looked up at him, and after regarding Franky for a moment with slightly widened eyes, he turned his head back toward the people he was waiting with.

The corner of Franky's mouth turned up just slightly. He could look pretty intimidating, when he needed to.

Robin turned around and beckoned for him to follow her, and they were led away to a table near the back.

At first glance, it had appeared to be kind of a fancy place, but Franky quickly realized she had picked it because of the crowd. Most of the happy hour patrons were in their thirties and up, as opposed to the college students that tended to flood every bar within a two mile radius of the school at this time of the evening.

Franky ordered whatever IPA they had on tap and Robin ordered a pinot noir. The image of her slender fingers lightly holding a wine glass suited her pretty well.

"So, I've been wondering all day. What the heck did you do earlier?"

She tilted her head slightly. "It was nothing special. I just reminded everyone what an asset you are to the school."

"Well, yeah, but I'm sure they didn't really want to hear all that," Franky said, scratching his head.

"They needed a little bit of convincing," she admitted. "But I came prepared."

"What do you mean?"

"I brought a few... pieces of supporting evidence."

"What, supporting evidence?" Franky said with puzzlement. When she didn't elaborate, he gave her a look. "Come on, you have to tell me in more detail than that."

Robin smiled again, and reached into the messenger bag she had set down on the seat next to her, folding over the top flap. It was filled with magazines and manila folders, which she pulled out and set on the table. Holding back the folders, she slid the magazines toward him. And he instantly recognized them—they were all popular robotics and engineering journal. She had about two dozen of them.

Then he realized exactly which issues were in the stack. "These all have articles by me... You knew about all these?"

"Of course. They're all fascinating—you cover some very innovative topics. Very few articles are even available about them right now," Robin replied.

"Yeah, I like to keep ahead of everybody, if I can help it," he said, his grin widening. This girl knew all about him... how about that.

"Other authors refer to you all the time, as well. The name 'Cutty Flam' is quite well known in the industry."

"Yeah, uh, you don't... ever need to call me that," he winced. "Just call me Franky."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Should I call you Professor Franky, like your students?"

"Just Franky," he laughed, not entirely sure if she was serious. "So, what else did you pull out of your bag of tricks?"

"Oh, just a few more things to back up what great work you do." She slid a hand over the manila folder, making no move to reveal its contents.

"Yeah, are you gonna show me?"

She took another sip of her wine, considering the question. "I guess I may as well," she replied finally, sliding one of the folders across the table toward him.

He opened it, flipping through the first few pages with increasing surprise. "What is all this?" he asked finally, jaw agape as he look up at her.

"Just a few reports that I thought everyone should see."

"Yeah, but... Some of the stuff in here. This one is a list of every article I've ever published and presentation I've ever had," he said with amazement, holding up the stapled set of papers. He didn't even know if his resume has all this stuff on it.

"Yes," Robin replied simply, taking another sip of her wine.

Franky was even more stunned by the next report in the packet. "What the hell, is this... I mean, this is..."

"It's the average time you spend logged into the school's server each day," Robin filled in.

"Yeah, I can see that."

"It's imperfect to capture all of the hours you spend actually working, but it was enough to show everyone that you spend more than an adequate amount of time on work directly related to the school."

Huh, he didn't realize he spent fifty hours a week logged in... Well, maybe that was pretty normal. He flipped to the next page. "Holy shit," he murmured in disbelief, crinkling his brow. But a moment later, he heard something far more shocking than Robin's reports.

As the curse fell out of his mouth, Nico Robin laughed.

Franky jerked his head upward as he stared at her. He had never heard her laugh before—and even though it wasn't the loudest or most infectious laugh, it made him feel a little giddy. He wanted to hear it again sometime. He stuck making Nico Robin laugh on a mental to-do list, somewhere in the back of his head.

"I'm sure you can tell, but that's a chart comparing your average weekly hours logged in compared to the rest of your department," Robin explained.

"Yeah, that's why I'm pretty fricking stunned. The time logs are one thing, but you made a chart out of this?"

"Look at the next page."

He complied, grinning stupidly and shaking his head from side to side as he looked at it. "What the hell. You made charts comparing me to the other departments' averages, too. How'd you even get this information?"

She smiled coyly. "I just asked one of the people in our IT department if we could generate any reports like that."

"And they just gave it to you?"

"Yes," she said simply, although he was pretty sure it couldn't have been as easy as she was making it sound.

"Geez, you're amazing!" he grinned. "I need to get you another drink. No, wait, how about dinner. Let's eat something—will you have dinner with me?" Franky asked eagerly, craning his neck to see if their server was in sight before he even heard her answer.

Robin laughed again and Franky was pretty sure his heart made a happy little skip. "Yes, I guess we can do that."

"Super!" he exclaimed, just as he made eye contact with their waitress. After asking for another round of drinks and some menus, he turned back toward the manila folder.

"So, any more charts in here? Maybe a venn diagram?"

"No venn diagrams," she smiled—more brilliantly than she had before. "There's a pie chart, though."

"A pie chart? You're kidding me," he said, shuffling through the pages. Indeed, there was—a pie chart and a couple more bar graphs, and all kinds of statistics comparing the average levels of students studying robotics and engineering as undergraduates versus as graduate students, with comparisons with the average levels of his own students.

"Your achievements are really impressive. The practical application of programming, physics, and calculus your students get to use are much more advanced than most students taking higher-level robotics courses," Robin filled in. "What you do speaks for itself—all I did was remind Dean Garp and the others how important you are."

"That's all you did, huh?" Franky asked carefully. "And that did the trick?"

"So it seems."

"You just showed them all these papers and bar graphs, and they said okay, I can stay?"

"You're starting back tomorrow, aren't you?"

Franky stared at her in astonishment, not missing her clever evasion of a straight answer, before sweeping his eyes over the papers now scattered across the table. This amazing woman had prepared all of this for him, for him, and she was brushing it off like it was no big deal.

And what was really scary was that all of the data she had brilliantly compiled had made absolutely no difference. According to Garp, the only reason he wasn't dismissed was because she had threatened to quit her job.

Franky was pretty in awe of her over it, to be quite honest. Sure, he could build a robotic dog and program it to respond to over four hundred spoken commands. He could build weapons without a blueprint for reference. He had even once made a really energy efficient electric car—it was kept in a warehouse at the university somewhere, since the DMV had refused to issue a license plate for it so it could be driven on public roads.

The point was that he had countless spectacular achievements. But he sure as hell didn't have any power over other people. But Robin—she had somehow played exactly the right cards.

And apparently, she had no intention of telling him about the sacrifice she'd nearly made.

Franky took a long swig from his glass. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes flitting toward hers. "Why'd you do all this for me, anyway?"

She smiled at him, and okay, it was maybe kind of dumb, but he thought her smile was a little dazzling.

"Because you're a wonderful teacher, Franky."

---

When Zoro walked into Nami's bar with Luffy, he raised his eyebrows. Sanji was seated between Usopp and Chopper, his head craned back as he chugged the contents of his tall glass.

The group cheered when Sanji finished his drink, and Luffy announced their arrival by joining in the clapping and shouting, totally unaware as to what exactly he was supporting.

Sanji spun in his stool, gripping his wooden seat, and he grinned at Luffy. "Oh, hey!"

"What're you guys doing?" Luffy asked as Nami grabbed him and Zoro a beer.

"We're celebrating," Usopp explained.

"Celebrating what?" Luffy continued, and Zoro glanced at Chopper, who looked about ready for a nap. But the kid was hanging on. He was always a trooper.

"Today," Sanji said, rubbing his mouth, "is the first Saturday night I've had off in something like six or eight months, I think."

Sanji might as well have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. If anything, it was a reason for the group to drink and laugh and lose out on a lot of very important sleep. They always jumped at the chance. Well, several of them did.

Sanji's gaze drifted from Luffy up to Zoro, and he still wore that unabashed, open grin, and Zoro looked away.

"You wanna do some shots with me, asshole?" Sanji asked, which caught Zoro by surprise, and he realized Sanji must've been drunk, actually drunk, to propose such a ridiculous question to him, of all people.

Nami was already lining up six shot glasses along the bar. They were the only ones in there—it was about closing time. Nami, being the only employee on the clock in the little dive bar, was tasked with all closing duties, which she had performed over an hour ago. She locked the front entrance while her roommates argued over what they were about to drink.

The debate came down to Usopp, Luffy, and Sanji all suggesting different shots, and Zoro stood next to Chopper.

"What do you wanna drink?" Zoro asked his youngest roommate, and the kid looked up at him from his barstool.

"Coffee, ideally. Lots of coffee. I shouldn't be here."

Zoro laughed and Sanji glanced over at him.

"Listen," Nami said, and out of a shared semi-obedience to her, the group focused their attention. "It's Sanji's, like… day. Thing. It's Sanji's thing tonight, so he's deciding, and the rest of you shut up, Jesus."

Sanji looked absolutely elated over Nami designating him for something. It could've been anything, really, and he would've reacted just the same. Zoro rolled his eyes.

Sanji looked over at Zoro, still smiling his stupid, crooked smile, and he said, "It's not really my day, though. It's Zoro's. Today's his birthday."

The group was absolutely silent. Zoro's mouth fell open at Sanji, and he was about to protest that it wasn't, but then he realized that nope, Sanji was fucking right. It was after midnight—making it his actual birthday.

"Oh, shit! Is it?" Luffy cursed, seated past Usopp on the far end, leaned over the bar, his cheek nearly pressed against the wood next to his glass mug.

"November 11th, isn't it?" Sanji asked Luffy, and, twisting around in his seat, Luffy searched his pockets for his phone, finally locating it and flipping it open and groaning at the date displayed on the screen.

"It's your birthday?" Nami cut in, almost shouting, like she was accusing Zoro of doing something wrong.

"How the hell do you know when my birthday is?" Zoro asked, brow wrinkled, and Sanji's cheeks were already red from drinking, it was his giveaway, he always wore everything on his sleeve—his emotions, his sobriety, the number of hours he hadn't slept—and that shit-eating grin he was wearing at the moment was making Zoro's jaw clench shut.

"I looked through your wallet when you left it out on the coffee table," Sanji explained casually. Plainly. Blatantly. The sheer fucking impudence.

"I did too! We did together," Luffy piped up from his spot on the far end, and Usopp snorted.

"The picture on your ID was really fucking cute," Sanji thrummed, and Zoro, fuck, Zoro hadn't been there ten minutes and he was already going to lay Sanji out, he was really going to do it, he was going to punch him in his smug fucking face, and his knuckles were white, clenched into the tightest fist he could manage.

"It's your birthday!" Nami interrupted, and Sanji turned his smile on her, and Zoro's rage was momentarily averted. He looked at Nami, grimacing at the expression on her face. She leaned over the bar a little, and Sanji leaned in a bit with her, although she easily ignored and deflected their dumbass roommate, and she said to Zoro, "You almost got away with it."

"I couldn't let that happen," Sanji added, and Zoro glared at them both—namely Sanji.

"So, Zoro, what're you drinking tonight?" Nami smiled, gesturing to the collection of bottles stored along racks behind her.

The entire group waited for his decision.

He could feel his eyebrow twitch just slightly. "Whiskey."

Nami poured six shots of straight whiskey, and Zoro felt a little guilty when he remembered Chopper and the kid's taste in booze, but, whatever, he'd just have to learn to like it. Everyone held their shot glasses up to Zoro, and they sang the birthday song at him, except for Sanji, that stupid fucker, who couldn't stop laughing at Zoro's clearly heated expression.

When they all went to down their drinks, Sanji made the mistake of glancing at Zoro again, and he choked, snorting alcohol up his nose, and Zoro pursed his lips together, trying not to smile.

"You're a fucking idiot," Zoro told Sanji as he watched him cough, one hand covering his dripping face, empty shot glass in the other.

"How old are you now, Zoro?" Usopp asked, sliding his glass towards Nami's side of the bar.

"Twenty-two."

"So," Nami said, holding the bottle of whiskey she'd used to pour the last round, "You have twenty-one more shots to take. Right?"

"Hell no," Zoro said, looking at her like she was fucking insane, and she scoffed.

"Oh, but aren't you some big drinker? Didn't you once say you could drink me under the table?" Nami pressed, tapping her chin.

"Twenty-one shots is, like, two fifths," Zoro said, eyeing the bottle she had in her hand.

"I've seen you put away a bottle on your own," Sanji said, lighting a cigarette, and Nami narrowed her eyes at him, warning him that he had to smoke the rest of his cigarettes outside or she'd get shit for it. The owner had some kind of nutso-super sense of smell.

"Zoro, get drunk! It's your birthday!" Luffy shouted, holding up a fist in support.

Nami poured Zoro another shot and slid it in front of him. He frowned at it. "Damn you, Nami."

"It's not my fault it's your birthday!"

"Match me," Zoro said evenly, looking up at her.

"What?"

"Match me shot for shot. I won't do twenty-something of them, but I'll drink until you can't anymore."

Everyone watched the exchange between Nami and Zoro. Sanji sucked languidly on his cigarette, ashing it in Chopper's little plastic cup that was half-filled with tap water.

"I feel like you're underestimating me," Nami smiled, holding her hand out. Zoro shook it and the competition was on.

An hour later, or maybe two, he didn't know, Zoro stood alone in the bathroom, taking the longest piss of his life, and he would never fucking admit it in a hundred years, but he had underestimated Nami.

He drank a lot in general, yes. He could be classified as a heavy drinker, he supposed. Did he drink every single day? Okay, maybe, yes. Did he have a problem? No. Did he get piss drunk every night and struggle with being a member of society? No.

Was he legitimately drunk, very drunk, for the first time in a long time? Yes.

But so was Nami, which was, admittedly, funny to see. She was an honest drunk. She abandoned what few filters she had, and she was open, and almost a little vulnerable in a way, and Zoro had found himself laughing with her several times throughout the night. He smiled to himself, alone in the bathroom, feeling the room shifting around him as he swayed a little.

When he left the bathroom, rather than returning to his housemates, he slipped down the short hallway and out the back door, wanting to feel the cold night air on his face for a minute before he went back to the group.

The crisp air hit him as he opened the door and stepped outside.

"She's giving you a run for your money, isn't she," came a familiar honeyed voice from the darkness.

Zoro looked down and to his right, and he saw Sanji there, sitting on the ground and leaned up against the brick building, smoking and staring up at the faint stars.

"She can drink her face off, I'll give her that much," Zoro said, and he eased himself down onto the cold concrete of the back patio next to Sanji.

"She's an incredible person," Sanji maintained.

"I guess she is," Zoro agreed, and maybe it was the first time he'd ever openly agreed with Sanji. When Sanji didn't say anything else, Zoro scrunched his nose at him. "Fuck you for announcing my birthday, by the way."

"Why? You're having fun, aren't you?" Sanji asked, pulling a leg closer to his chest and resting his chin on it. Smoke floated past his teeth and his lips as his spoke, coming out of his nose, like he was filled to the brim with it, and he exhaled loudly, expelling it all, and rolled his eyes up to Zoro's. The presumptuous smile on his face lit up in the moonlight and streetlights that lined the back alley.

"My birthday isn't any of your fucking business," Zoro said, ignoring Sanji's actual question.

"I feel like birthdays actually are the business of your friends, dumbshit."

"Which you aren't," Zoro pointed out.

"Yeah, but they are. They're your friends. Enjoy them while you have them. For Christ's sake." Sanji leaned back again, sniffing, and he rolled his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger.

They sat there in silence, Sanji smoking his cigarette and coughing every once in a while—he'd been coughing more than he normally did, lately, maybe—and Zoro watching the blinking red lights of a plane flying miles above them. It was cold out, but Zoro didn't feel it much.

"It's fucking freezing, lets go inside," Sanji said, flicking his cigarette into the shadows in front of them, his knees popping as he stood, and he wiped the dust and dirt from his trousers. "Nami's probably down for round fifteen, and Usopp's driving."

They didn't count the number of shots they had. Well, they started to, and then they forgot to, and by the time they remembered, they were too far in. It was too difficult to keep track over Luffy's loud laughter and Sanji's cursing and Usopp and Nami shouting at each other.

As far as the competition went, Nami eventually gave up, and she came around the other side of the bar, squeezing between Chopper and Zoro.

"Chopper, you're the bartender now, and I need water, and you have to get it for me," she commanded. She leaned on Zoro, their shoulders together, and he looked down at her. She sighed loudly, her eyes on the empty shot glasses lining the bar. "You really can drink a lot."

Chopper walked around the bar and filled a large glass with the tap, and he slid it to her, smiling, looking more tired than any teenage boy should look.

They had a couple more beers and listened to Luffy explain how, while Men in Black was an excellent movie, there was actually a conspiracy theory that there actually were men in black suits that worked to hide and contain information about aliens, and, did you know, some people thought the men in black actually were aliens, and—

"We should probably go sleep," Usopp interrupted, and Luffy looked past him, down the row of his roommates seated at the bar. Sanji and Nami both had their arms folded over the smooth wooden bar top, their faces buried in the sleeves of their jackets. Between them, Zoro had all his weight on one arm, his jaw resting in his palm, trying really fucking hard to keep his eyes open. Chopper was asleep in one of the booths on the other side of the room.

"Oh. Yeah, probably," Luffy conceded, and he slipped out of his chair to go shake Chopper into consciousness.

Zoro flicked his finger over the back of Sanji's head to wake him up, and Sanji grumbled a string of rude phrases at him as he dragged himself from his seat. Chopper and Luffy took up spots on either side of their blond roommate once he was finally up and moving, but he was sure-footed as he could be, hands in his pockets and his head dipped down, and Zoro trailed a few paces behind the small group. Usopp flipped off the lights and carried Nami, who was very insistent on staying mostly asleep, on his back, leaning forward and balancing her weight while he made sure the bar doors were locked behind them, pocketing her work keys.

Usopp deposited Nami in the front seat, which she leaned back immediately, and Luffy sat behind her, the headrest of the passenger seat practically in his lap.

Chopper and Zoro filled in the rest of the middle seat, and Sanji leaned over them, folding down the third rear-facing seat to create a big open trunk area. And then he fucking climbed over the three of them, shoving past them and over the seat back, sprawled out across the trunk, and promptly passed out again.

When they got home and everyone started yawning their ways inside, Zoro slid out of the car and opened up the back hatch, and the yellow light from their lone streetlamp poured down onto Sanji's face, and he squeezed his eyes shut tighter.

"We're home."

"Leave me," Sanji groaned, folding his arms over his chest, his legs bent, knees sticking up in two different directions.

Zoro grabbed Sanji by his bony ankles and pulled until Sanji was halfway out of the car—his lower half, anyway—and he leaned over the blond and curled two fists around the front of his button-up shirt, yanking him upwards and onto his feet.

Sanji's eyes fluttered open and he put his hands on Zoro's shoulders, standing directly in front of him, steadying himself in their sudden proximity, adapting to a new center of gravity. "Okay, I'm up," he said, his bloodshot gaze coming into focus on Zoro's face.

"You shouldn't sleep in the goddamn car," Zoro said, and Sanji's pupils were huge, still adjusting to the low light.

"Right."

Sanji took a step backwards, away from Zoro, and he turned and shut the trunk of Usopp's car. Zoro trailed behind him through the yard, and Sanji managed to almost fall up the porch stairs, recovering before he walked in the front door. The resident chef trudged directly to one of their larger couches and collapsed onto it, and as Zoro was closing and locking the door, he noticed Nami already passed out on the other couch. Everyone else had made it to their rooms, it seemed.

Essentially alone, kicking off his shoes and shrugging off his jacket, Zoro smiled a little.

---

That was it. Usopp was done. His brain literally couldn't handle another technical phrase or equation.

He shoved his textbook across his desk like it was offensive, until it hit the wall with a noisy thunk.

He really did need to read that chapter though. As he leaned back in the uncomfortable desk chair, stretching his arms upward, extending his spine, Usopp contemplated going to sleep so he could get up early the next morning. Yeah, right, because that had ever worked for him.

Well, he didn't have work tomorrow. Maybe that'd be enough to get him motivated.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and he leaned forward as he pulled it out, his eyebrows raising slightly at the innocuous text message on the screen.

"Come over?"

It was from Nami—who was literally across the hall from him.

With a light sigh, he rose to his feet and trudged over to her room, not even bothering to knock as he walked inside.

"You could've just yelled at me," he told her teasingly, slamming the door closed behind him. But his expression quickly twisted into a frown as he looked down at her—something was definitely wrong.

Nami was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back to the door, with an exaggerated number of books surrounding her. Like, a cartoon-ish amount. She must've emptied out a shelf at the library or something.

But as soon as she turned around, Usopp instantly recognized the panic in her eyes. He'd never really seen her make a face like that before. He froze for a moment, his gaze locked on her, and his brain fluttered through all the questions to ask, and he couldn't figure out which one to go with.

After some deliberation and consideration, he wisely settled on, "What's wrong?"

"Usopp, I need help," she pleaded—but it wasn't like how Usopp'd ever heard her plead for something before. Because okay, he'd heard her act before, to get someone to do something for her. Nami was like master-level at getting her way. But this was different.

He quickly approached her, dropping to his knees next to her. "What's going on?"

"I really messed up."

"Okay, uh, what'd you do? Can we fix it?"

A long pause. "I have a—a paper due tomorrow."

"A paper?" Usopp repeated. "Okay, um, have you started it yet?"

Nami averted her gaze. "No."

"Okay..."

"I had it in my head that it was due on the twenty-fourth. So earlier, I got all these books, I looked up all these articles and printed them off, and I thought, hell yeah, I'm gonna get a head start on this paper." She closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath. "And I just pulled out the assignment and—the fourteenth. It's due on the fourteenth."

"Wow. That's, uh. Really unfortunate." He didn't really know what else to say.

"I know," she hissed. "I really fucked up."

"How much of your grade is it worth?"

"Forty percent," she said quietly.

Usopp groaned. Shit. That was kind of a lot. "You can just turn it in late though, right?"

"Yeah, that was my first thought. But then I remembered, on the first day, the professor went on and on about how he's got zero tolerance for late work, and how students have no appreciation for deadlines."

"Geez, okay." Usopp thought about all the times he'd turned in a paper late. Good thing he didn't have classes with that guy.

"He's going to dock my points so much if I don't get this done," Nami went on. "Plus, he holds grudges—and I'm going to have to take a couple more classes with this guy for my major."

"What if you're deathly ill?"

Nami rolled her eyes. "He'd expect me to email it, even if I can't go to class."

"Huh, yeah, you're right." Usopp wracked his brain. "But if you were hospitalized..."

She narrowed her eyes. "Hospitalized because of what?"

"Um. I guess it'd have to be an injury. Hit by a car?" Well, it was the easiest thing that came to mind.

Her glare grew a little more intense. "Are you offering to run me over?"

"No," Usopp sighed. "You better just write the damn paper. What's the class, anyway?"

"Remote sensing of the ocean and atmosphere."

Geez, that sounded terrible. Meteorology. Weather. He understood a lot of the basics, but something like this... Usopp picked up one of the books nearest him and thumbed through it. "I don't even know what that is, Nami. I'm not sure how I can help you."

Nami pointed at the laptop on her bed. "Just... type for me, okay? I'll tell you everything to say."

Oh, that was actually a pretty good idea. Usopp pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay. Uh—let me get some coffee real quick. Otherwise I'll never make it. You want coffee?"

"Bring the whole pot," she said gravely.

"Okay."

"And sugar."

"I know."

"And that fancy creamer. The cinnamon one."

He turned back to give her a look, although she was completely fixated on one of the many books surrounding her.

"I know," he repeated quietly, mostly to himself. Like he didn't know how she liked her coffee by now.

Nine hours and two pots of coffee later, Nami had a paper that she felt like she could turn in without looking like a complete idiot. Usopp relinquished the laptop to her so she could do the final tweaks as he chugged the rest of the coffee in his mug.

He'd actually given up on cream and sugar a couple hours ago. He hated black coffee, but he wasn't drinking it because he wanted it. It was a goddamn necessity.

Usopp flopped down on the area rug next to Nami's bed and took out his phone. 5:23. He'd been awake nearly twenty-four hours—5:30 had been the time he'd gotten up for his shift at the coffee shop yesterday. Well, it certainly wasn't the first time. Definitely wouldn't be the last.

"Good enough," Nami murmured to herself, clicking the laptop closed and practically throwing it onto her nightstand. "I'm gonna reread it one more time before I print it."

"Yeah, good idea." He was sure they were both in the same boat—that they couldn't proofread for shit right now.

"You printing at the computer lab?"

"Yeah," Nami replied, flicking off the lights. She paused to prod Usopp in the ribs with her toes before she flopped into her bed. "Come on, let's sleep."

"Okay," he said tiredly, and he nearly contemplated falling asleep right there on the floor. But, Nami's bed was much more comfortable, even if it was a bit small for the two of them.

"I'm setting an alarm for 7:30. You set one, too."

"Huh?"

"That way, we definitely won't oversleep."

Usopp yawned. "Okay, fine." He took out his phone and set the alarm, double-checking it three times to make sure he didn't pick the wrong option. He'd definitely picked "PM" instead of "AM" when he'd tiredly set an alarm before.

"An hour and a half. That should give me enough time to read it, print it, and get to my class," Nami went on, her voice growing more sleepy by the moment.

Nodding tiredly, Usopp rolled over onto his knees and elbows and pushed himself to his feet. Then he set his cell phone on Nami's desk—if he had to stand up to turn off the alarm, he definitely wouldn't sleep through it.

She turned toward the wall, nestling her back into his side. For a moment, he got stuck on how warm and soft she was next to him, and how her hair smelled faintly of oranges, and their hair was all over and kind of suffocating him slightly, but, no, it was fine. He was utterly exhausted, so it only took a moment for him to drift asleep. At some point during the morning, he rolled onto his side and hooked his arm around her.

The sound of the phone-alarm was literally physically painful. Two hours of sleep was like an entire sleep cycle but Usopp still felt like he'd been hit by a truck as he half-slid, half-fell out of the bed to get to his phone.

"Come on, Nami," he croaked, his voice still hoarse from sleep. He reached out and pressed his hand on her arm, gently shaking her awake.

"Already?" Nami groaned, squeezing her eyes closed even tighter in protest.

"Yeah. Come on, or you won't have enough time."

"Okay," she muttered, grabbing for her phone. When she didn't get up, he leaned over to see what she was doing.

"Who the heck are you texting?"

"Sanji."

"What? Why?"

"I need his coffee," she said, matter-of-factly.

"He's definitely asleep." They'd actually heard him stumble up to his bedroom just a few hours ago.

"He'll make it for me," she said, sitting upright as she clicked "send" on the message.

"I can make you coffee, you know."

"His is better."

"It's my job to make coffee."

"His is better," she repeated, stretching.

Her phone vibrated back almost immediately, and before Nami had even placed her feet on the floor, Usopp heard Sanji sluggishly heading down the hallway toward the stairs.

"You're giving me a ride to the computer lab, right?" Nami asked.

"Shouldn't you have asked me that before you decided what time to wake up?" She'd never make it if she walked, and Usopp knew she knew it.

Nami shrugged. "I didn't think you'd say no."

Usopp smirked. True—and he'd already planned on it. But he sure as hell wasn't going to tell her that.

---

"Hey, you sound like shit."

"Thanks," Sanji said graciously, clearing his throat from behind his cigarette. He sat at the kitchen bar, half-watching the giant television across the room while he nursed a glass of water. Today's show was about secret KGB documents from the cold war regarding alien crash-landings and autopsies. Super fucking fascinating.

Usopp gave Sanji a thumbs-up from where he was wedged in the loveseat and went back to his textbook.

A few days passed.

"Sanji, that cough sounds awful."

Sanji grinned at Nami from his spot on the opposite end of the long couch, wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket from his bedroom. It was fucking cold in that house.

"You're concerned about me."

"You're a concerning person in general," she deadpanned without looking up from her phone.

"Thank you!"

"Not necessarily a compliment."

Sanji meant to say something about how her words were always compliments to him or something, something really fucking cheesy, but he was interrupted by his own sudden coughing fit and couldn't get a word in.

Nami raised her eyes to him and waited for him to finish.

"Maybe you smoke too much."

Sanji shook his head, clearing his throat, trying to scratch the fucking itch that wouldn't go the hell away. "Definitely not."

Nami rolled her eyes at him and went back to her phone, and Sanji stood after a moment and let the blanket fall to the couch, and he walked to the bathroom to hock up all the shit coating his throat into the toilet and fuck, he was thinking about maybe just carrying around some kind of cup or trash can to spit that shit into because he was tired of getting up every twenty minutes.

But fuck that, that was disgusting. Sanji wrinkled his nose at the fat loogie floating in the toilet and flushed it with the sole of his shoe, shivering a little, his arms folded tight across his chest.

Another week passed.

Sanji stood outside the front door, about to fucking kick it down because god damn it his house keys sucked ass and—he kept jiggling them, twisting the knob back and forth—he couldn't get the front door open and he really just needed his keys recut because nobody else had this problem apparently and—

The door suddenly unlocked with him still leaning on it and wrestling the doorknob, and Sanji nearly fell into the house.

Glaring at the door, he yanked his key from the knob and slammed it shut.

Sanji stood there, pointing his head down while he coughed up a lung and yanked off his coat. He fumbled for a pack of cigarettes and of course couldn't find his lighter. He coughed harder, and at this point, he was just trying to scratch the itch in his throat. He had a headache from it.

"Dumbfuck, if you're going to stand around and die slowly, you should do it quieter or somewhere else entirely."

Sanji's eyes swept to the couch where his very least favorite motherfucking roommate was clearly just waking up from a cozy little afternoon catnap.

"Fuck you," Sanji said to Zoro, because he couldn't say much else amid all his hacking, and after a moment he managed to clear his throat and take a deep breath. He knew his cheeks were red. They fucking did that all the time over basically anything. His eyeballs felt like they were going to pop out of his head.

Sanji found his lighter in one of his coat pockets and finally lit his fucking cigarette and started coughing all over again.

"You look like an idiot," Zoro informed him, sitting up straighter and stretching, the joints in his elbows popping when he hyper-flexed them and fuck, Sanji was so grossed out by that shit.

"That's a—little hypocritical—of you," Sanji said between throaty coughs into his fist, and, fuck, he opened the front door again and leaned outside to spit out all the goddamn phlegm in his mouth over the porch railing, oh god, eugh, gross.

"Maybe at least stop smoking."

"Fuck, just shut up," Sanji groaned, shutting the door and walking past Zoro to go find a bottle of water or something in the fridge.

"You could always do what normal people who aren't raging idiots do and go see a doctor."

Sanji straightened up from his survey of the fridge and turned around. "Do I look like I have health insurance to you?"

Zoro shrugged. "There's always Chopper."

"Oh yeah," Sanji said, unscrewing the cap from the bottle of water he'd successfully located. "Forgot about him."

Zoro snorted. "Some friend you are."

"Well, he hides in his room all the time—and also, fuck you." Sanji took a long slow drink of his water because he wasn't actually thirsty, he just wanted to coat his throat with something cold.

"He's hiding in his room right now. You should go talk to him."

Sanji ignored Zoro for a minute, trying to smoke his cigarette, although he couldn't do much more than puff on it. But the smoke burned his throat so much that it actually worked well for scratching the itch. Plus, he needed it. Especially when dealing with fucking Zoro.

Fucking Zoro.

Wow, Sanji didn't want to think about that at the moment. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them, sighing.

"I should make him coffee or something if I'm going to hassle him with this," Sanji mumbled towards his lap.

"Probably."

Sanji shot Zoro a look and then went back to ignoring him.

He prepared Chopper's coffee just the way he loved it—three million scoops of sugar and drowned in milk and whipped cream on top. Sanji made a cup of black for himself because coffee would probably feel really good on his throat, and he tilted his head back and pointed the aerosol can upside down and filled his mouth with whipped cream before sticking it back in the fridge.

"Fucking gross. Aren't you supposed to be some fancy chef?"

"Fancy chefs like whipped cream too, dick," Sanji said slowly, his mouth still full. Whipped cream also worked really well for coating his throat, which was a huge bonus before he started coughing it all up again. He spat a mouthful of gross into the sink and rinsed it down.

"Go talk to Chopper, dipshit."

"I am!"

"Are you afraid of doctors?"

"Obviously fucking not, we live with one."

Sanji walked to Chopper's door, and he was extremely dismayed when Zoro got his dumb ass off the couch and walked over behind him, and when Sanji paused, two cups of coffee in his left hand, Zoro leaned past him and knocked loudly, and Sanji fucking seethed.

Sanji could hear the music blaring in Chopper's room.

After a few seconds, the door opened, and Chopper looked up at them, raising his eyebrows at the expression on Sanji's face. "Uh—what's up?"

Sanji extended a cup of coffee to Chopper. "Will you examine me?"

"Will I what?"

"You're a doctor and Sanji's sick, so do your thing," Zoro said from behind Sanji.

"I'm not a doctor," Chopper said, his voice thick with exasperation. "You should go to an actual doctor. I'm surprised you haven't already."

"If you—" Sanji coughed, and Chopper took the offered coffee so Sanji could properly hack into his fist, "—thought I was sick, why didn't you say anything!"

"You're an adult, you should know when you need to see a doctor!" Chopper shouted back at him, and Sanji tried to look intimidating but mostly he just wanted to stop coughing long enough to sleep for a few hours.

"Either way," Sanji said, clearing his throat again, cupping his fingers around his remaining mug and holding it close to his face. "I'm not paying for a real doctor, so if you care whether or not I live or die, you'll use your boy-genius skills to figure out what's wrong with me."

Chopper threw his hands up into the air and turned, walking towards his desk, leaving his door open in a wordless invitation for Sanji and Zoro to follow him. Chopper pointed at the bed, commanding Sanji to sit, and he turned down the music blasting from his shitty stereo. There were books piled all over his desk and on the ground next to it.

Sanji took a long drink of his coffee and held it out to Zoro, silently threatening to spill it down the front of Zoro's dumb shirt if he didn't catch it and hold it for him. Zoro hurriedly grabbed the steaming cup and gave Sanji a nasty look. Sanji turned and sat on Chopper's bed.

Chopper pulled one of those doctory things from the bottom drawer of his desk.

"You say you're not a—" Sanji coughed, "—doctor, but you have the listening thing."

"Stethoscope. And shut up," Chopper replied, putting the earbud-headphone part in his ears and pressing the listening part of the stethoscope against the front of Sanji's shirt. "Breathe like a normal person."

"I am."

Chopper gave Sanji a look that he did not appreciate receiving from some shitty fucking teenager. Without a word, Chopper turned Sanji's shoulders so that he was facing away from him, and he slipped his hand up Sanji's shirt and pressed the fucking cold listening part against his bare back.

"Keep breathing."

"What else am I going to d—" Sanji started coughing again and Chopper withdrew. Still with no comments to make, Chopper walked to his desk again and produced a thermometer and held it out to Sanji.

"Hold this under your tongue."

Sanji did as he was told.

From his spot where he was standing by the door, Zoro spoke up, "For not being a doctor, you know what you're doing."

Chopper glanced at Zoro, doing that thing where he tried not to smile as he said, "Well, I learned a lot from my grandmother—she was the only doctor in our little town. But stop trying to flatter me, asshole. Just shut up and stay over there."

The thermometer under Sanji's tongue beeped, and Chopper grabbed it from his mouth before Sanji even had a chance to do so, and Chopper frowned at the digital reading displayed on the little screen before ejecting the tip of it into the trash.

"You have a fever."

"Yeah?"

Chopper pulled his phone from his pocket and turned on the flashlight app and told Sanji to open his mouth, and once again, Sanji obeyed. Chopper shined the light on his phone into Sanji's mouth, and honestly, Sanji didn't want to hear about what his throat looked like and he fucking hated this.

"Stick out your tongue and say 'ah' and—I don't have anything sterile to hold your tongue down so just, try to open your mouth really wide and keep your tongue flat, alright," Chopper said, and Sanji was trying so fucking hard not to cough in his face.

Sanji glanced over at Zoro and fuck that smug look on that bastard's face, fuck this whole thing—he was being examined by a teenager and this was fucking ridiculous and Zoro was laughing at him, and Sanji snapped his mouth closed and turned his head to glare at Zoro, and he was going to tell him the fuck off, but Chopper cut him off.

"I think you probably have pneumonia. Bronchitis is possible, but things were rattling in there," he said, nodding towards Sanji's chest.

Zoro snorted. "Figures you have some senior citizen disease."

Again, Chopper interrupted Sanji before he could snap at Zoro.

"Not just old people—infants are also very susceptible."

Zoro laughed outright and Sanji was about to lose his fucking shit, but Chopper kept talking.

"But it's not an age thing, really," Chopper continued, folding his arms over his chest. "Pneumonia is often caused by a crappy immune system." Sanji got another look from Chopper. "Smoking puts you at a way higher risk."

Zoro was grinning and Sanji wanted to backflip into the sun.

"Drinking also puts you at a higher risk," Chopper said pointedly to Zoro, and okay, Sanji felt a little better after seeing that asshole under the same fire.

"Alright, anyway, what am I supposed to do? Do I go get… medicine? What medicine do I take?" Sanji asked, standing up, his hands going to his pockets, and he curled his fingers around his crumbled pack of cigarettes because fuck.

"You need to be diagnosed by an actual doctor. You need an x-ray, and for that, you need a doctor's referral."

"I obviously can't afford an x-ray. Or a doctor."

Chopper rubbed his face, and Sanji felt a little guilty for making him so frustrated.

"There's a free clinic twenty minutes away by bus, and it's open for two more hours, and if you leave right now, they can probably get you in," Chopper said, grabbing one of his notebooks off his desk, along with a pen, and he scribbled the address and which bus stop it was closest to onto a piece of paper and ripped it out and held it out to Sanji. "A chest x-ray will be less than two hundred dollars without insurance. But probably more than a hundred."

Sanji groaned and took the fucking paper and ended up coughing all over himself.

"The antibiotics also became significantly more expensive this year for some reason—even the generic stuff."

Fucking shit.

See, the thing was, Sanji actually could afford this shit. Well, it wouldn't sink him. Honestly, he probably made more money than anyone in the house, except for maybe Luffy, because who knew how much fucking money that idiot made, and how the hell he did it was also a mystery, and Sanji wasn't going to ask. The point here was that Sanji didn't want to drop a couple hundred bucks or more on this fucking bullshit cough and god fucking damn it.

He didn't want to ride on the bus to a fucking free clinic and sit there with a bunch of fucking sick people. He didn't want to be examined by some fuckoff doctor who was just going to tell him what Chopper already told him, and who was probably going to advise him to quit smoking and talk about health and blah blah fuck. Sanji didn't want to get an x-ray. He didn't want to know what his lungs looked like, and if they tried to show him the goddamn x-ray picture thing, he was going to flip out and, fuck, he couldn't do this today. He'd just gotten home, for fuck's sake.

"Sanji," Chopper said, snapping Sanji out of his thoughts. "Go right now. You could be contagious. And if it's bacterial, it can mess you up. Like, it can spread to your blood, you could lose part of your lungs, you could die, Sanji."

"Fucking Christ, I will fucking go right now," Sanji said, trying not to scream, and he was trying to take a deep breath, but even that was too fucking difficult, and he was just going to calmly walk out of the room and go somewhere, probably not to the fucking doctor, but he was going to leave and calm down and—

"I'll go with you," Zoro said from his spot in the doorway, still holding Sanji's coffee and blocking his path, and he was smiling, obviously entertained by this shitshow.

"Literally the last fucking thing I want in the world right now. I would rather snort tabasco sauce."

"I know," Zoro grinned.

"Yeah, Zoro," Chopper said, smiling along with that dumb moron, "You should go with him. Make sure he goes."

"I don't need someone to go with me!" Sanji shouted, hands balling into fists.

"You do," Zoro said. "You won't go otherwise."

"You don't know that! I'll go!"

"I do know that. You're not going unless someone physically makes you. And I have the rest of the day off. You should appreciate how much your roommates care about you." Zoro was saying all this shit with that smug look on his face and yeah, Sanji was probably going to fucking fight him.

Chopper put a hand on Sanji's shoulder, and Sanji whipped around to glare at him, because this was Chopper's fault as much as Zoro's. Maybe it wasn't their fault that he was sick, but. It was still their fault.

"Please go, Sanji. I'm serious."

Mother. Fucker.

The look Chopper was giving Sanji was fucking horseshit, and Sanji wasn't going to win this battle, was he. Chopper's eyes were so big and pathetic. His concern was so genuine. Sanji was going to cook Chopper whatever he wanted for a week, but in that moment, he wanted to drop kick him out the window.

"Fine! Fine, alright, I'm going. Zoro, get your coat. We're leaving right now or I'm going to set this house on fire."

Zoro laughed and said, "It's not the Sunny's fault you got pneumonia," and Chopper looked relieved and Sanji broke away from both of them, physically pushing past Zoro, and he went to find his coat that he'd dropped somewhere in the big living room because he needed to get away immediately.

This was the worst thing that could possibly happen to him.

A minute later, Sanji stood by the front door with his hands jammed in his jacket pockets, waiting on Zoro.

"Are you com—" Sanji tried to shout, but the whole yelling thing didn't work well with his throat, his vocal cords were fucking betraying him, and he hunched over and coughed hard into his fist.

"Yeah, don't bust a lung," Zoro said as he jogged down the stairs, yanking on his coat, and Sanji turned and walked out the front door, hardly waiting for him.

Zoro caught up as Sanji was popping a cigarette into his mouth, now that they were outside and away from Chopper, and the smoke paired with the cold air burned like hell. It felt like he'd massaged the inside of his throat with a cheese grater.

"Pretty fucking pathetic," Zoro said to Sanji as he kept up with his brisk walk.

"I need one right now," Sanji said roughly, looking straight ahead. The bus stop wasn't far.

"You don't need it."

"Yes. I fucking do." Sanji glanced to his left, and Zoro was giving him the most motherfucking disdainful look.

That stupid asshole. Of course Sanji needed one. They'd be at the bus stop in a couple minutes, and the bus would be there probably before too long, and Sanji couldn't smoke on the bus, or in the doctor's office, so he needed as many as possible now and holy fuck, even the thought of the goddamn bus ride—Sanji took a long drag on his cigarette and, fuck, it was too much, and he started hacking, slowing and eventually pausing his stride entirely.

Zoro looked back at him and waited.

Sanji spat a mouthful of phlegm onto the sidewalk and straightened up, catching up to Zoro, saying nothing. Thankfully, Zoro kept his snide comments to himself for the time being.

Zoro wouldn't understand the desperate need Sanji felt. Nicotine was his crutch, and his cushion, his goddamn safety blanket, and cigarettes were his vice and his first love and his fucking armor, and they'd probably kill him one day, but he was fucking addicted, and Zoro would never understand something like that, so fuck him.

But then again, Zoro was an alcoholic at age twenty-two, so maybe he would.

It wasn't worth discussing.

They stood next to each other at the bus stop, and Sanji was mentally willing himself to stop shivering.

"So when did you move here? Like, to America."

Sanji raised his eyebrows and looked over at Zoro. And then he narrowed his eyes at him and croaked, "Why the fuck do you care."

"Passing the time."

That was another infuriating thing about Zoro. He'd been… less horrible lately. Almost like he was a decent human being capable of semi-complex thought. And now he was making small talk with him.

"I don't remember. I was nine, maybe. Or eight. Ten. I don't know," Sanji said, watching down the street for the bus.

"What's France like?"

"Google it."

"Fuck you."

Sanji wanted another cigarette. He looked Zoro up and down. "Why do you dye your hair fucking green?"

Zoro shrugged, like he didn't even know the fucking answer, and that made Sanji angrier than anything Zoro had said to him in the past hour.

Sanji could hear the big diesel engine of the bus rolling down the street, and he said to Zoro while watching for it, "You should go home. The bus is here, I'm getting on it, so you can go fuck off."

"You won't go."

Sanji turned and gave Zoro a nasty look. "Stop fucking acting like you know jack shit about me."

Zoro gave him this stupid fucking serious face and folded his arms across his chest. "You swear on whatever the hell you find important that you'll go to the doctor if I don't get on the bus with you? You swear it?" He was looking Sanji straight in the eye, and it was uncomfortable as hell.

Sanji knew in his heart he wouldn't go. He would avoid it until it killed him. He hated doctors, he hated thinking about health, he hated all of it, and if he got on the bus by himself, he knew he'd go straight to a bar—a bar far away from any medical clinic. And he would stay there until it closed.

Sanji clenched his jaw and said nothing, and when the bus stopped in front of them, Zoro followed Sanji onto it.

The whole experience was more or less awful.

The bus ride was too short, and the wait at the clinic was way too fucking long, and he basically repeated what he'd gone through with Chopper and then some, and yes, they'd written him up for an x-ray and scheduled it for that afternoon, which he also tried to skip, but Zoro was... being such a fucking asshole.

Sanji didn't want to go to the fucking hospital.

Sanji had never been in a hospital before. Zoro stayed right next to him the entire time, making snide comments and saying little things that he fucking knew would piss Sanji off, and Sanji had been so distracted by trying to explain to Zoro what a fucking moron he was, that he was almost startled when a nurse called his name.

Shit.

He would never tell Zoro that he'd nearly had some kind of freak-out panic attack meltdown once the machine started doing its x-ray thing.

Sanji managed to remain still for the duration of the x-ray itself, but at soon as it was over, fuck. He'd yanked the heavy... blanket-shirt thing they made him wear off in such a hurry, getting his shit together and straightening out his clothes, and he'd bolted from the room before anyone could try to show him anything or tell him anything, and when he found the front desk to the particular lobby where he'd left Zoro, he'd stared at the nurse or receptionist or whatever with huge eyes and taken a deep breath.

"Do I need to check out? Or pay anything? Or—what do I do—can I go? Can I leave?"

The lady in scrubs had smiled a little at him and said, "We'll bill you, and your physician will contact you with the results."

"So I can go?"

"You sure can." Again with that smile, don't smile at him like that, don't fucking look at him—

Sanji turned and jammed his hands in his pockets and power-walked the fuck out of that building as fast as he could. He had to stop himself from breaking out into a full sprint.

Once he was outside, and the cold air was hitting him in the face, like he was being backhanded, he took another long, deep breath and wound up coughing for nearly a full minute, and it was so rough that he was almost gagging. He was trying to light a cigarette when Zoro found him.

Zoro stood next to Sanji while he turned and hunched over, cupping his hand around his cigarette, trying to create a barrier against the wind.

When he finally managed to get it lit, and took the longest drag his shitty throat would allow, Zoro said, "You did it," and Sanji didn't respond to that one.

Zoro stayed next to him the entire way home, from the concrete steps of the big non-emergency entrance of the hospital to the front door of the Thousand Sunny.

They bickered, and maybe laughed a little, and shared long stretches of silence, and the entire time, Sanji kept thinking to himself that he needed to stay away from Zoro.

It was easier to hate him.

---

"When is Nami coming back in town?" Sanji asked.

Usopp sat at the kitchen counter/bar and watched Sanji put together the fanciest sandwiches he'd seen in a while. He cleared his throat. "Thanksgiving. During the afternoon, I think? I'unno."

Nami had been gone the past couple days, visiting her sister back in her hometown. Usopp hadn't talked to her since she'd left, which was weird, not talking to her, but he was pretty sure she'd said she was coming back on Thanksgiving, which was the day after tomorrow.

Sanji hummed and nodded and sliced the sandwiches into little squares, which was silly because Usopp was just going to shove them all in his mouth as fast as he could because they looked so good, wow. Usopp really loved when Sanji was home, because he wasn't home all that much, but when he was, he usually cooked. Like, he was happy to cook for everyone. It was the best.

Everyone had worked out a system where they each just gave Sanji money every month for groceries, and he took care of the rest. He made so many meals, and he would even prepare stuff that they could heat up later, like if he wouldn't be around, and god, Usopp felt like he was living like a king most of the time just based on his standard diet. He'd never eaten this well in his life.

"Why do you ask?" Usopp wondered aloud as he absently popped all the knuckles on his left hand.

"We'll all be here on Thanksgiving," Sanji said as he walked over with two plates full of pretty little sandwiches and slid one in front of Usopp. He walked to the other side of the bar and sat next to Usopp and pulled his phone from his pocket, opening up the calendar on it, and Usopp leaned over to look at Sanji's schedule.

"You work a lot," Usopp said with his mouth full.

"I know," Sanji said, looking down at his phone, "but we're closed on Thanksgiving. I think we're all going to be here that night."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. So," Sanji looked up at his own portion of the lunch he'd prepared, and Usopp didn't know how he had so much self control. Sanji was such a slow eater, whereas Usopp was almost halfway finished. "I can make Thanksgiving dinner for us."

"Really?"

"Yes," Sanji said, and he looked over at Usopp, grinning. "I can make the best Thanksgiving dinner any of us has ever had."

"Oh, awesome. Will it be like a French-Thanksgiving?"

"That doesn't make any fucking sense."

Usopp paused. "Either way, Sanji, I don't have any extra money to give you. Turkeys are expensive, aren't they? I'm, like, strapped for cash."

Sanji popped one of his little sandwiches into his mouth and shook his head. "Mm—no, don't worry about it. It's fine, I'll cover it. I just dropped a couple hundred dollars on a fucking cough, I don't care if I spend a little more on making dinner for my friends."

"You sound a lot better, by the way," Usopp pointed out. Sanji had finally stopped coughing his lungs out every two seconds. He was more or less back to normal in just a few days.

"Yeah, the medicine fixed me, like, immediately. I only took it for two days and I'm cured."

"You're supposed to take the whole bottle—you know that, right?" Usopp asked, finishing off the last of his sandwiches.

"Well, I'm all better, and I figured I could just save the bottle in case I ever got sick like that again, because those pills were fucking expensive. Also, they made my mouth taste like, uh… like metal. Metallic. It was fucking awful."

Usopp gave Sanji a look. "If you don't take all of them, you can get it again and it'll be worse and harder to cure."

Sanji shrugged. "Whatever."

"You're an idiot."

"An idiot who's making you a fucking nice French-Thanksgiving dinner, so fuck off. Text everyone. Make sure they're all here that night." Sanji slid his plate to Usopp, giving up what was left on it. "Tell the landlord, too. He's also invited."

Usopp gave Sanji a thumbs-up and inhaled his remaining sandwiches as he scrolled his contacts in his phone.

It really was surprising that they'd all be there on Thanksgiving night. None of them had family in town. Usopp was the closest one to being a local out of any of them—he'd grown up in the city about an hour south of the college town they all lived in.

Nami had gone to see her sister early because of her sister's scheduling or something. Usopp couldn't remember. But out of all of them, Nami was the only one to leave for the holiday. The rest of them couldn't afford it or didn't have family to go visit.

Usopp had been there when Sanji had asked Luffy if he was going to go see his grandpa for Thanksgiving, and Luffy had just laughed and said, "Probably not."

Thanksgiving arrived quickly, and all day, the house smelled incredible.

Usopp had texted Nami, offering to pick her up from the train station, but she'd declined, which was fucking weird as hell, but he hadn't pushed it. When she arrived home, he'd been sitting on the couch, and he'd smiled when she walked in the door.

Sanji had spun from his spot in front of the stove, shouting his greetings, and that he'd missed her, and that he was glad she arrived safely, and that dinner would be ready in a few hours, and—

"Hey," she'd said to Usopp with a smile that was totally fucking fake. And then she'd waved to Sanji and gone up to her room, shouldering her single bag that she'd taken with her.

Usopp watched her go and looked back at Sanji. Sanji's eyes were already on Usopp.

"That was weird, right?" Usopp asked, and Sanji nodded.

"Go talk to her or something."

"Nah," Usopp said, turning back to the television and the random alien documentary he'd put on. "She'll talk about it if she wants to. She's probably just tired from riding on trains and busses all day."

Sanji went back to making the best meal Usopp had ever smelled. "You're probably right."

The dinner itself was absolutely incredible.

Usopp had never seen one man orchestrate a kitchen like Sanji had been doing all day, making everything from scratch, talking through his thought process half the time—he was making up a lot of the recipes on the spot as he went along. Usopp listened to him talking to himself here and there, smoking like a chimney and humming every once in a while, for a good part of the morning and into the afternoon.

Usopp had woken up fairly early and had no commitments for the day, so he'd offered to help Sanji with the cooking and had been refused immediately.

A while back, Sanji had once explained to Usopp that he enjoyed experimenting when he cooked, and trying new things, and how his job prevented him from doing that. So that was part of why he cooked so often, even when he spent the entire day working his ass off in a kitchen. And from what Usopp understood, Sanji had been experimenting and preparing their extravagant Thanksgiving meal since the break of dawn.

And when Sanji was finally finished, Usopp wanted to cry. He might've teared up just a tiny bit. He wanted to photograph it.

The entire counter/bar was covered with huge plates of food, and Sanji had filled the rest of the counters with steaming hot plates of things Usopp had never seen, and it looked like art, and Usopp had stood up from the couch and walked over and stared at the display with his mouth hanging open.

"Sanji, you're like some kind of food-magician. This is insane. This is like… like if I won the food lottery. I don't know how you do this, man," Usopp started saying, and Sanji stood next to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Usopp. You can build robots and you're impressed by a few hot meals." Sanji was smiling at him.

"You can't eat a robot," Usopp pointed out.

"Fair enough. Where is everyone?" Sanji asked, looking over his shoulder at the giant empty room.

"Nami and Zoro are both upstairs," Usopp informed him, eyeing the super amazing-looking Thanksgiving meal in front of him, trying to keep all the spit in his mouth, but his mouth was watering really hard and yeah, whoops, he might start straight up drooling. "And, uh, the others—they'll be here soon."

"Will you go get them? Nami and the idiot?"

"Sure."

Usopp knocked really hard on Zoro's door because he was probably sleeping, but maybe he wasn't, and Usopp sure as hell wasn't going to just barge into Zoro's room without giving him some warning because who knew, maybe Zoro was doing some crazy... muscle-training thing, and if Usopp just popped in there, Zoro might punch him in the face or something.

He probably wouldn't, but. Still. Zoro could knock Usopp into last week if he wanted.

So Usopp knocked on the door until he heard Zoro grunt from inside his room. Poking his head in the room, Usopp said, "Hey, the best meal of our young adult lives awaits us."

Zoro had obviously been passed out all day. He threw the covers off himself and grunted again and Usopp took that as confirmation that he'd received the message.

Usopp just walked into Nami's room simply because he hadn't knocked on her door in, like, two months.

He found her sitting on her bed with her legs crossed and her eyes glued to the screen on her laptop. She looked up at him and snapped her computer closed.

"Food's ready," he said to her with a smile.

"Alright. I'll be down in a few minutes," she said, opening her computer again, turning her attention back to it.

"Nami."

"Hm?"

"It's ready right now, we can actually go and eat it right now."

"I said I'll be down in a minute!"

Usopp folded his arms over his chest. "Nami."

"What!"

"Let's go get really fat together."

Nami sighed and closed her computer again and stood up, smiling at him just a little, and she said, "Fine, fine. It does smell really good. Let's go make ourselves physically ill."

Usopp grinned and linked his arm around hers and pulled her from her room.

A couple minutes later, Chopper and Luffy walked in the door looking wind-blown, and Chopper looked a little frazzled as opposed to Luffy's expression. Luffy walked to the kitchen, silent for once, and looked upon the huge display Sanji had waiting for him. Usopp thought Luffy looked like he was falling deeply in love and experiencing the emotion for the very first time as he stared at all the food.

"Do you think one turkey is enough?" Luffy asked, his voice almost a little shaky.

Sanji stood behind him. "That bird weighs half as much as you do."

"I just—"

"You can have as much as you want," Sanji said, cutting him off.

Luffy inhaled deeply, like his voice was caught in his throat, and Sanji handed him a really big plate and Luffy took it like it was a precious gift. And then, almost like a whirlwind, Luffy started piling as much food as he could fit onto his plate. He made layers of side dishes. He paused in front of the expertly-carved turkey.

"You want light or dark meat?" Sanji asked.

"I want…" Luffy said slowly, and he reached over and pulled an entire leg off the bird, like the whole fucking drum, and put it on top of the mountain on his plate. "This."

Sanji snorted and turned away from him, and Nami was walking around the kitchen with Chopper, looking at everything, and there were so many options that if Nami just took one bite of every single thing, it'd probably fill her up. This was a difficult decision for all of them except Luffy, who could fit an extremely unnatural amount of food into his scrawny little body.

Usopp and Chopper stood next to Nami, and the three of them pointed at different things and asked Sanji, "What's that?"

"Port-roasted chestnuts with grapes."

"And that?"

"Potato gratin with porcini mushrooms and mascarpone cheese."

"This stuff?"

"Sautéed parsnips and carrots with honey and rosemary."

"Those?"

"Balsamic-braised cipolline onions with pomegranate."

Usopp didn't know what the hell any of that was, and there were so many more dishes, fuck, and Sanji seemed to sense this from him and leaned over a little to say, "All of it's good, just pick anything, you'll like it."

Luffy made some kind of affirmative noise from the cherrywood dining table. He was already shoveling food into his mouth at an extreme rate. So much for waiting for everyone.

Zoro came downstairs just as Usopp and Nami and Chopper were sitting down at the table, and Sanji didn't hang around to explain to Zoro what everything was. He waited, standing off to the side and smoking a cigarette, watching the rest of his roommates and smiling a little.

It was apparent that Sanji cooked not because he liked eating, but because he liked feeding people. Loved it, even.

Brook burst in the door carrying several bottles of liquor, apologizing for being a little late, and Sanji grinned when he saw him and what he'd brought.

It was very old and fancy liquor, according to Sanji and Zoro.

Usopp saw Sanji kind of roll his eyes a little when Zoro recognized the gifts Brook had brought them.

Once Brook had filled his plate and was seated, Sanji finally picked out a few dishes for himself and sat at the end of the table.

The whole table manners thing wasn't very important at the Thousand Sunny, seemingly. Luffy ate like a damn slob. The rest of them weren't much better. Nami and Brook and Sanji were the only ones with some semblance of restraint.

"Do you like it?" Sanji asked Nami, who sat between him and Usopp.

"It's incredible, Sanji," she said with another smile. A fake smile. Usopp recognized it. Sanji probably did too. But he looked like he was melting, regardless. He put on the act with no hesitation.

"Are we going to go around the table and list things we're grateful for?" Usopp asked, clearly joking in between stuffing his face and gulping down a glass of one of the bottles of wine Sanji had left out, and he got a kinda-nasty look from Sanji for drinking wine like that, but whatever.

"Is that what people do?" Sanji asked, picking through his plate.

"No idea," Luffy said with a full mouth. "This is the first big family Thanksgiving I've ever been to."

Chopper swallowed what was in his mouth, taking a deep breath, reaching for a glass of wine and wrinkling his nose at the taste of it. "I've always had very small Thanksgiving meals with my grandmother and sometimes our neighbor—we didn't really have traditions."

"Same here," Nami said quietly.

"I'm just assuming that's what people do. It is, isn't it?" Usopp asked, suddenly wondering if big families actually did go around the table and say what they were thankful for on Thanksgiving, or if that was all made up or exaggerated.

"Sounds pretty stupid to me, if it's true," Zoro said, eating almost as quickly as Luffy.

Usopp paused and looked at all of them, and he saw Luffy glance up and sweep his eyes along the table filled with the feasting tenants of the Thousand Sunny. He knew Luffy was thinking the same thing he was.

For the first time, they found something that the six of them all had in common.

"I have to tell you all," Brook spoke up, and his plate was already almost empty, wow. "This is the first family dinner I've been to in perhaps fifty years, so I wanted you to know how grateful I am to be included here."

Brook grinned at all of them, and Luffy was suddenly smiling back, smiling really hard, and he laughed—they laughed together, and they toasted their glasses of wine.

Usopp kind of assumed that Brook was joking. But then again, maybe he wasn't. Maybe he really was, like, a hundred years old.

Everyone ate until they were sick and could hardly move. They all had to sort of combine their efforts to get Luffy to stop going back for thirds and fourths and fifths, because if he kept eating, he was going to end up having to go to the hospital or something. And then Sanji had pulled out the desserts and what the hell.

The evening wound down with everyone collapsing on the couches and the loveseat and the floor in the living room area, and Luffy put on a DVD that none of them had seen yet, and Brook rolled a joint and god, Usopp had maybe never felt the way he felt at the moment. With all of them together like that. It was just…

He looked over at Nami and frowned. She was right next to him on the couch, and she watched the documentary along with everyone else, but if felt like she wasn't really all there. She was too quiet.

They sat shoulder to shoulder, as they often did, but it felt weird. Or different. Or something.

It was much later on in the evening, after almost everyone had passed out watching Luffy's DVD with overly full bellies and Usopp had gone upstairs, when Nami walked into his bedroom with her laptop tucked under her arm. Usopp sat up from where he was sprawled across his bed, stifling a yawn. It had been hard to not take a really intense nap after eating such an incredible meal.

"I was wondering when you'd stop by," Usopp said, stretching, and he moved to the side because he just assumed Nami would throw herself down onto the bed next to him, as per usual.

Instead, she set herself on the floor. She laid on her stomach, her weight on her elbows, and she opened her laptop so the screen was facing away from him. That was a little weird, but. Well, whatever.

After she didn't say anything for a few minutes, he sat up a little bit. "Um. So, how was your trip?"

"It was fine," Nami replied, not even looking at him.

"That's… good," Usopp said slowly, watching her. "You got to spend some time with your sister?"

"Yep."

"That must've been nice. You guys have a, uh… what, an orchard?" Usopp scratched the back of his head.

"Yeah."

"And you grew up there?"

"Sure did."

"Man, I bet that was pretty awesome."

Nami nodded slowly, reading something that must've been extremely interesting on her laptop because Usopp knew what the hell it felt like to be ignored.

And, yeah, this was weird. He stared at her for several long seconds.

"Nami, what's going on?"

"Not much," she responded, ignoring the implication in his question. Then she pursed her lips into a thin line, and the look she gave him was a little cold. "Am I bothering you?"

"No," Usopp said reflexively, but then he thought it over for a moment. He wasn't sure if he'd ever seen her look at him like that before, and this was definitely weird. Uncomfortably weird. "It is bothering me that you're not telling me what's wrong with you," he finally added.

"Nothing's wrong with me!" Nami returned, like she was offended, and Usopp had to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

"You haven't smiled since you've been home, not really, and you look like you want to punch a hole in the wall, and you've hardly said a word to me—"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know I needed to check in when I got home."

"The hell, that's not what I said. I'm just weirded out that you're acting so bizarre."

"I'm being bizarre? You're the one who's trying to pry into my personal business."

Whoa. Okay. This was a pretty bad direction to head in. He backpedaled, tried rephrasing his question, his concern, but things continued to escalate.

"Nami, we talk about shit like this all the time."

"We talk. I don't grill you with personal questions about shit you obviously don't want to talk about, and here you are trying to get me to do just that. My family, my family's farm, and what happened on my trip is none of your business."

Usopp frowned at her, as she glared up at him from the floor. She was right, her family wasn't any of his business. But she was his friend, probably his closest friend, and it was his business if something was going on with her.

But it was like there was nothing he could say that would turn out right.

"I'm just worried, Nami," he said finally. "Something obviously happened."

"Even if it did, it's none of your fucking business," she repeated for probably the fourth time.

Usopp snapped a bit. "I don't even know what to say to you when you're being such a… a—"

He wasn't even totally sure what he was about to say, but Nami cut him off before he could finish it, rising to her feet as she spoke.

"A what, Usopp? A jerk? A bitch?"

Usopp looked up at her up at her and her angry face and clenched fists and he didn't know what the fuck was suddenly happening.

"Why the hell are you trying to pick a fight with me?" he asked, barely able to keep his tone steady.

"You're the one who was about to call me a bitch."

"I wasn't going to call you a bitch," he said, a little loudly, and he really wished there was something he could say to diffuse this situation but he was pretty sure he was just making things even worse.

"Well, I'm not picking a fight with you," she sniffed, looking down at her computer on the floor. "I just came in here for a minute to relax and unwind and you're already prying into things about me and my family, and you should just mind your own business and focus on your own life and your own—"

Nami suddenly stopped, her voice faltering over the last word, but it was pretty easy to tell what she was about to say.

"You're the closest thing to family I have."

Usopp sure as hell hadn't meant to say that, it'd kind of slipped out, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

Nami frowned and after several tense seconds, eventually let the breath out of her lungs.

"Usopp, I—sorry, I wasn't thinking, but—"

"Sorry, I didn't mean—I just—you're one of my closest friends. So I care if you leave for a few days and come back all stressed out. Or not stressed out. Or whatever."

Nami looked up at him and forced one of her smiles, and he didn't smile back.

"Nothing's wrong. I'm just… yeah, I'm stressed over some things. But it's not a big deal. Don't worry about it, I'll get over it."

"Okay, I won't pry. But you know, if you need to talk, or anything—"

"I know that," she replied, almost cutting him off, and there was obviously a lot of finality there, like he wasn't really welcome to say much else.

And then she said, a little softer, "But—thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

---

November had passed by before he really knew it. Shit.

Zoro glanced over at the digital clock on his nightstand when he heard the front door slam shut from downstairs. It was three in the morning.

He was sitting at his desk, hunched over it with three empty beer cans next to his textbook because his trashcan was full and overflowing from the past few days and he couldn't be hassled to deal with it. He didn't know why he was bothering with this shit now, anyway—the whole studying thing. It was pointless this late at night. But he'd been awake, and he'd been fucking dwelling on school, and sitting around twiddling his thumbs and feeling bad sure as hell wasn't going to do jack shit.

"Jesus, fuck!"

Zoro closed his eyes. Sanji's voice was so easily recognizable, even if he didn't have the ridiculous accent. The outburst in the stairwell was followed immediately with some knocking around and bumping into the walls and Zoro didn't need to actually see Sanji to know he'd tripped up on the stairs in his stupidass oxfords with the slick bottoms and had lurched wildly for the railing. Zoro could literally hear every step of Sanji's struggle in detail.

Zoro was not prepared at all for Sanji to suddenly burst into his room, though, like a drunken whirlwind. An inebriated force of nature.

With his hand still on the doorknob, Sanji squinted at Zoro in the overhead light of his bedroom.

"Why're you in my room? What are you doing?" Sanji asked, gripping the handle of the door harder, leaning a little, stumbling just a bit when the door continued to slowly swing open on its set trajectory.

"This is my room, you stupid dipshit," Zoro corrected him, pushing his chair away from the desk a bit, facing Sanji a little more. He couldn't decide whether to be pissed or just amused. On one hand, his stupid idiot roommate had interrupted his attempt at studying. But on the other, this was fucking pathetic.

Sanji looked genuinely confused, and Zoro watched him really try to open his eyes wider, and he actually couldn't, and he looked around the room, his eyebrows pursed together.

Sanji turned on his heel and walked into the room directly across the hall and flipped on the bedroom lights—as in, his own bedroom lights—and a second later, Zoro heard him burst out laughing, like from his gut, and Zoro curled his lips inwards and bit them. He leaned in his chair enough so that it rocked back on two legs, and he said in the loudest hushed voice he could manage, "You're gonna wake everyone up, asshole."

"I give a shit!" Sanji yelled back, and then he clapped a hand over his mouth, groaning. He crossed the hall again, forgetting to turn his goddamn bedroom light back off, and he returned to Zoro's room like that'd been his planned destination the entire fucking time, hand still over his stupid mouth, saying something about, "Fuck, I forgot about Nami, fuck, I am an asshole, oh my god, oh fuck me."

Sanji slammed Zoro's door shut behind him and immediately winced, turning around and gently pressing his fingertips against the imitation wood. "Whoops."

"You're a fucking idiot," Zoro said from his chair, and Sanji whipped around, wobbling a little.

"I am, you're right," he said, his eyes finally starting to adjust to the light. They were bloodshot as all hell.

Zoro honestly didn't know how to respond to Sanji agreeing with him. He didn't know how to respond to this situation in general. Sanji had only been in his room on a couple occasions, and it was for seconds at a time. And now he was leaning against the closed door, his hair a fucking mess, long fingers with red knuckles curled around the edges of his jacket sleeves. Zoro changed the subject.

"You couldn't even make it to the right bedroom; how the fuck did you manage to get home on your own?"

Sanji rubbed his eyes and mumbled something. Something totally incoherent with a thick accent that Zoro wouldn't have been able to understand either way. And then Sanji blinked several times, forcing his eyes to refocus on Zoro. "I don't know? That's… I do not know how I got here."

Zoro had never seen Sanji this drunk.

"You sound like a fucking idiot."

Sanji wrinkled his nose at Zoro. "Well. I hate you." He put his hands in his pockets and walked up to Zoro's desk, leaning over him to inspect his work, completely ignoring any personal space Zoro had designated for himself. "And you're too stupid to figure out this basic shit, don't fucking call me an idiot."

Zoro debated whether or not to hit Sanji. He should probably hit him. He should hit him fucking hard right in his stupid fucking mouth that never shut the fuck up. But that would cause a lot of noise. If everyone else in that house had managed, somehow, to sleep through Sanji's hammered-as-fuck homecoming, Zoro doubted they'd sleep through the fight he wanted very badly to get into with his piece of shit roommate after that snide fucking comment he just made.

This version of Sanji was colder than he was used to. This version came with a different sort of bite. And if Zoro had any extremely brief hesitations over whether or not Sanji was an asshole to his core, they were gone now. Fuck that stupid prick.

"Idiot's a little weak," Zoro said, and Sanji straightened up a little, looking down his nose at Zoro as he continued, "You're not even an idiot. You're a scum-sucking womanizer who thinks his shit doesn't stink, and right now, you're being a fucking nuisance."

Sanji said nothing. He just stood there. Zoro was on edge, ready for Sanji to try something stupid. But instead, after a long sigh, Sanji pushed the empty beer cans aside and sat on Zoro's desk.

"I see your point," he said, and Zoro literally did not have a comeback for that. After a moment's pause, he met Zoro's eyes and nodded towards what was left of Zoro's twelve-pack. "Can I have one?"

"They're warm."

"I don't give a shit."

Zoro didn't say yes. He didn't mean to communicate that Sanji was welcome to one of his beers. But. Well. Sanji was leaning over the desk, his half-untucked button-up shirt riding up his waist a little, and Zoro looked away.

"Go drink that in your own room. I'm going to pass out. It's late." Zoro stood and stretched, looking over at his bedroom door.

"I can't sleep yet," Sanji said, cracking the beer open and putting the sole of one shoe against the corner of Zoro's freshly empty chair.

"Is that supposed to matter to me?"

Sanji's head was dipped down, the can of beer resting on a bent knee, keeping it balanced with the tips of his fingers. "I'm too drunk."

"That's your own stupid fault," Zoro said, standing in the middle of his room, not knowing where to go now. "Go cook something. Or go throw up on yourself, I don't care. Just—"

"Oh, fuck off, I'm drinking this beer and—it's fucking gross, by the way—I'm smoking a cigarette and maybe passing out, stop crying."

"I'm not crying, you stupid fuck."

"Oh, sorry, it just sounded like a grown man was crying just now. Sounds like you're crying. Pretty sure you're crying."

Zoro glared at Sanji until he suddenly looked up at him, smiling, and what the fuck, Sanji was fucking joking around with him and, and, damn it, Zoro just really needed Sanji's stupid drunk ass out of his room immediately.

Sanji was far too unpredictable like this.

Leaning to his side, Sanji dug in his pants pocket and produced a half-crumbled pack of cigarettes, and he held it out to Zoro with his ugly crooked smile. "You want one?"

Zoro didn't know if Sanji was still joking around or not.

"I value my lungs."

Sanji flipped open the top and pulled a single cigarette from the white and copper pack. "But they make you look so cool."

"You're really the biggest idiot I've ever met."

Sanji popped the cigarette between his lips and started checking his other pockets, presumably for a lighter.

"Don't smoke that in here."

Sanji found his lighter and lit his cigarette.

"It's too late in the night for me to kick your ass right now, dick," Zoro said tightly, folding his arms across his chest, but Sanji had already busied himself with looking around Zoro's room.

That stupid asshole. Zoro walked to one of the two windows in his room and pulled it open with one hand, keeping an eye on Sanji, who was slowly wavering in his seat on Zoro's desk. He had one of Zoro's notebooks, and he'd started sifting through it, reading over poorly-organized notes, his face completely impassive, cigarette resting just past the first two knuckles on his left hand.

"Maybe you're more of a visual learner," Sanji said, his words threading together, glancing at each page for only a few seconds, not really reading anything.

"What." Zoro didn't know what that stupid prick was talking about. The cold almost-winter wind blowing in from Zoro's window was making the hair on his arms stand up.

"I mean…" Sanji trailed off, taking a long drag on his cigarette, puffing at it a few times to pull more smoke through the filter and into his lungs, like he couldn't quite get enough with a single inhale. He took a deep breath, still half-reading, and he slowly exhaled a long, fat plume that didn't really dissipate all the way and hung in a thin layer over most of Zoro's room. That asshole was totally unconcerned with how much he was stinking up the place. He exhaled two more times, even more smoke slipping past his lips.

Zoro didn't know how Sanji managed to ever breathe.

"I mean, this… economics and business shit is—it's a lot of concepts that, you know, don't have these nice mental pictures to go with them, so just, uh, listening to someone talk about it can be confusing. Pain in the ass. You know? Hard to grasp. For me, anyway. I mean, listen, I'm obviously much better at this than you, but maybe you could try some—" Sanji cleared his throat, "—other ways of learning this shit."

"What the fuck are you trying to say?" Zoro asked.

"Maybe I'll help you study," Sanji said, still looking at the notebook that curled inwards from Zoro rolling it up into a tight frustrated cylinder so many times.

Zoro bit the inside of his cheek, staring at Sanji from where he'd remained next to the window. He shivered a little from the bite of the wind. "I don't want your help."

"Yeah, well, you need it," Sanji said, tossing the notebook aside, still not fucking looking at him, and he ashed his cigarette into the little trashcan next to Zoro's desk. He reached for the warm beer he'd opened and brought it to his lips, sipping it with unfocused eyes.

Zoro leaned back against his wall, watching Sanji. He didn't know what that stupid prick was doing in his room, drinking his beer, telling him that he'd help him fucking study—what the hell was wrong with him? Zoro narrowed his eyes, "There isn't anything I'd ever need from someone like you."

Sanji rolled his droopy, half-lidded eyes and turned his head to give Zoro the most painfully exasperated expression that he could manage, looking the way he did. The later in the night it got, and the more Sanji drank, the more he ended up looking like he got hit by a bus. This was one of those nights.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Zoro said, affronted by the look on Sanji's face.

"It means you're an asshole, and I'm too drunk to play the game right now."

Zoro's eyebrows kneaded together. "What game? What the hell are you talking about?" Why the fuck couldn't he just say anything like a normal person? Just goddamn spit it out?

"The game you and I play," Sanji said, his voice a little lower, and he was looking right at Zoro, and it was a little unnerving.

No, it wasn't unnerving. It was annoying. As hell.

"I still don't know what you're trying to say. I hate you, and you hate me, and that's the end of it," Zoro said, his voice dry.

"I don't hate you. Well. I do. Okay, I do, yes, but not really—not actively, constantly, you know?"

Zoro shook his head. "No. I don't know. I definitely hate you."

"Well, fuck it, lighten up, I'm too fucked up for your bullshit tonight." Sanji took another long drag of his cigarette, eyes on the ground again. He swung his dangling legs a little, his posture terrible, totally hunched over, one hand pressed against his thigh. Probably holding himself up, by the look of it.

Zoro walked over to the desk that Sanji was currently occupying and pulled one of the last beers from his twelve-pack and cracked it open. Gaze locked on the far wall, he said, "You really think you can help me with that statistics bullshit class."

It wasn't a question. Maybe an accusation.

Sanji looked up at him—Zoro could see him out of his peripheral, he felt the movement, and he met Sanji's eyes.

"Yes."

Fuck.

"Okay." Zoro took several consecutive gulps from his warm beer, pulling the can from his mouth with a final swallow and a long sigh. "Okay."

---

A/N: thank you so much for reading chapter 4! things have been a little hectic for both of us, but we shall continue to bust ass to bring you this giant beast of a fic, no worries~*~*~ anyway, now seems like a good time to announce that December will be coming to you in three separate parts. so the parts will be shorter, but the wait between release dates will also be shorter so booyah. and then that'll be the end of part one of make no mistake! part two will begin with january, which, will be a hulking chapter so prepare yourselves for that

once again, thank you so friggin much for the reviews and the art and ALL the things. they really really fuel us and you don't know what they mean to us. thank you. as always, you can reach us both at okama-kenpo (liz) and eudaimonarisornae (raquel) on tumblr, and if you post a thing for mnm, please tag it with #mnmfanfic so we can see it!

we hope to see you in chapter 5, part 1: december !