No, Tony, you can't eat any more chocolates from your advent calendar." Zoro said firmly to his little son who pouted.
"Why not?"
"Because you're only supposed to have one every day to count down to Christmas."
Tony slid off his chair at the kitchen table and skulked into the living room, a few seconds later a theme tune to some children's show began to play. Zoro sighed, Tony always struggled around Christmas and it didn't help that the boy's birthday was on Christmas Eve either. Tony became unpredictable in his mix of excitement and sadness and would have days of either one. Since the divorce, Tony had had to bear a lot of unfulfilled promises from his mother that she would come visit, but there was always a last minute cancellation. There hadn't been a phone call nor a message of any kind that even suggested she was coming this year so this Christmas was probably going to be considerably harder for him.
Zoro wanted to be outright angry at his ex-wife but he couldn't find the time to be, so preoccupied was he with trying to keep Tony cheerful through the weeks before and after that he had only time to be annoyed in small outbursts in private. He moved across the room and hall and into the living room to see Tony huddled up on the sofa, hugging a pillow close to him with the throw covering him like a blanket. Zoro leant on the back of the piece of furniture and rubbed where Tony's arm was reassuringly. In the corner stood the tree, a live one this year on Tony's insistence, completely undecorated until Zoro had time on Friday to do it with his son. But he saw Tony's eyes flickering to it with a longing kind of look and frowned, "Do you want to decorate it now?" Zoro asked.
Tony, however, shook his head, "No."
"How come?"
"Don't feel like it." The little boy murmured.
Zoro's heart ached, he loved Tony to pieces and it hurt to see him so upset. Looking at the sadness in his son's eyes, he wanted to get angry at his ex-wife there and then but he knew it would do no more than make the situation worse. He tried to distract the little boy, "How was school?"
"Okay." Came the dull reply.
"Did you have fun?"
Tony didn't even indulge in an answer then, merely shrugging his shoulders. Zoro pushed himself upright and walked around to sit next to the child, beckoning with his hand, "Come here, Tony."
Reluctantly, the boy sat upright and shuffled closer until Zoro grabbed him and bundled him into a hug, "It's okay."
Tony burrowed his face into his father's shirt and his little hands clenched into the material of it. When he spoke it was muffled and Zoro felt hot little wet patches begin to form on the material, "I love you, dad."
"I love you too, Tony." Zoro said firmly and held the boy a little tighter to him, "I always will."
He sat there quietly with his sobbing son until he'd calmed enough for Zoro to begin shushing him softly.
"Why won't mom come?" Tony whispered, voice hoarse from his crying, and the sight and sound of him was breaking Zoro's heart to witness.
"She's busy, she can't help it," Zoro lied; he'd no clue why she never came to Christmas. "It's alright, Tony. Come on, you've got me."
Tony sniffled and only said one word, "Dad…"
"Tell you what, you can have my chocolate out of my advent calendar, yeah?" Zoro said, stroking his son's head softly, "Will that cheer you up?"
Tony sniffed his now runny nose from crying and managed a very small giggle, "Chocolate…"
Zoro smiled warmly, "I knew that would make you happy," he said, looking at his son's watery smile, "Go on, you go fetch the calendar and then you can have the chocolate."
As soon as Tony had left the room, Zoro seethed with anger at his ex-wife. How the hell could she keep doing this to Tony? The poor child was going to grow up thinking she stopped loving him. He wanted to hit something but he couldn't scare his son like that and make him cry even more so Zoro took a moment to think of the next best thing and his heart clenched for an entirely different reason and the skin next to the corner of his mouth tingled anew with the ghost of a kiss.
He fished his phone out of his pocket and pulled up a blank text template and hastily typed in before forwarding to Sanji, 'Let me take you up on that 'telling you something new'. When are you free?'
He needed someone to vent to.