"Hey-hey, it's me!"

Robin glanced at the clock. Five minutes on the dot. "It's open!"

As the door opened, Robin's gaze fell upon the table for a split second, and, to her horror, only just then noticed Nami's drink. If Nami laid eyes on that drink, that was it, game over; she'd piece together everything before Robin could get a single syllable out. In a blind panic, she grabbed the glass and shoved it under the bed. Not the best hiding place, and in a calmer state of mind she certainly would have thought of something better, but 'calm' was a luxury she didn't exactly have, at least not at the moment.

"Sanji's finally turned up, I didn't get a chance to as–" Nami paused as she noticed Robin on the floor. "Oh, did you lose something?"

"Yes!" Robin probably sounded a bit too obviously-relieved to have been gifted that excuse, and realized it as soon as the word left her mouth. "I…" she cleared her throat to try and reset her composure. "Just… an earring. Found it, though."

Robin didn't wear earrings.

Change the subject, change the subject… "Where did you end up sleeping?" she asked, quickly getting up from the floor.

Luckily, this question was just barely enough to distract Nami from pondering the excuse she'd just been given. "Just the infirmary."

"Oh, no, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be! It's actually–" Nami paused, for a half second wondering if she should be selfish and keep the infirmary all to herself. She then locked arms with Robin and sat with her on the bed, leaning in close. "I'm gonna let you in on a liiiittle secret, but you have to promise not to tell another soul…"

.


.

Robin honestly could not believe how quickly Sanji had whipped up breakfast. They'd known each other so long and yet, he still found new ways to impress her with his cooking prowess.

"Morning, ladies~!" Sanji brightly exclaimed as Franky arrived with Robin and Nami in tow.

"FINALLY. Took ya' long enough!" Luffy wasn't allowed to eat until everyone was accounted for, so he'd been an absolute mess waiting (all of ten minutes…) for Robin and Nami, whining and complaining and temper tantrum-ing.

As usual, Sanji made sure everyone else was served first, even that shitty swordsman (technically, he got served second to last, before Sanji, but it still counted).

"How come I don't get to pour my own syrup?!" Luffy wailed as Sanji served him.

"Because every time I let you have the bottle, you drink the whole goddamn thing, baka."

"That only happened, like… three times…" Luffy grumbled out of the side of his mouth.

Sanji rolled his eyes, and his gaze landed on Robin. She and Nami were listening to Usopp give a presentation on his new Iron Usopp Suit proposal (he still hadn't let that one go), smiling, laughing, asking questions. By chance, Robin's eyes met his and she smiled warmly at him, tucking some of her hair behind her ear before turning her attention back to Usopp. Sanji reciprocated with a wistful, lazy grin that lingered even after she turned away.

The moment he'd first laid eyes on her, years ago in Alabasta, he knew she was trouble. The good kind of trouble, through. The kind of trouble he liked to get into. As was customary for him when it came to beautiful women, he was immediately entranced, and it never waned. The longer he'd known her, the deeper and more complex his feelings became: from uneasy allies, to polite acquaintances, to nakama, to… nakama and… and something else, now. Something more. He was now absolutely, unequivocally enthralled by her, to a degree that he'd never experienced before. Not just with Robin, but with anyone. Ever.

Every little thing she did completely enraptured him: her laugh, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear, the arch in her back when she stretched in the morning, the sound of her breathing when she was asleep, the way she held her goddamn coffee mug.

All of it.

"Ah… Sumimasen… Sanji-san?"

"Shut up, Brook, don't ruin this for me!" Luffy hissed through clenched teeth.

Sanji snapped back to reality and looked down to realize he'd emptied the entire bottle of maple syrup onto Luffy's plate. "…Shit."

"TooLateAlreadyEatingIt:NoTake-BacksByeeee~" Luffy hurriedly spat out before absconding with (and devouring) his maple syrup with a side of pancakes.

"You let Luffy eat all the syrup again, Ero-Cook?"

Before Sanji could tell the swordsman off, Chopper chimed in. "Whaaa? No syrup? But… what about my pancakes…?" His eyes were glistening and roughly the size of dinner plates.

"S'cuse me, girls, I think there's an emergency afoot," said Usopp, still knee-deep in his presentation. "Did someone say there's no syrup…?!" he yelled out as he marched toward the source of this "emergency."

Another day on the Sunny, another breakfast that would never finish in peace.

.


.

Nami, Robin and Sanji were the last Mugiwaras left in the kitchen that morning. Sanji hadn't missed a beat and had been doting on Nami as dutifully as he ever had before: complimenting her, attending to her, the works. Robin didn't give any outward indication of this, but it made her… curious… about something.

"Okay, you two, I'm gonna see if I can get some work done charting our next course. Catch you guys later~!"

And with that, it was just the two of them.

"Need a hand?" Robin asked as Sanji worked on collecting empty plates.

"You know I can't let you lift a finger in here, Robin-chan, but you're more than welcome to keep me company," he smiled as he effortlessly carried two gargantuan stacks of dishes in each hand, as if they were featherweight.

She knew he'd say that, of course. But, like Sanji, she had a hard time taking 'no' for an answer, sometimes. "You wash, I'll dry," she smiled.

He laughed. They really were so much more alike than he ever imagined they would be. "That supposed to be a compromise?"

"Mmhm."

"Something tells me I don't have a choice, here."

Robin only kept that smile on and got to work drying, wordlessly confirming his suspicion.

After a few minutes of comfortable silence, running water, softly clanging plates, and crackling, foamy soap, Robin's curiosity got the better of her.

"Sanji-san, I–" she paused. She wasn't entirely sure how she was going to get this out. "This morning, with Nami nearly… well, it just made me think… if she ever found out–"

Sanji knocked on the wooden cabinet above him. "Heh. Sorry. Continue."

She laughed as she lightly nudged his shoulder with hers. "Well, I was thinking, just so I can be… sufficiently prepared, if that were to happen, I…" she swallowed. Suddenly, this seemed like a terrible justification for the invasive question she was about to ask, and she desperately wanted to go back and undo it all. But it was too late. All she could do was add more and more preamble, rubbing each plate harder and harder the longer this took.

"W-well… you absolutely don't have to answer this, as it's not really any of my business, outside of the very… specific circumstance I've just described. I mean, we're all adults here, and it's not as though you and I are… in any kind of… exclusive–"

"You wanna know if there's anything between me and Nami," he said, very matter-of-fact as he tilted his head to softly smile at her as he shut off the tap.

She felt her face getting hot as she silently nodded, completely unable to look at him. Why was this making her so goddamned nervous? She felt like an absolute fool. Like a child. A foolish child. This was ridiculous and honestly shouldn't even matter. It's just as she said; they were all adults, she had no claim to him or his fidelity… this should have been such a mundane, nothing issue.

… And yet, she felt like she wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and pretend this conversation never happened.

Sanji noticed that Robin had been frantically drying the same dish for quite some time, now. So, still smiling, he gently took it from her hands and put it away. "Nope."

This genuinely shocked Robin. "Really." It came out like more of a statement than a clarification question.

"Really, really," he replied casually. Robin was too surprised to say much, it seemed. She just stood there, making various pensive faces. "I mean, don't get me wrong; I've tried." Lord, had he tried.

At this, Robin shot him a very suspicious glance.

"…What? Oh, don't you give me that, Robin-chan," he teased.

"I didn't say a thing."

"You didn't have to," he chuckled, playfully poking her nose. "I mean, we both know she's beautiful, yeah?"

"True, yes."

"So… can't blame a guy for trying, Robin-chan~"

Well… he's not wrong. "So… it… never really panned out, then?" She was desperately trying to mask the fact that she very much cared about the answer to this question, not entirely sure it was working…

"Nah~" he was smiling, casually putting away the remainder of the dishes that Robin seemed a bit too… distracted to get to.

"Huh…" she paused. "I suppose I just… I always assumed… the way you are with her, I…" another thing she immediately regretted saying. She didn't want him to think she was in any way concerned with the way he interacted with Nami. Because she wasn't. Surely. She…wasn't. Not at all. It was none of her… business… surely

It was Sanji's turn to make a few pensive faces, as he pondered the actual nature of his and Nami's relationship. "She likes my attention," he began, "my cooking…" His servitude, really. He just… wasn't too keen on using that particular word, for obvious reasons. "And we're nakama, of course. That's about where it ends." She was young, and (like most young women, in his experience) she appreciated a bit of flattery and obsequiousness, which he was more than happy to provide. It was a duty and compulsion, of sorts.

He shrugged, nonchalant. He'd made his peace with this next bit quite some time ago: "Fine by me, I'm not everyone's cuppa' tea," despite how many cocktail waitresses might've disagreed… "The heart wants what it wants, and vice versa, y'know?"

There was a pause as Robin took all of that in, standing at the counter, eyes practically boring a hole into it, but she didn't say anything. She was just so… struck by how mature and measured he was. For years, it seemed, she'd really misjudged him; she was honestly starting to feel terrible about it. This Sanji must have been there, all along, and she was just… too blind to see him.

Sanji slowly slinked up behind her, smirking. "Y'know… if I didn't know any better… I might think…" long arms snaked around her waist, "…that maybe… you might be…" a smattering of light kisses over her neck and shoulder, "…a little bit… jealou–"

Robin immediately whipped around, glaring daggers at him. She did not care for this accusation and she certainly did not care to entertain it, even as a joke. "Don't."

Luckily for Sanji, she was still very close to him upon turning around. So he was still smiling, despite her obvious displeasure. "Robin-chan, I'm only–" he leaned in to kiss her, and she almost instantly turned away, sliding right out from under him and making her way to the kitchen table, sitting on top of it as she tightly crossed her arms and legs in defiance.

Even though she was obviously very annoyed with him, he couldn't help letting out a wistful sigh as he casually wandered over to her. She made eye contact with him for a split second before turning her head away, again.

Luckily again for Sanji, this left a lot of her bare skin exposed.

He put a hand on either side of her thighs on the table, then leaned in, lightly dragging his nose across her cheek until his lips reached her ear. "Was just… having a little fun… y'know…?" His voice was low and soft.

Robin could feel her heart starting to race, and she wanted nothing more than to silence it, somehow. She wasn't exactly sure what it was about what he'd said that bothered her so much… she wasn't… actually jealous of Nami…

Right?

No, of course not. Impossible. Absurd. Asinine for him to even… joke about it. Offensive, even.

Her anger was completely justified, she thought.

"Robin-chan…" he began with an exaggerated sigh. "Silent treatment's kinda harsh, don't you think~?" The first kiss he left, below her ear, was chaste. The further downward his mouth traveled, the less chaste they became. All the while, one of his hands moved over to her thighs, gently coaxing them apart.

He'd get her talking.