WINTER HEAT | ZoSan ❄

1

"WE'RE HEEEERE!!! WE'RE HERE! WE'RE HERE!"

"The hell...?"

A Swordsman's eyes fluttered open with annoyance as he heard his Captain shouting all throughout the Sunny.

The first thing that he noticed upon waking up, was a thick layer of glittery white snow covering an entire island.

"Hey, what is this place?"

He asked Luffy, rising up from his crow's nest to stare out at the scenery in front of him.

His voice was dry and groggy from the amount of alcohol he had been drinking since last night.

"Nami said this was Sheldon Island!" The Captain proudly responded to the older man.

"Now even close. It's called Snowbound Island. The Island is about seven hundred thousand kilometers, but in terms of population, it only has five hundred residents,"

She paused for a moment, realizing how seemingly uninhabited the Island appeared from far away.

"Which is understandable, considering how dangerously low the temperature tends to drop here, not to mention the constant blizzards that come and go, on a daily basis. Especially at night."

Nami's words were making Zoro fall asleep again, with Luffy joining him, finding the girl's speech too specific to understand.

Realizing that she was no longer being listened to, the Navigator sighed in defeat, rolling her eyes at the sleeping men.

"Like Captain, like first mate." She chuckled, walking away.

"NAAAAMI-SWAAAN!!!! I MADE YOU A SPECIAL TREAT TO KEEP YOU WARM!"

Before she could announce to everyone else that they had arrived at a new island, a man who's energetic voice was the complete opposite of Zoro's own, called out to her as he spun around, twirling in circles until he made his way towards the girl.

"For you, mademoiselle."

With one hand tucked behind his back and another holding onto a fancy Christmas mug, a tall, blonde man with shimmery eyes, handed Nami over a cup of steamy hot chocolate with marshmallows melting inside of it.

"Just what I needed! Thanks, Sanji-Kun!!"

The girl smiled gently, piercing through Sanji's heart like one of Cupid's arrows.

"YOU'RE WELCOMEEEE! By the way, have you seen Robin-Chan?" The Cook questioned with a sweet smile.

"I saw her walking by Zoro a few seconds a- Oh! She's actually sitting right over there."

Turning his head to where Nami's finger was pointing, Sanji targeted a dark haired woman wearing a dark purple trench coat while reading a book.

The second he noticed her, the Cook prepared himself to walk over towards her, but then his vision drifted off to the ground beside her, where he found a drunken Swordsman snoring beside his Captain who was also asleep.

"He's there... Right in the way."

He felt a sense of remorse culminating in the pit of his stomach, causing him to tense up before he gathered up the strength that he needed in order to ignore the Swordsman, sprinting towards Robin without a care in the world.

"Your hot chocolate, my dear. Sorry about the wait!" He smiled gently.

Though he was standing up straight, Robin noticed how uneasy Sanji appeared to be, as if he were hiding from someone.

Following his eyes with her own, the astute Archeologist was able to capture the insecurity behind the mask Sanji was trying to maintain on his face to conceal his true emotions.

But those eyes of his couldn't lie.

They were glistening like the Northern Lights before he approached Robin, and now they had dimmed down, leaving not a single ray of light behind.

"Oh? You seem troubled by something, are you alright?" The raven haired woman asked, placing her mug down for a moment.

"Nah, it's nothing to important. I just haven't gotten much sleep lately."

The Cook responded, his eyes hardly even paying attention to Robin's face, in spite of her staring directly at him.

"If you feel tired, you should take a nap like Luffy and Zoro."

Robin suggested through a light chuckle, pointing over at the Captain and his first mate.

Holding a silver food tray in his hands, Sanji nodded gently at the woman, then walked away, shortly afterwards, never once looking over at Zoro or Luffy, while they were sleeping.

"Hmnm.... The hell is... Taking my sword..."

On his way back, he couldn't help but to overhear Zoro blurting out nonsense in his sleep.

Sanji's throat ran dry when he realized how difficult it had become for him to swallow properly, the moment he passed by the Swordsman, feeling a strange ache in his chest.

Deciding not to contemplate on what he was experiencing, the Cook walked out onto the deck and hunched over the veranda, pulling out a cigarette from his pocket.

"Zoo wee mama!! YO, It's gettin' suuuuuper cold out now, isn't it?"

Franky asked, standing beside the Cook who was now placing a cigarette in between his lips to light it with his special golden lighter.

"Mmm, sure is."

He responded to the Shipwright using a gentle tone of voice, sounding almost uninterested in keeping the conversation going, even though he was.

"Don't catch a cold out here, buddy. Imma go wake up those two sleeping beauties over there- YOOOO, RUUUUFFY!!! ZOROOOO! WAKE UP!"

Looking over his shoulder, Sanji watched Luffy rise up from Zoro's lap, stretching his arms out, while the Swordsman stayed asleep for a while longer.

"That asshole never gets cold does he? His chest is totally exposed."

The Cook's shoulders tensed up while he reached into his pocket to pull out another cigarette, thinking back to a time in his life when everything actually made sense to him.

Back to when he wasn't constantly distracted or under so much pressure, unlike how he is, nowadays.

"Seasons change, people change. Or so the saying goes..."

The man calmly spoke beneath his breath, watching the puffs of smoke emitting from his mouth as he took the cigarette out for a moment.

"Makes me wish Summer would've never happened so that I wouldn't be suffocating in nicotine right now."

~~~