-x-

it has time to settle
freshly-laid blue

-x-

This busted leg could not have possibly happened at a worse time.

Sanji stands at the kitchen sink, fuming about it, trying to finish up the dishes from lunch. Mentally, he counts heads as he sets each plate or bowl in the drying rack; nine Straw Hats, one allied Warlord of the Sea, two Wano samurai, and that nutjob ""scientist"" chained to the balustrade on the deck. That's a full house and then some, and this goddamn leg…

It's not that it hurts. Pain is something that Sanji is used to, and he's had enough of this particular kind of injury to recognize a minor bone fracture that will heal just fine on its own in a couple of weeks. But Chopper will give him shit about not saying something sooner. And the damn thing burns. He's already pulled his boots off and propped them against the counter back here, out of sight incase anyone comes in, but his pant leg is feeling tight and bending his knee to take some of the pressure off it only makes the fabric pinch.

That's not good….

Chopper chooses that moment to amble through the door, seeking respite from all the excitement going on outside and the stiflingly warm weather. He pauses underneath the air vent in the ceiling with his head tipped back and his eyes closed, relaxing into the cool breeze. Sanji drops the serving platter he's scrubbing back into the soapy water, sends it sloshing up the sides of the sink.

"Shit."

He pulls his apron off, throws it down.

Chopper opens his eyes at the outburst and looks over. Before he can ask if something is wrong, Sanji steps around the counter, his hand braced against it because, goddamnit, he needs the support. The tiny doctor notices his limp immediately, "Sanji! Your leg!"

"Yeah," Sanji says, grimacing.

"Is it broken?! Why didn't you say something!?"

"Didn't think it was that bad."

"It's swollen! Sit down right now!"

Sanji pulls back a chair at the table and sits without argument, sticking his leg out for Chopper to examine. He has to undo his belt, shimmy out of his slacks, and literally peel them off his leg like a goddamn banana or something because they're too tight to just pull up to his knee. His sock leaves a red, harsh-looking indent behind when he peels that off, too, and Chopper is visibly torn between sympathy and irritation. He picks up Sanji's leg carefully, running his hoof along the bone.

His nerve endings are all sensitive, so Sanji sucks in a breath when the small motion burns, jerks his leg on reflex when Chopper presses against the break.

Chopper settles on being irritated.

"You're staying off it the rest of the day!" Sanji gestures helplessly toward the sink because he has clean-up to do, and Chopper shakes his head like he can read the cook's mind. "No way you're doing dishes! You have to put your leg up!"

Sanji drops his hand into his lap, grinning sheepishly, "Worth a shot."

Chopper grabs a pillow from the sofa, pushes up another chair, and only scampers off to his office to collect some things after Sanji lifts his fractured leg in both hands and obediently rests it on the pillow, and promises not to get up. He's gone for a couple of minutes, leaving the cook sitting in the galley, lower half stripped down to his shorts. Sanji works the knot out of his tie, pulls it off. He stares at his leg, puffy and red from knee to toe, bruise blooming in the middle; glances toward the sink where the dish water is getting cold and the counters need to be wiped down; and thinks, Shit….

This is going to kill him.

He glances at Chopper's office door. It's open, and he can hear Chopper digging through drawers and moving things around. Sanji hopes he's not getting the plaster for a cast.

Outside, the whooping and hollering from the others picks up suddenly. Before Sanji can wonder what all the excitement is about (he can tell by the pitch of Usopp's voice and Luffy's laughter that it's nothing dangerous), Chopper comes back into the galley with his stethoscope around his neck and a little bag in his hooves, and his heart sinks.

Chopper's ears flick toward the door, curious, but he's set on his task. He drops his bag beside Sanji on the table and goes around the pull a cooling pack out of the freezer.

"We'll have to wait for the swelling to come down before I set it," the little doctor says.

He places the large pack across the middle of Sanji's femur, where the swelling is the worst. It's an instant relief. Sanji adjusts it with one hand, patting the cool gel inside so it spreads out over more of the area, reaches down and picks his slacks up from the floor with his other hand to fish out his cigarettes and lighter. Chopper carries a chair around the counter and washes the rest of the dishes himself while they're waiting. Sanji smokes and rubs his thumb over the pattern of his lighter.

A couple of ominous thuds make the Sunny sway. Something that sounds suspiciously like cannon fire makes them both a little worried, and then Nami screams. But it's just their idiot captain's name in anger, followed by laughter, shouts, and cheers. Chopper shoots Sanji a Look. The chef grins and raises his hands placatingly, sinking down into a slouch to prove he has no intention of sprinting out the door to see what's distressing their lovely navigator.

He's not a shithead like the swordsman. He knows to follow the doctor's orders. (Sanji might cause a fuss when he's cracked a rib or two and he's not allowed to smoke, yeah, but his leg's not attached to his lungs so he's got nothing to complain about.)

Besides, the crew is just causing a ruckus, same as always.

It's nothing to worry about.

Chopper is tentatively feeling out the extent of the break, several minutes later, when something fissures through the galley. A ripple of air, or light, something filmy and almost tangible, slides across the floor. It passes over Sanji and Chopper both, the surrounding surfaces. It makes them look around in alarm, because it is eerily similar to the feeling they had right before they all got scrambled around on Punk Hazard.

A chair on the other side of the table vanishes, and before either of them can flinch, Luffy appears in its place about a foot in the air. Whatever momentum he had built up before the switch is still in effect - he slams his whole body face-first into the floor, a huge puff of snow going up around him like a cloud. It has time to settle, dusting the floor and the tabletop, before Luffy groans at having all the breath knocked out of him. He recovers quickly enough and climbs to his feet, laughter sticking a little in his chest as he bounds toward the door, yelling, "Traffy, do it again!"

Sanji breathes out a line of smoke, "Idiot." He would try to jump on the least friendly guy on the ship and then think it's fun when he gets brutally rebuffed.

Chopper turns around, Sanji's leg still braced between his hooves, "Luffy! Is that snow?!"

That good old Grand Line weather must be at work.

Luffy's dumb giggle follows him across the galley, "Yeah, there's piles of it now!" He yanks the door open, trips to a stop. Beyond him, where before the air had been almost rippling with heat, there are heavy drifts of white snow falling on the deck. Luffy is staring at Sanji, though, and his mouth pulls into a frown, brow knotting. "Hey, whatsa matter?"

"It's fine," Sanji says.

"He needs a cast," Chopper amends, and Sanji pulls in a deep drag off his cigarette, rolling his eyes, "But it's not that bad. As long as he stays off it for a while, he should be fine."

Luffy hesitates in the door, letting waves of cold air waft inside, as if it wasn't already chilly enough. He closes it a little, his hand on the latch.

"You can't come outside?" he asks, trying to process.

"Not until the swelling comes down," Chopper says, "He has to stay off his leg as much as possible - "

"It won't stop me from cooking." Sanji says this stubbornly to Chopper more than he says it to reassure Luffy. The dishes are one thing, meals are another. He's got one job on this ship and unless he's bleeding out on the deck, completely immobilized, or dead, he's going to cook. He lifts a grin at his captain when Chopper huffs, but doesn't protest. "Don't worry about it."

Luffy laughs, pulls open the door again, "Okay," and bounds outside.

Belatedly the heat kicks on, adjusting to the temperature outside.

Sanji is halfway through his third cigarette, waiting for the damn plaster of his freshly-laid blue cast to dry, when they hear more thumping right outside the galley door. Luffy kicks it open without warning. Him and Zoro squeeze through the door together, grinning like devils. That's never a good sign. They're pulling what looks like a bulky bedsheet behind them, trying to force it in through the door.

Chopper realizes what they're doing before Sanji does. The reindeer yells and shifts into heavy point, lifting his large hands to protect the cast. Sanji just stares stupidly while the two idiots struggle. And then he barely has time to bark, "You assholes better not!" before Zoro and Luffy give the sheet one final heave and launch about five tons of snow into the galley, burying him and Chopper both.

Chopper resurfaces first, giddy and angry rolled into one emotion; he loves snow, maybe more than Luffy does, but he has sense and priorities.

"You guys! The cast isn't finished setting yet!"

Luffy is giggling so hard he can't get his breath, his bare hands raw and red when he digs Sanji's stubborn, disgruntled, freezing ass out of the snow with Chopper's help. (Zoro's laughter is loud and short as he goes to get himself a beer out of the fridge, and Sanji gives him the finger because he can't give him a kick to the goddamn face.)

"You couldn't come and play in the snow," Luffy tells Sanji gleefully, "So I thought we'd bring it in to you."

"When did I say I wanted to play in the snow with your dumb ass?" Sanji grouses, annoyed that his cigarette was snuffed out and that he's going to have to sit through getting another cast put on if this one is ruined.

Because the day just Won't End, Usopp charges into through the open door with a defiant-looking Momonosuke trailing him, wielding a huge hose.

"DID SOMEONE SAY SNOW?"

"NO!"

Somewhere outside, Franky turns the hose on and blasts snow into the galley anyway.

-x-

(A/n) I wanted to do a 12 Days of Christmas thing, so I grabbed onto a prompt list with both my damn hands and i'm going to do my best to crunch one out for every day until Christmas Eve! These are probably going to just be loosely connected drabbles, I'm trying to be fun and self-indulgent so I'm sort of throwing my inhibitions into the ether at this point. Expect edits and pls point out any type-os - i'm writing on my phone 90% of the time now and it likes to auto-correct!

Here we go! Happy Holidays, kids!

-bobTAC