AN: I hope everyone is doing well. Welcome to Summer (or Winter for those in the Southern hemisphere) we've been going at this story for 6 months!

I didn't realize until I went into the draft for this for final edits and brush-ups but it has a really different voice than some of the other chapters lol. Hope you all like it. This is another one of those early concept chapters that built the basis of this story

Sleep Eating

Sanji has never been a particularly light sleeper, but he doesn't fall into the deepest of sleeps either. It's kind of like selective hearing, some things wake him up, and some things don't. A woman's tears wake up Sanji, Zoro wakes up Sanji (even his voice is infuriating), but things like Chopper asking after injuries or heavy storms shaking the ship don't disturb his rest in the slightest.

Eating is one of those things that wake him up.

Most of them haven't slept much since Enies Lobby, but that isn't from lack of trying. The problem was they didn't have anywhere to go. At first they were stranded on the Galley-la ship, being dropped off in a port where they had nothing to their names. Even after they'd been offered the shelter of a break house at one of Galley-La's docks they'd had to deal with the question of medical supplies for Chopper, food, and clothes among other essentials. Treating all of their injuries had taken the reindeer (and the doctor Iceberg had hired to help) several hours… Luffy slept through it all but most of them weren't that lucky.

Now, in the dead of night, it seems that Luffy isn't willing to stay asleep for very much longer.

Sanji pushes himself out of bed and looks around. There's an irregular sort of gnawing sound, like a dog with a bone, and that synonym is enough to tell him where to look first. He pads down the row of beds set up in one of Galley-La's offices, at the very end, closest to the door, Luffy has fallen half out of bed so his legs are up on the mattress and his head is down by the floor. He is restlessly chewing on the nearest leg of the bed.

Sanji sighs and heaves Luffy back into bed by his shirt collar. The man is covered in bandages but is resilient as ever, simply muttering gibberish as Sanji tucks him back in and plods back toward his own cot. His heart aches a little, knowing that his Captain is hungry and he can't do a thing about it.

A heavy thump sounds behind him and Sanji turns to find that Luffy has rolled himself up in his blankets and is now all the way on the floor. A moment later and the lazy scrapes of teeth on wood start up again. Sanji sighs and turns around again, moving to return Luffy to the bed- but something stops him. He watches his captain chew the wood into splinters for a moment before the idea hits him and he stoops to heave Luffy back onto the mattress, mind racing.

The thought is insane but then again, aren't they all? So Sanji takes a second to make sure his Captain is going to stay this time and then turns to the kitchenette.

Chopper is the first one up that morning, roused by the scent of the spices Sanji is using liberally in his cooking of breakfast. The doctor plods down the row of beds tiredly, absently moves Luffy back onto the mattress and tucks him in, and then takes a seat at the table they'd been using for meals.

It's not till he's reaching for the first breakfast roll that he realizes the table is set like Luffy's going to be there.

"Sanji, what's all this for?" He squeaks, surprised, and Sanji half turns away from the stove where he's flipping an omelet.

"Oh, good morning Chopper," He smiles tiredly. "I'm just making breakfast, that's all."

"B-But Sanji!" Chopper stands up to look at all the food crowded onto the table and counters. There are plates of bacon, baskets of fruit, this has to be the fourth or fifth omelet getting added to the platter at Sanji's elbow. There is a bowl brimming with creamy crepe filling, dishes crowded with pastries and three pitchers, two with orange juice and one with milk. "We can't eat all of this!"

"But Luffy can, and he's hungry, in case you hadn't noticed." Right on cue there's a loud thud and when Chopper turns to look Luffy is on the floor again, and this time he notices, he's chewing on the leg of the bed, which he now also notices is looking quite beat up. Er, chewed up.

"Don't eat that!" Chopper squeals and hops out of his chair, shifting into heavy point and lifting Luffy away from the ground in a big wrapped-up bundle of blankets. Sanji smirks around the cigarette and flips the omelet onto the plate with an easy flick of the wrist.

"I think I'm ready, wanna get him a seat?"

"What are you doing Sanji?" Chopper asks cautiously as he pulls out a chair and sets Luffy in it. The rubber man slumps over immediately and face plants into the table, snoring into the wood as he shifts a little, squishing his face into an odd angle. Chopper nudges his head to make sure he can breathe and looks up at Sanji as the cook brings over a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs, setting it next to Luffy's head.

They wait.

And wait.

Luffy snores.

"Sanji, what are you expecting to happen?" Chopper asks tentatively and Sanji grinds the cigarette between his teeth.

"What?" He growls, "You'll eat wood but you won't eat my cooking? I know you're hungry so eat already- don't you dare make all this food go to waste!" Sanji picks up a strip of bacon and dangles it close to the boy' face. "You do it all the time, and I never ask you to but this time I am- just eat the bacon!"

"Don't wake him up Sanji," Chopper says calmingly "He needs rest still, you didn't see a lot of his fight with Lucci-"

"No, I didn't, but I saw him afterward." Sanji snaps, "And after any battle he's hungry. Just because I couldn't feed him before he fell asleep this time doesn't mean he doesn't need food! He's chewing on the legs of the bed, he needs to eat!"

"But he needs to sleep more," Chopper argues "You can tell that because he isn't waking up even for-" CHOMP "...Bacon."

Luffy mumbles a little more gibberish in his sleep as he munches happily on the strip of bacon hanging from his lips like Sanji's cigarette. Sanji manages a small smile then nudges the plate a little closer. Luffy's nostrils flare as he smells the simmering eggs and the moment he's done with the first bacon strip he's whuffling closer to the plate and working the edge of the next strip into his mouth.

"There ya go, Captain." Sanji turns away to start moving more dishes onto the table. "Keep eating and I'll keep cooking, deal?"

"How did you know he'd do that?"Nami asks, a little unnerved by the pace at which Luffy has taken in sleepily moving food from one plate or another and into his mouth.

"I didn't really," Sanji manages a tired smile her direction, just a little too short on sleep to go through all the usual motions. "But he was chewing on the leg of the bed so I figured he'd chew on food just as well."

"I'd prefer a chair leg to your food." Zoro grunts as he slides a plate of tater-tots closer to Luffy's wandering fingers. The more food the rubber man consumes the more animated he becomes in eating more. What had begun with Sanji hand feeding him bacon is becoming Luffy feeling out the plates of finger food on his own. He hasn't unlocked the secret to sleep-eating with silverware yet but Sanji figures it isn't very far off.

"Shut up, Marimo." Sanji snaps back but it lacks his usual anger and vigor. He's been cooking all night and now that Luffy is actually taking in food he's working even harder to mass produce the most nutritious and/or filling of breakfast foods. Whatever energy he has left is still being spent on feeding the black hole, and is not to be wasted on something useless like trying to educate the mosshead. "Wood has almost no nutritional value."

While Zoro is returning with some coarse insult of inferior quality, Sanji is distracted by the door opening.

"Hey cook," Paulie pauses in the door with the grocery bag on his arm, looking at Zoro and Nami who hadn't been around when he'd dropped by that morning. "Oh, hi. Uh, I brought that yogurt."

"Thanks, leave it on the counter over here." Paulie crosses the kitchen and starts unpacking the bag, stacking two large tubs of vanilla yogurt beside a few cartons of berries and a bag of apples. Sanji sets down the spoon he was using to stir oatmeal and moves the apples to the cutting board, slicing them and sliding them all onto a plate which he hands to Paulie in about thirty seconds. "Set that by Luffy."

Paulie drops the plate on the table on his way out the door, just as Luffy polishes off the last tater tot. He pauses on his way out to shake his head as the pirate captain detects the fruit with roaming fingers and maneuvers the first slice into his mouth.

"You're all nuts," He laughs and ambles out the door.

Sanji smirks tiredly and plops a dollop of butter on the top of a stack of pancakes.

Robin wakes up later that night, thirsty and tired and aching. She slides out of bed and pads past the others, smiling lightly at the fact that they're all still there, together. The smile slips when she remembers that Usopp is absent, but she doesn't imagine that that will last long.

If they'll go to Enies Lobby to retrieve her then she's quite certain they'll go to the other side of the island to get Usopp.

She slides open the kitchen door as quietly as she can, mostly because she's used to being quiet but a little bit for the well-being of Luffy. They'd moved his cot into the kitchen earlier that day and she didn't want to be the thing that woke him. But when she opens the door she stops abruptly in surprise, finding it was not only Luffy that she needed to be cautious of waking, it was also Sanji.

The cook is sound asleep in his chair at the table, head pillowed in his arms and a spoon in one hand, a bowl of soup before him. Luffy, too, is asleep at the table, though he less peacefully perhaps. Every few seconds his face scrunches up with a frown and he whines.

Robin steps over to the table very carefully, watching the two sleep to be sure that nothing she does disrupts them. The scene's predecessor is all too obvious. Luffy was hungry, so Sanji was feeding him and then Sanji had fallen asleep, exhausted from his own fight at Enies Lobby and his previous night and day spent cooking enough food to provide for four royal banquets.

Her smile returns and she hastens to the fridge, retrieving the water she'd come for and then perching herself on the chair next to Luffy. She leans over the sleeping pair and eases the spoon from Sanji's lax grip, sliding the bowl of soup over to her side of the captain. She fills it with soup, (chicken noodle, she notices with amusement) and nudges it against Luffy's lip. The young captain opens wide and nearly inhales the spoon as well as the soup immediately.

It's hard not to laugh but she manages, focusing on filling a new spoonful and delivering it to her hungry friend.

If this is what she can do to help them, any of them, even a little, to repay for what they'd all lost chasing after her (sleep, Merry, safety, blood), then she'll do it without complaint, just to give a little back.

AN: I'm running out of content, hnnngg. If there's a delay before Thriller Bark I apologize but I've been agonizing over it in my free time for like 6 months.