Sanji was slightly stressed, serving food for his nakama always made him so. He found cooking soothing of course, and he found eating pleasant, and he immensely enjoyed seeing others eat and enjoy his food. But the actual serving of it? Stressful. Luffy was always trying to steal things before everything was down and he had to set out the table in such a way that his ladies could reasonably reach everything that they needed to as well as making the visual layout of the food on the table pleasing to the eye. It wasn't like his nakama ever even waited until he'd put everything down before they started grabbing food and shovelling it into their mouths, well, the lovely ladies did of course, but the men didn't.

The sound of people crunching into the crispy crackers that he'd put down with dip made him wince, he turned slightly to see Luffy with his mouth stuffed wide with them, Usopp was tucking in as well and both Chopper and Zoro had the crackers in their hands and were reaching for dip. Sanji turned his back on them and took a deep soothing breath of smoke to calm him.

Don't freak out, don't kick anyone in the head. He chanted mentally as he walked around the other side of the kitchen surface to pick up his other dishes.

Suddenly he heard coughing and spluttering from the table, Sanji looked up through his hair and grinned at Zoro, he'd apparently not realised that there was chilli in that peanut dip.

"What the hell did you put in this shit-cook? Fifty million peppers?" Zoro coughed, his voice rough and his eyes watering. Sanji grinned even wider.

"Why, is it too hot for you to handle Mar-i-mo?" Sanji asked delicately dragging out the syllables of his favourite nickname-come-insult for the swordsman.

Zoro glared up at him. Sanji noticed that the Marimo's eyes were even watering and his face was going red from the coughing. Sanji's grin spread still wider than before, in fact his head was in danger of splitting in two at this rate.

"No!" Zoro said childishly and promptly scooped up a whole load of the dip on another cracker and stuffed it whole into his mouth and swallowed.

Sanji slowly raised an expectant eyebrow at the swordsman who was thoroughly red by now. Zoro's watering eye twitched slightly. His lip quivered. Sanji watched a tense muscle along his jaw dance with tension. The swordsman burst out coughing and spluttering and reached for his drink defeated. Sanji let out a triumphant laugh and sauntered off to see to his lovely flowers further down the table.

"Robin-chan, please try the chicken. It's a little spicy but I'm sure you will love it, not everyone's like the marimo over there." Sanji smiled charmingly. Zoro, in the middle of a coughing fit, flicked the top of a sword out of it's scabbard to make that shink sound; it seemed that he was too busy coughing to tell Sanji to fuck off himself and so the sword was communicating his malice for him.

"Oi, oi, you okay there Zoro?" Franky asked concerned, he clapped Zoro on the back hard enough to make the cutlery on the table jump. If Sanji had liked Zoro, he might have felt a little wince of sympathy for him. Franky had a nasty habit of not realising how strong those giant hands were.

"I'm not-" Zoro drew in a wheezing breath, "choking you idiot."

Sanji froze, his hands halfway through setting a dish down in front of Usopp. His ears strained in Zoro's direction, Zoro coughed some more and drew in another raspy wheezing breath.

Sanji was at Zoro's side in an instant, he grabbed the Marimo's chin and yanked his head towards him. His eyes were red now, his skin was still bright red and hot too. Sanji pressed the tip of his ring finger against the swordsman's throat, he could feel his breathing, it was short and frantic and rattling.

"What *gasp* are you *wheeze* doing?" Zoro demanded and shoved the cook off of him.

"CHOPPER!" Sanji yelled in place of an answer.

The little doctor at the other end of the table perked up at his name being shouted so loudly by Sanji. Out of the corner of his eye the cook could see Zoro clutching at his chest.

"Get over here!" Sanji shouted. The tiny doctor leapt at that and ran over to Sanji at the precise moment that a loud thud alerted Sanji to the fact that Zoro had apparently decided that now was a good time to fall unconscious, and off of his chair too.

XxX

Sanji sat down heavily on the infirmary chair and stared at Zoro. He was slightly less red now, at least on his face. However the redness there seemed to have spread to his whole body in large angry looking blotches. He could hear the slight slow wheeze as Zoro breathed in and out. Nervously he pulled a cigarette from his top jacket pocket and fumbled for his lighter in his trouser pocket, he flicked at the lighter a few times trying to get it to come to life.

"Don't smoke in here," Chopper said sternly from the other side of the room, "he's having a hard enough time breathing as is."

Sanji's hands stilled and he reluctantly shoved the lighter back in his pocket, but kept the cigarette between his lips. He tried not to look at the unconscious swordsman in the medical bed.

"What caused this? I know this has to be an allergic reaction but… what to?" Sanji growled. He knew an allergic reaction when he saw one, he had been a chef in a restaurant after all, he'd been trained to spot them and administer the medicine that a doctor had left with them. But then they were trained to call a doctor and nothing else, he didn't know how it worked beyond that.

"Something in the food I'd guess. Could be the dip." Chopper shrugged as he crunched something up in his mortar and pestle.

"But… it can't be that. He's eaten everything in that dip before, there was nothing new there." Sanji growled, rubbing his forehead. He tried desperately to think of anything that he'd served in the meal that Zoro could have gotten his hands on that was new. But nothing sprang to mind, and this whole thing had only started when Zoro had eaten his chilli peanut dipping sauce. And as far as Sanji knew that was the only thing that Zoro had eaten.

"Sometimes… sometimes it takes a lot of exposure to something for someone to have an allergic reaction. You can eat the same thing for years and then just suddenly react to it." Chopper replied slowly, his concentration more on his work than the conversation.

Sanji bit down hard on his cigarette and stared harder at the swordsman. His skin was swollen slightly all over, you had to look close to see it but it was true, the skin around his nails was higher than before, making his nail look like it'd been depressed into him, like dough. In his other arm Chopper had put an IV line, apparently fluids were important in this kind of dangerous situation. Stupid dip. Stupid Marimo. He crunched down on the tip of his cigarette.

"It's not your fault Sanji, you didn't know. And you're the one who spotted it, if you hadn't then…" Chopper trailed off deciding that perhaps that one direction was not the best place to go.

"You saved him." Chopper added.

"Yeah, but I poisoned him in the first place." Sanji snapped getting out of his chair suddenly and stalking out of the room. Chopper watched as the door banged shut and heard the familiar grating click of Sanji's lighter wheel.

XxX

A few hours later Sanji was stood outside the infirmary door dragging the last few calming breaths out of his smoke, he crunched it underfoot and breathed out slowly. He opened the infirmary door with his foot, since his hands were occupied holding a bowl. Chopper didn't look up from what he was doing, which was either taking Zoro's blood pressure or fitting him with arm bands for swimming. Sanji paused and the device let out a hiss and deflated. Chopper leant back to the book on his desk and wrote something down. Then he looked up at Sanji as he removed the band from Zoro's arm.

"What's wrong Sanji?" Chopper asked, looking up at the cook.

"Nothing. Your dinner's on the table and I brought this for him." Sanji replied gesturing to the bowl in his hands.

"It's just soup. Not got anything in it from lunch. Just potato soup, I triple washed everything before using it to cook so…" Sanji trailed off.

"That should be okay for him to eat. Thank you." Chopper smiled reaching out to take the bowl from Sanji. Sanji raised a curled eyebrow.

"I said yours is on the table, I'll stay here with him while you eat. You probably need a break and if you don't go soon then Luffy will eat yours." Sanji said flatly. Chopper's little eyes widened at this. He looked from the door to his patient and back again.

"He's coming in and out of sleep, but… ah… he reacted strongly to the medicine I gave him." Chopper said with a nervous laugh.

"Don't tell me he's allergic to that too?" The cook growled frustratedly.

"No, no, it's not an uncommon reaction, especially with the high dose I gave him. He's sleepy of course, everyone is on this, but ah… it seems to have had a slight… psychoactive effect on him." Chopper explained. Sanji mulled this over for a few moments.

"He's stoned?" Sanji eventually asked.

"In a manner of speaking… yes. But he's been quite docile really, I'm sure you'll be fine." The little doctor laughed tensely as he edged towards the door, apparently the idea of Luffy eating his dinner was a strong motivating factor to run to the galley.

"Go, I'll call you if I need you." Sanji laughed and the little doctor ran out of the room.

Sanji put the bowl down gently on Chopper's desk and sat down on the comfortable chair near Zoro's bed, he leant forward and poked the Marimo in his arm. The Marimo grunted at the disturbance and opened his eyes slowly. Sanji noted that his eyes were still red and on further inspection his eyelids looked a bit puffy too. But most prominent of all was the fact that Zoro's pupils were huge. Sanji had seen some people really out of it on drugs before but he'd never seen anyone's eyes that big before.

"Good God." Sanji groaned looking at him. Zoro sat up like a puppet whose strings had been yanked, all uneven and in the wrong order. He tilted his head and Sanji's direction and grinned.

"Nope," he said popping the p, "can I takea message?"

Zoro laughed, Sanji didn't. Zoro laughed some more, apparently this was incredibly funny. Sanji didn't agree, this was a little more than an averse reaction, this was more than a little stoned. If stoned was what people usually got then Zoro was much, much more than that. Zoro was… was… bouldered, if that was even a term.

"You look funny," Zoro grinned lopsidedly at Sanji, "swirly." He elaborated. Despite the levity in Zoro's voice, his voice itself sounded rough. Sanji would bet that Zoro's throat hurt like hell, provided he wasn't too stoned to tell.

"Do I now?" Sanji grumbled unhappily. Zoro laughed slowly at something that only his drugged up brain knew was funny.

"Izzat for me?" Zoro slurred pointing. Sanji followed the line of his finger, Zoro was pointing at a clock on the wall. Sanji's eyes tracked down and right, the soup was on the desk.

"The soup's for you." He answered to be on the safe side.

"'m hungry." The stoned swordsman informed Sanji.

"I expect you are, you didn't exactly get a chance to eat much at lunch." Sanji agreed and felt a little pang of guilt flash through him. His cooking had never hurt anyone before, but here Zoro was, sick because of him. He picked up the soup from the desk and sat back down in front of Zoro. He stirred the soup carefully, he felt bad about what had happened, although he could at least give Zoro an agreeable dinner. It had still stayed nice and hot too, so the Marimo would have to- Zoro had lurched forward and wrapped his mouth around the spoon in Sanji's hand. –blow on it…

The swordsman leant back unevenly onto the bed and licked his lips.

"Tastes like pain." He volunteered, "and… potatoes."

"It was still hot you moron, you were supposed to blow on it, not launch yourself at it." Sanji snapped, putting the soup back down on the desk and feeling slightly impressed that he'd managed not to spill any on himself. Zoro whined at reached for the soup, when it was clear that Sanji wasn't going to give him the soup back the Marimo leant out of bed and rested a hand on the Cook's hip to stabilise himself and reached over Sanji's shoulder for the soup behind him.

"Ah!" Sanji snapped in a warning tone and pushed the Marimo back into bed with his other foot. The pressure eased on his hip as the swordsman flopped back against the wall by the bed.

"But, soup." Zoro protested with a whine in his voice.

"No." Sanji said firmly, Zoro was acting like a dumb kid… or Luffy. His behaviour was still so weird and un-Zoro like that Sanji couldn't bring himself to find it funny.

"Chopper said to wait, to make sure you're not allergic to this too. Then you can have the rest." Sanji explained carefully. Zoro's huge eyes regarded Sanji sulkily and the swordsman sighed and leaned back lower on the wall. He absently scratched his arm where the IV had been earlier, or was he scratching at his irritated skin from the reaction? Either way…

"Don't scratch." Sanji ordered, kicking the Marimo's hand away with his foot.

"Yer mean." Zoro pouted grabbing Sanji's foot. He stared down at the shiny black shoe in his hand and ran a finger along it's squeaky-clean shiny surface. It squeaked.

"I can see my face in your shoes." Zoro informed Sanji and stared at Sanji's captive foot. Sanji squirmed and tried to pull his leg back but it seemed that stoned Zoro still was just as strong as regular Zoro and Sanji didn't want to hurt the already injured Marimo further. He sighed frustratedly and let the damn stupid drugged up swordsman stare at his own reflection in his black shoes.

"Why can I see my face in your shoes and not in mine?" Zoro asked looking down.

"Because I'm not a slob and I clean my shoes." Sanji answered primly before looking down at the Marimo's feet. Red toes wiggled on the floor, Zoro was staring down at them expectantly.

"Also," Sanji continued, "because you're not wearing shoes."

"Oh." Zoro commented.

Sanji squeezed his eyes closed and wondered what horrible thing he'd done in a past life to deserve this, because he sure as hell hadn't done anything to warrant this in this lifetime. Perhaps he'd been a mass murderer in a past life, or perhaps he'd hit a lady. Sanji shuddered, best not to contemplate that. And so it was with a creeping horror that Sanji realised that Zoro's fingers were inching their way up Sanji's calf, inside his black suit trousers.

"What're you doing?" Sanji yelped flailing his leg.

"You've got curly leg hair." Zoro answered sounding fascinated as Sanji snatched his leg back.

"Screw you!" Sanji shouted clutching his shins protectively. Zoro raised an eyebrow and looked at him in puzzlement, his large dark eyes staring hard at Sanji.

"You want to screw me?" Zoro asked sounding confused.

"WHAT? NO!" Sanji yelped, feeling incredibly aware of how high pitched his voice was getting. His brain fumbled around for a distraction.

"You want that soup now?" He asked rather louder than he'd meant to, he grabbed it off the side and thrust it in Zoro's direction. For a moment Zoro just stared at him before taking the soup and eating it. Sanji relaxed slightly, Zoro was eating and all previous weirdness was forgotten.

He just needed to breathe.

Zoro took another mouthful of soup and hummed in pleasure, Sanji jumped in his seat. He really didn't need to hear that after what Zoro had just said.

"'s good." Zoro groaned, his eyes shut. Sanji squeaked and ran out of the door, running into Chopper on the way out.

"He's all yours!" Sanji yelped as he ran by the small puzzled looking doctor.