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Idiots

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"Get away from there," Sanji growls, without even turning to look as he whisks the thick, yellow contents of his largest mixing bowl. His parent-voice is top notch this morning, because Luffy withdraws his hand and sinks down beside the table. Satisfied that the command has been followed, Sanji twists around to glare at him, brandishing the splattered whisk. "Try it again and I'll cut your hands off! That's for Nami!"

Luffy bites the edge of the table in frustration and groans loudly, his teeth digging into the wood, "Bud it wooks show good!"

"Thank you. It's still for Nami."

"I'm starwing!"

Sanji unsympathetically returns to his whisking.

"You're fine, you just had breakfast."

"I knee shecon-breakfash!"

"You'll have lunch in an hour if you'll just be patient. Don't eat that table and the next time you reach for this cake will be the last time you have hands!"

Collapsing against the bench, Luffy moans, as if he's in terrible pain, and rolls off into the floor, holding his stomach. He lays under the table and persists in his agony for several minutes without any sign of letting up; he sounds like he's dying. Sanji raises his eyes to the ceiling, sighing a line of smoke from between his teeth, and prays for patience.

He turns again, whisk and bowl in hand, and Luffy's feet are, surprisingly, all he can see of the rubber idiot. Neither of his hands are stretching around the edges of the table, fingers groping blindly for the prize. The small, delicate cake that he crafted so affectionately for Nami is fine - sitting exactly where he left it, on the exact same plate, the icing still perfectly smooth, and every puffy swirl of whip cream, and every tiny, diamond-shaped tangerine slice accounted for. Sanji is relieved and suspicious, all rolled into one.

"Don't you have anything better to do?" he asks, reluctantly turning back to the counter and tapping the whisk against the edge of the mixing bowl.

The thin metal pings lightly when it clashes together.

"No," Luffy moans, his voice faint and muffled by something between his teeth, "Hungry..."

He must be chewing on his arm.

"I'll make you some sandwiches in just a second." Sanji holds the whisk under the faucet, running water through the tines, and drops it into the sink. He retrieves his two largest baking pans from the bottom cabinets and sets them out on the counter, by the mixing bowl. "What do you want on them?"

"Meat...!"

Sanji pours the batter he's mixed, dividing it evenly between the deep pans, and scrapes the bowl out with three deft turns of a spatula.

"Anything else?" he asks, smacking the excess batter off.

He drops the spatula in the mixing bowl, sets them both in the sink, then pulls open the oven door. Warm air gusts across his face as he slides the heavy pans in side-by-side, across the middle rack. They barely fit in the oven - perfect, considering who they're going to feed in one sitting - and Sanji doesn't bother setting a timer. By the time he makes the sandwiches (all three dozen of them) and cleans his kitchen again, the cakes will be finished, each a luscious golden brown, thick and fluffy, and they will have plenty of time to cool while he prepares for lunch.

"Meeaaaat," Luffy moans.

"Meat sandwiches it is, then, Captain. Go see what the others want."

Luffy mumbles wordlessly, sprawled out under the table, and doesn't move. Sanji turns and looks down at the sandaled feet, wiping his hands on his apron. He waits for a second to see if Luffy plans on doing as he asks, and when it becomes clear that he's just too damn hungry to crawl out on his own, Sanji reaches under the table after him. He hooks his foot behind Luffy's knee and slides him out with one swift tug, scowling down at him as Luffy blinks in surprise, holding his hat onto his head.

Sanji drops his leg, his hands on his hips.

"Go get them," he says, "Or no sandwiches."

Luffy hops to his feet at once, complacent and grinning, "Okay, okay."

He heads for the door and Sanji notices - belatedly, with a jolt of alarm - that his arm is outstretched.

Nami's cake! he thinks, furious with himself as he looks at it, but the delicate, flawless cake is still there, still perfect. The cake is fine... Luffy's arm is stretched around Sanji, past the cake - PAST THE CAKE? - grubbing around in the sink. Metal clinks and clangs noisily against metal for a second, and then the mixing bowl comes winding past him, slinging drops of water from the bottom and remnants of batter from the top, as the arm returns to it's owner.

Luffy catches it and holds it with both hands, grinning broadly, and Sanji feels a new kind of horror sink into his stomach.

He notices the spatula in Luffy's hand, as well.

"Don't you dare lick that...!" he growls, lunging forward.

Of course, Luffy doesn't lick it - he puts the entire spatula in his mouth and bolts from the galley, cradling the bowl under his arm. Sanji can't believe he had to witness this atrocious act with his own two eyes, and for one instant he has half a mind to just let Luffy keep them. Buy a new mixing bowl, a new spatula. Then the outrage returns - that is his bowl, and his spatula, and he's going to wash them anyway, but really, how disgusting can you be!

When he finds Luffy, hiding under the forecastle, he has to literally yank the mixing bowl out from between his teeth.

It's been licked entirely clean.

Sanji cracks his captain in the head with it, snarling, "Idiot! Why should I cook for you if you're going to act like an animal!"

Luffy is hardly remorseful.

"But it tastes awesome and I'm starving!"

"You're pretty damn far from starving! Have some patience!"

"What's the big deal, you were gonna rinse that out anyway -"

"It's raw eggs and flour and milk, you stomach with legs, you don't eat anything raw, that's what I'm here for! Where's my spatula? I bet you swallowed it!"

"That rubber thing? No, I gave it to Usopp."

"Usopp...?"

Summoned by the sound of his name, Usopp leans into the forecastle through the open doorway, said spatula in hand, "What? Did you guys need something?" Apparently Luffy was feeling charitable, because there's extra batter on the spatula when Usopp returns it to his mouth. Sanji grimaces in disgust, his cigarette between his teeth.

"Usopp, he's had that in his mouth!"

This doesn't dissuade the sharp-shooter like Sanji thinks it should.

"So what?" he asks, with a raised eyebrow, "I don't care if he licked it, I've taken half a steak right out of his mouth before. You take what you can get from that guy, chewed or not."

Even Zoro pipes up from where he's lounging on the deck against the gunwale, "Usopp's got a point. There's no fair-eating when Luffy's around - he thinks he's won if he puts it in his mouth and if we let him win every time he did, the rest of us wouldn't get half as much to eat."

Sanji realizes, in that moment, that he is surrounded by idiots.

Disgusting, ungrateful idiots.

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-BobTAC