[open] how can we expect

[deviledlegs]

Who: Sanji and OPEN
What: Someone didn't take the last event well.
Where: The permafrost ice cellar dug vaguely close to Sanji's restaurant
When: January 13th
Warnings: Angst. And a boo-boo.


The visions have ended. They haven't plagued anyone for days, and Hadriel has settled back into its modicum of twisted peace. Sanji's restaurant-slash-home-slash-kitchen, however, is eerily empty. His equipment is clean, the lights are all out, and his tools have been carefully slotted into their proper places. All except for a single kitchen knife still lying atop his pristine counter. The very fact that Sanji's left it out is concerning. The dots of red on its blade? Those are a problem.

Sanji himself is now holed up in the very ice cellar he helped dig, cross-legged next to a pile of frozen game as he glares at the bloody cut marring his right pointer finger. He's angry at the stupid, shitty noise that had made him jump, at himself for being distracted enough in the first place to jump with a fucking knife in his hand, at this whole damn situation for tearing him away from his life. But most of all, he's angry at the bone deep ache that's managed to penetrate every single one of his defenses and just won't go away.

He'd never even considered that his crew could die without him. That's the way it should have stayed. Sanji believes in every member of the Straw Hats with absolute certainty. Every member except himself.

The weary cook wraps the wound with his towel again, soaking up more blood but also just so he doesn't have to look at it anymore.

What if he never makes it back to them? What if they spend the rest of their lives looking for him? Luffy's voice echoes in his head. It's usually such a guiding light; now it only stings like his damn stupid cut.

"Without you, I can't become the pirate king!"

Sanji leaps to his feet and slams his shoe into the wall with devastating force. The whole cellar shakes.

"Shit!"

Comments

[uptightness]

It's food, so there is that. She's taken to attempting to hunt the smaller creatures around, although the stampede had left some meat around as well. Carolina still hasn't made it out ice fishing, not entirely certain what, if anything, is required for bait for that. It had been easier on the islands, where there had been shallows and a net could easily catch some of the smaller creatures.

The sack holds a few creatures about the size of rabbits, skinned and gutted, and she does recall him speaking about cooking. Isn't too hard to find make her way there either. There is a knock that is given as she waits a few moments, before another knock, more insistent this time. "Sanji! Open up, or I'm just coming in."

That it looks dark doesn't matter. It's more the threat that might make some hope to action with the tone of her words. A few more moments, and by now the red head is starting to wonder if he is here, before she does hear a noise, followed by a shit. With a slightly perplexed look on her face and an alertness to her posture, she follows the sound to it's source, arching an eyebrow ever so. "Uh. Dare I ask what it ever did to you?"

Not that Carolina is one to talk. She's punched shit. She's thrown stuff around. She has fit the red head temper to a T some days.

[deviledlegs]

"...It was looking at me funny."

He delivers the most fatal deadpan of his life. There is a gorgeous woman at his door, delivering the precious food that will keep everyone on this miserable tundra moving, and yet that lifeless, monotonous string of dull words is all that comes to mind. He deserves to be executed for that bit of misconduct alone. But for Carolina at least, he turns his head, acknowledges and appreciates her as every man should, and does his best not to hate himself for wanting her gone.

His palm tightens around the bloody towel, and his fresh cut renews its cry for attention.

"Had to teach it a lesson before sweeter company arrived."

[uptightness]

She may or may not know a thing or two about things looking at her funny... She has her own ghosts, just as she assumes that most people do, at least to some extend. Many might not be as grand as the one's that weight Carolina down, but from one to another, she can hazard a guess.

Her lips purse a little, putting her gift of meat down as she glances around. He might not be his chipper and annoying self, and that along doesn't have her turning heel to get out of there sooner rather than later. "You got something better than a towel? Because I don't think that's cutting it."

[deviledlegs]

Immediately, she draws the conversation exactly where he doesn't want it. He's happy she's worried for him; he's not happy that she has to worry for him. Frustration quirks his brow, but he gulps back as much indecision as he can.

Just be happy. Just be happy.

"It's okay. Seeing your face in my darkest hour was so exciting that it got my blood pumping, that's all," he insists with an off-balanced smile, as if the weight of the expression itself is too much to carry without slipping. "It'll stop in a minute."

[uptightness]

It's hard to pull the wool over her eyes, and she's not someone that is easily distracted, unless one knows how to distract her. It is a fairly good job, as her lips do purse at his words. Well, either he's not that badly off, as he's still being ridiculous, or he's just always on.

"Do you ever turn it off." But she does know something about keeping things to herself, as Carolina has never been the type to share too much about herself. "If you don't want to talk about whatever it is, fine, but if I find out you pass out from blood loss, I'll kick your ass."