Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

-o-

“You say funny words in your sleep.” Is the first thing Sanji wakes to, eyes flying open and then closing as the ache in his head dulls to a steady pound. Dehydration pain in the back of his fucking skull, he realizes. He blindly reaches out for a water cup, hand flapping over the weirdly soft skin of Luffy’s face. Luffy just laughs, as if Sanji hasn’t just woken up from whatever his latest life threatening injury was. 

“Like what?” Sanji croaks, finally grasping the cool pitcher of water Chopper always keeps for reawakening patients. The whole crew has a neat little regime for the critically injured, but the cook always feels like he’s screwing it up by not being the one ready to prepare the iron and protein rich meals. Whatever, he thinks. It’s his own blood loss at least. 

“You said-'' and here Luffy pauses, makes a face like he's trying to use his brain cells, god help him. “It sounded like Beeth-oo .” 

Sanji is very careful to put the jug back down, swallow the water, look anywhere but his captain. He knows the dream he was having, an unsavory loop of chasing after his not-brothers, begging them to let him join. A time when he’d been young enough to seek inclusion over safety. He knows what he had once cried out. 

“That’s weird.” He replies, thinking of that word. Bittu, bittu, bittu. How often had he gone running down hallways, shouting that word for wait. 

It makes him nervous, a little sick too, to think that he was letting the old North Blue words slip out of a place in his mind he kept very carefully locked. He glances cautiously at Luffy, but the boy is fiddling with the edge of the blanket, head lolling to one side and then the other. Somehow it feels like Sanji has contaminated him with that one word, like he’s thrown up on him or something else vile. 

Luffy just keeps looking at him, waiting for god knows what. Or maybe he’s just looking the way Luffy does, the way children are allowed to and the way Sanji will always let Luffy look, because you don't tell the sun to turn it's head. A part of Sanji wants to look back, and the other part wants to close his eyes for a long, long while. Instead he looks down at the bandages taking up space on his skin, some still tinged with a little red. 

“Do you-,” Sanji begins, cuts himself off and rethinks the question. Asking Luffy if he knew any other languages feels ridiculous, and would accomplish nothing in the end. Feeling blinded by how white the bandage on his arm is, he goes ahead and blurts out the only other thing on his mind. “Are you sure about- me? As your cook?”

He’s not sure why he wants the answer now, when he’s been living in a state of blissful ignorance for a nice couple of weeks. It could be because ever since they left the restaurant and got Nami back, he’s been thinking about life- without. The Baratie and Zeff’s existence without the whole of him, Sanji, running around and being so much of too much. A him without home, or a home without him. 

But it could just be that Luffy’s weight on the side of the bed is like a stone in his pocket, and drowning in the abyss of all that confident power is actually a gentle, kind thing. Luffy looks up at him with those enormous, child-like eyes that have a depth no sea could match. He leans in on his elbows, chin in hand as he seems to take the entire existence of Sanji in.

“I wanted Sanji.” He says, very simply. Then he grins. “And I have Sanji.”

Sometimes it's like Luffy could tear open the fabric of the universe and pick out the answer to all of life, simplifying it to the core of existence. It’s an ability that terrifies Sanji some days and pisses him off others, and at the end of all hours it will be yet another of the thousand millions billion reasons he walks in the boy's shadow. But that’s all just logistics. What matters is this; the captain’s word is gospel truth, and his cook is a devout follower. 

“Yeah,” He says, brushing his thin fingers adoringly through the soft black hair. “You got me.”

-oOo-

What is the heaviest thing you carry? He wonders about the weight a language holds. The weight of his own debt wedded to the weight of his past. The weight of his dream measured by his lifespan. Fruit is usually heavier than vegetables because of the water density in the juice. Meat with higher protein will tip the scales more. The average medium-sized cast iron skillet is 3.6 kilograms, but he likes his to be an even 4. How much does his own body weigh when it's lost more than a fourth of its blood and limp like a rag doll? How much would it weigh dead? 

Morbidly, he thinks about that. About how one day, no matter what, someone will be forced to touch his decaying, cold body. Maybe it will be Luffy, or Chopper, or Zeff. Maybe they’ll have to peel a bloody shirt from his gray skin and dress him in cotton or linen or silk. Maybe they’ll have to place coins on his eyelids to weigh them shut, deceiving the funeral goers into an image of slumber. Or maybe he will die on an enemy ship and be tossed overboard like a spare thought, and he will sink into nothing and exist as a memory. Is he supposed to come up with his own burial rights? He should tell someone he never wants to be buried in the dirt- that if he wakes up on the other side in a coffin in the mud with insects eating his eyes, he’s going to scream for the rest of eternity. 

He gets out of his bunk and makes his way to the galley, not even bothering to change out of his pajamas. It’s 4am, no one else will be up anyways. 

Here’s the thing he quietly decided long ago: he will forget his native tongue in favor of common words, and leave the past in the past.

There are layers to this the way there are layers to everything, starting with the foundation of wanting to forget . When he hears Judge’s voice it’s not in the common tongue, it’s in the North Blue language, and so closing off those particular sounds to his ears is like closing a door, desperate and easy all at once. He hates the language because it reminds him of his not-father shouting order after order, demanding faster and stronger and better . All the things Sanji couldn't be. The children grew up speaking the new dialect, the one that sounds clipped and was mutated by the world government into a more universal alphabet. Like a child stolen away to be raised by people who didn't even want it. So Sanji speaks the common tongue with everyone else, and the old bastardized language dies in his memory. 

He grew up on a ship that spoke nothing more than a regular dialect and plethora of curses anyways. Anything more does not exist. 

But the language was also his mother's language, and when he thinks of her he hears her too, and it’s a painful thing. She made the hard cut words seem soft, and so even though the truth is that the language is ugly and harsh and cold, Sanji remembers bits of it as perfect. So try as he might to forget every noun and verb and adjective, they haunt him. He wakes to words like ekki and tala and smjor. More than one occasion he’s had to bite his own tongue, fatigued and forgetful on the verge of blurting words he half knows. What if people can hear it in his voice, the way smells linger on his clothes? What if he wakes up one day forgetting how to communicate with everyone because all the words get scrambled? What would happen if he asked Chopper to pass the salt in a language he himself barely knew? 

The galley door creaks a little when he opens it, and he starts gathering ingredients by the light of the open window. In his hand the smoothness of an egg feels forgin and disturbing, as if his own body knows they're supposed to be warm little things instead of cold. 

Is he even allowed to forget an entire language? If he forgets all the words, does the common tongue still hold all the meaning he grew up learning? He’d secretly afraid that if, one day, he finally lets go of every North Blue word he’ll end up struck dumb without any reference to the other language he knows, and from then on he’ll struggle around the ship like a child, pointing at objects as if to ask what is that? A-pple? Is that right? That's an apple? 

He makes panna cotta. He makes white chocolate truffles with raspberry puree. He makes tiramisu. He’s in the mood for the food of indulgence, for that which is not necessary. He wants excess and lavishness. He wants proof of life in the form of overabundance. 

I could eat as much as I want . But he doesn't. He puts the truffles in little separate boxes and labels them, puts a ribbon on the one for the Nami. Pauses and puts a ribbon on all of them for everyone. He cuts the tiramisu into perfect, even squares and puts a sprig of rosemary on each plate. The panna cotta is really only meant for one or two people, and he tries to look inside himself and say just fucking eat it . It's almost 6am. 

Instead of eating he goes back to the bunk room and changes, taking aside three shirts that look like they could use ironing. Across the room he takes careful note of the rise and fall of warm bodies in beds, safe and secure. The slight light from the half moon reflects in his locker mirror, and a haggard thing stares back. Sanji pulls his tie right up against his throat and then pulls it a little tighter. This is how he remembers to breathe. 

When he returns to the galley the panna cotta is gone, and he finally feels his heart slow to a steady rhythm. 

-oOo-

“Aren't you pissed at your dad for leaving?” 

Maybe this isn't a conversation to have while drunk. Then again, maybe it's a conversation to have because he’s drunk. Either way, Usopp doesn't look offended and even swings an arm over Sanji’s shoulder, leaning in like he’d got a secret to share. 

“Oh, I was. Like when I was 13? It was like one day I just woke up and was so angry .”

Sanji remembers being 13. Finally feeling a little correct in his skin after years of being too thin, and then suddenly being forced to deal with the betrayal of his body going through changes . He’d been angry too. 

“And now you’re not?” Sanji doesn't remember why he wanted to know. Possibly it's because he looks at Usopp and sees a really genuinely nice guy, and he wants to know how that happened. Did some higher power decide that Usopp would be compassionate and likeable no matter what, or was it some great choice on the younger boys part, and why did that make Sanji so sad ? 

“Now I’m older.” Usopp corrects, taking a sip of beer like it was hot tea. “And I get it, because I left too.”

How the fuck are you like this? How did he just brush it off like dust and then smile ? They called you a liar, he wants to scream, we call you a liar, doesn't that make you mad? 

“Besides, it's not like my mom would’ve actually gotten better if he came back.” And the guy just shrugs . 

Sick moms, Sanji thinks. Oh god. 

“What the fuck.” He pauses and scrubs at his face, steals Usopp’s beer and chugs half of it. “Does anyone on this ship have a mom who’s still alive?”

It sounded a lot harsher out loud, and he winces. Beside him Usopp just makes a pshhh sound with his teeth and just shrugs.

“Sorry. Bad memories?”

That's one way to put it. The cook shakes his head with a clumsy motion fueled by the beer, as if he can deny the whole thing. He wants to go back to Usopp and his sad but not tragic life story, where the simplicity of a boy on an island making up tall tales is quite honestly beautiful. Questions burn in the back of his throat like do you carry her in the way you pronounce certain words? Did she use a silly voice to tell stories too? And why do these kind, patient women keep enduring the love of foolish men? 

“Do you know any stories about the stars?” Sanji asks instead. 

Come winter in the North Blue the night would stretch on for a few extra hours, resulting in daytime starlight. It had an odd sadness to it, distant in his memories of that particular time. Still, Sanji likes the stars and all their unreachable light, existing a million years away from him and his silly little existence. Beside him, Usopp grins. 

“Do you know the story of the twin constellation, Castor and Pollux? You can see them holding hands if you look right.”

Usopp goes on, launching into a tale about mortality and loss, two brothers separated by their father's blood. Sanji looks up, drawing the imaginary lines in the inky sky, putting the images into the great nothingness. 

“I always wanted a twin. Like can you imagine all the pranks? I bet it’d be the best .” The younger man smiles over at Sanji, the previous anxieties long gone in the wake of a new topic. Beside him, the cook plasters a thin smile on his face and bites the inside of his cheek.

“Sure.” He whispers. “The best.”

-oOo-

After Drum he writes a letter to Zeff. After Alabasta he finally sends it. Half of the whole thing is just scratched out lines, because it occurred to him somewhere after getting his fifth set of stitches removed that maybe the old man didn't want to hear about his many, many near death experiences. That saying dear shitty geezer, today I learned that it really fucking hurts to get caught in an avalanche was quite possibly insensitive. He honestly isn't sure if Zeff would be concerned or not, and he’s a little afraid of the answer.

So instead he writes dear shitty old man, and he makes lists and lists and lists of food he’s cooked out of ingredients he’s bought and mentions the deals his sweet Nami-san got at the market just for him. The better part of it is dedicated to the elephant tuna he’d procured, and he’d made his hands stop writing when he reached the edge of the paper. One single page of his slanted, slightly messy handwriting, thrown into an envelope before he could regret even putting the pen to paper. He pretends to forget about it, having crammed it behind the extra silverware in a drawer he hardly opens. Islands become ways of tracking time, and by the time they say goodbye to Vivi he knows he’s going to mail it like he knows Luffy will ask for food at 2:30pm. Written in the stars, as they say. 

For some reason he never expects a reply. It's strange to think, but he’s lived and known Zeff for a rather good chunk of his existence, and he supposes that gives him some right to care for the man. Reciprocated feelings though, he didn't sign up for that. It feels presumptuous to assume Zeff might like him more than a toleration, and if he dared to actually possibly care for Sanji? Disastrous surely. Dear god, what was he supposed to do with feelings of affection thrown his way? Accept them? He’s prefer a bomb. And anyways wouldn't it just be cumbersome if Sanji grew even more attached to the guy who saved his meager life? Not that the young chef had ever had any control over what he did and did not feel. God help him, he really did love too easily and he couldn't even bring himself to wish he didn't. Something about giving and being a little addicted to giving too much.

All that to say the reply came and Sanji couldn't open it. The letter went right back into the extra silverware drawer and he made up it's contents ten times over. He made up the words like he’d made up food to eat on that rock, picking at the bones of a fat bird as if his ribs weren’t threatening to break through his skin. Maybe it said things he wanted to hear. Maybe one day he’d know what those things were. 

-oOo-

The romantic side of his brain wants to say that he and Zoro fell madly in love with each other, started dating, had sex, and discussed sailing off into the sunset together and adopting whole crates of little orphaned children. Being 19 year old boys that didn't happen because they were too busy figuring out if the blood pumping through their veins wanted them to fuck or fight. In the end they did both. 

That's not to say Sanji didn't fall in love. Or, he developed a very unique love just for Zoro out of the neat, enormous space in his heart where all his Nakama resided, and it was a bit terrifying. On one side, it wasn't like it was a hard step to move from I would die for you to I would die for you and also I want to hold your hand, but on the other it was definitely a new step. It was all encompassing and a hard type of sweetness that cracked teeth and left Sanji drained, and somehow always always craving more. Zoro fits in the space against him the way no one else had before, and Sanji decided it was love before he even fully understood that kind of love. At some point he had looked over his shoulder and the swordsman was simply there, and it was immediately understood that not only did the cook want Zoro there, but Zoro would be there. 

The bastard still drives Sanji crazy. He has gross morning breath, but Sanji excuses it because Zoro kisses him very sweetly in the mornings, and who’d have thought sweetness would come from such a man? Zoro is not a soft and pretty woman either, but Sanji excuses this too. Love is blind and all that. More like his love is bound, gagged, and held at gunpoint by the unwashed mess that is Roronoa Zoro. Sanji doesn't really care though. The idiot makes him happy. 

And that's strange too. It's all very strange. Sanji wasn't supposed to live outside of a prison cell, and then he wasn't supposed to make it off that rock, so to be sailing on the Grand Line in pursuit of his dream with the man he loved? Preposterous. Maybe he’d starved to death after all. 

“Calm down.” Zoro says, when they’re lying in his or Sanji’s bunk and the blonde can't relax his shoulder muscles and feels like a body going through rigor mortis. “Calm down.” He says, brushing his thick, calloused fingers through Sanji’s hair and kissing the pounding vein in his temple. “Calm down.” He whispers against Sanji’s neck when they’re curled around each other on the medical cot, no doubt doing harm to fresh wounds but god . Sanji is just happy to be alive. 

“Don't tell me what to do.” Sanji replies, his heart rate already slowing, traitorously in love. 

-oOo-

Sometimes he has panic attacks and that's just a thing that happens. He gets so used to it that he forgets other people don't have them, and the first time he has one in front of Nami she makes it spectacularly worse. Chopper explains it much better than he ever could, and once the navigator understands that Sanji isn't dying she handles it a whole lot better. Luffy gets it in his head that food is the answer to all things, either because he strongly connects food to the cook, or because food always works for his own unusual body. This doesn't bode well for the blonde, and he’s very careful to explain to the captain that he needs space to breathe when he gets ‘extra stressed’, not a fucking eclair shoved in his face. He loves Luffy, but sometimes. Jesus. 

Usopp, Chopper and Zoro handle it the best, unsurprisingly. Usopp knows things about anxiety and stress and kind of sort of hating himself sometimes. Chopper’s a doctor and pulls the professional card when he needs to, despite his age. Zoro meditates himself into a half comatose state of calm on the daily. Now that Sanji thinks about it, maybe that's why he has the ability to fall asleep at will. 

He doesn't want Robin to see him like that. He knows she’s nakama and she is soft spoken and beautiful behind all the psychopathic tendencies, but he’s afraid of disappointing her. It's ridiculous, but there's something about her that makes him feel like he could be doing better and he doesn't know why. Maybe he should talk to her about it. 

It's not like he makes a habit of losing his shit in front of everyone, but it's a small ship, things happen. He’s not going to go scitter off into the storage hold every time he feels one coming, and 9 out of 10 times he can just go to the pantry and take inventory, which eases him into a better mentality. No one cares anyways. Everyones got their own shit. The sun rises regardless. 

“Do you need- can I get you some tea?” Nami says, grimacing. She is incredibly bad at this and they both know it. Sanji loves her all the more for her well-meaning failure. 

“I’ll be fine, Nami-san.” He says, breathing in for 3 seconds, out for 6. He smiles at her despite the tremor in his body, because he knows he will be fine. Just 3 more seconds. Just 6 more seconds. Breathe out. 

-oOo-

Who do the stars fall for, the song goes. It’s in the North Blue tongue, the old dialect, and it sounds like someone clearing their throat in a way that shouldn't be beautiful but is. He thinks of his mom and the lullabies she used to hum but not sing, because Judge had forbidden her to teach his children the outdated old words. 

The stars fall for us, upon us, the song continues. He doesn't understand how he understands it. Maybe it's something ingrained in the dna he didn't ask for. Maybe his mother had slipped the words to him in secret as a baby. Chopper and Luffy sway to the music and he wants them to stop. But they don't know the lyrics are about war, and he’s going to make sure they never do. All the North Blue songs are about death or waiting for summer or both. He’s glad he didn't grow up on some frozen island up there, but then again maybe it would have been preferable. 

Who do the stars fall for, the song asks again in the refrain, and Sanji gets up. He needs to either not be here to listen or drunk enough that the words stop registering. His pale skin and pale hair and pale fucking eyes feel like open wounds he can't hide to these people. They’ll spot him in a moment, he’s sure, drag him down to be a part of something they think he wants but he doesn't. They’ll pretend to offer community for a family he’s far away from and he will absolutely throw up if that happens. 

He catches Zoro’s eye from across one of the many giant fires, the light glinting off his earrings and making him look like something parents warn their children about. Sanji grins, tilting his chin in the direction of the black forest. 

He smokes 4 cigarettes while he waits with his back against a tree, and Zoro ambles up beside him, steals the half finished stick and crushes it against the tree. It's a mutual collision when they kiss, like they both put in the usual 100% instead of the 50 and 50. 

“I need you to fuck me.” They’re far enough away from everyone else that he doesn't bother whispering. Zoro, the asshole, doesn't deliver right away. He likes to draw things out and work his way up and down methodically. He's clumsy like the concept of tenderness is new to him, and Sanji loves the idea of Zoro figuring it out on his own body. Of a man so dedicated and loyal as the swordsman committing himself to Sanji’s flesh and figuring out how to touch. He seems to find his rhythm, and kisses Sanji’s ears, brow, throat, and then murmurs the cook’s name like it will guide him away from death itself. 

“Yeah,” he bites his lip, because there’d been an accent on the ea sound, a yah instead of yeah . Old dialect. A language of loss. He closes his eyes. 

Zoro won't fuck him. Zoro wants to have sex with him, and he drawls Sanji out of his shell, back to the real world where he doesn't want to be. But the swordsman translates him, writes his needs and wants and dreams out with his tongue. Reads him, not like a book, but like a mural. Holds his hand and says I love you with the way his thumb brushes over Sanji’s knuckles. 

Behind them the songs ends with a final the stars fall for us, for us and Sanji thinks shut the hell up. Maybe the stars are fucking tired. Maybe they never wanted to fall at all. 

-oOo-

The first thing he does when he moves into Sunny is tuck Zeff’s unopened letter in the back of yet another barely used drawer that he will no doubt fill with paperclips and dented forks and one-use sauce packets. He unpacks his favorite dish set, then the sturdy Luffy-proof set, then the fine china teacups reserved for Nami and Robin. There's plenty of room for the seemingly hundreds of coffee cups that everyone in the crew has acquired over time. They should probably edit down their collection, but Sanji loves looking up and seeing all the worn colors and chipped ceramic and ugly logos. It's proof of durability. It's home. 

Zoro sits at the new table and helps him sharpen knives. They’ve been spending a lot more time together recently and Sanji doesn't hate it. The new ship is much larger but they naturally move like it's still small, pressing their shoulders together in a hallway that could fit three of them. Sanji feels like a snail that's been dumped out of its shell. He can only imagine how Usopp is feeling. Zoro holds up a knife to the light, inspecting it critically and going back to the whetstone. He’s the only one Sanji’ll trust to do this, and it nearly makes him blush. The kitchen knives are not anywhere close to as sacred as the katana blades, but the crew has a funny way of tucking bits of their soul into the objects they carry. Would it be so unbelievable to believe his favorite fish knife had a little of him inside of it when Nami’s maps were always so warm to the touch, and Luffy’s hat seemed to glow in the evenings? It doesn't weigh more than a kilogram, he thinks. How does any of it even work. 

Franky comes bursting in, loud and big with a louder shirt, and he’s so very odd. Sanji had hated him so much when he’d learned it was this man who had hurt their sniper, and even now he’s working on unclenching his teeth around the guy. It’s a process though. His anger sticks to him like dried blood and he wants to wash it all off, but he keeps missing spots. Luffy wanted him though, and he has to remind himself that Luffy does not make mistakes, despite the fact that Luffy chose Sanji. And then there was Robin, who seemed so fond of the strange, blue haired man, and who was Sanji to deny her anything in the whole world, when it made her smile? She was human now, finally. He could see through her skin. They were communicating in the same language for the first time. 

“Yo cook-bro! I got an electric knife sharpener if you-

“Absolutely not.” Sanji says, at the same time Zoro says “No.”

Franky looks back and forth between them, and then grins like he just figured out the most obvious secret that the two men have never once tried to hide. The shipwright chuckles and slips out the door, wiggling his eyebrows at them over his shoulder. 

“If I ever catch that pervert putting my sheet-folded serrated stainless steel fillet knife in a machine -” He’ll finish what Robin started and castrate the bastard. He’ll cook his cyborg testicles in a parsley and cream sauce and serve them pan fried. Or fuck it, he’ll throw all his genitals in a blender and make a fucking smoothie. He’s really got to address some of his anger issues. 

Zoro’s smiling at him. It catches the blonde off guard, because it's a very open, fond smile, and it's not 1am and they’re not naked on the floor. It shouldn't be so surprising that the swordsman expresses his love in these occasional small ways, and yet. And yet. 

-oOo-

The thought process goes I could die and then that's ok and then maybe it's not ok . 

He does not not want to die. This is important. Maybe he’s never known this before. Maybe he’s known this the whole time and been pretending. He didn't have to run when Reiju pushed him, he could have just laid himself down in the middle of that civil war, buried himself under all the other nameless children whose people were becoming dead history. He didn't have to ration the food on that god forsaken rock, and he certainly didn't have to scream himself raw when the ship passed by. He didn't have to practice the kicks that Zeff taught him and he didn't have to clean all his wounds to prevent infection. These were his choices. He has always chosen to live. He has always chosen to fight . 

Now he stares at his hands and the small cuts on his palm, the bruise forming on his wrist. It’s been a long time since he’s been so weak on his feet that he had to push his body up with the strength of his fingers, pulling the full weight of his hideous self to a presentable height. The last thing his fingers had grasped was the skin of Zoro’s arm, warm and dirt-coated. Would his fingers always remember that feeling, that memory? Like a last kiss almost. 

The mosshead is alive, he reminds himself. No one on the crew died, and they can't possibly continue to be so lucky. Sanji still doesn't know if he’s more scared or sad, so he decides to be angry above all else. Zoro’s not getting laid for a fucking while . 

Brook joins him on his seat in the rubble. Sanji likes Brook and his neat courtesy and soft voice. He likes that Brook takes pride in a pressed shirt and cravats and is never intentionally abrupt with his long, white fingers. A chef and a musician share the value of every bone in their hand, every movement. So what if Brook looks like death walking. He’s nice . 

“If you’d like to talk about it, I’ve been told I’m a marvelous listener.” Brook hums. “Even though I have no ears!”

Sanji doesn't really want to talk about it though. What happened happened, and it was just as out of his hands now as it had been when Zoro knocked him out. Yes, there are things to unpack, but he’s tired. For once, he justifies his fatigue. 

“What’s your favorite food?” He finds himself asking, reaching for a cigarette in his hoodie pocket. If Brook is joining the crew then Sanji will cook for him, and he will cook what will be wanted. 

“Quite honestly, Sanji-san, I do not remember.” He says quietly, staring at Sanji. Or maybe starring off to the side. Sanji can't tell. “And I’m sure food is quite different now that I cannot taste, so please do not trouble yourself over me.”

How dare you , Sanji thinks, nearly biting the cigarette in half. You haven't eaten in decades. You have no idea how fucked up that is. How much it's fucking me up. He wants to pry Brook’s mouth open and shove a roast turkey in there or some shit. Oh god, he thinks. I want to fill a skeleton with food. I’m losing my shit over a lack of digestive tracts and stomach acid. 

“No one skips a meal on my watch.” Sanji says, maybe a little harshly. Brook’s eye sockets are enormous, devouring things. It might take some time to get used to them.

“Of course not,” Brook backpedals, hands fluttering a little nervously. “I merely meant, perhaps, it might be wasteful -

“Feeding a person is not a waste .” He snarls, fingernails biting his palm. “Even if you don't need it, even if you don't think you deserve-

He cuts himself off and tries to breathe, tossing the cigarette away into the terrain. There's a stain near his foot that’s probably blood, and he wonders if it's his or Luffy’s or Chopper’s or- inhale for 3 seconds. Exhale for 6.

There are people starving somewhere and everywhere in the world. There are cruel people who do not deserve to live, but Sanji would feed them, he knows he would. He kills and will continue on killing, but he will feed and that's who he is. Is he doomed because he can't change this or is he forgiven? Who is the god of feeding enemies and hating themselves? I deserve to live, he reminds himself. I deserve to eat. 

Tell me about yourself, Robin had asked, and Sanji had said I’m a cook . He hadn’t said I like the color blue or I want all the spiders in the world to die , he had said he fed people. Because before he’d been a fighter, before he’d been a survivor, before he’d been a real son, he’d been a cook. Some people spend their whole lives trying to figure out what they want to be. Sanji had known before he’d even had a proper life to live. 

If there are hungry people he feeds them, but what about the people he’s killed? What about the people he’s pushed aside and cursed at and left behind because it wasn't his problem? He’s become something so mixed with apathy and compassion and anger- a pirate for god's sake- he can't afford to be kind to every single person. And anyways he doesn't want to save the whole damn world. He’s been over this; he just wants to feed those who are hungry. 

“Are you alright, Sanji-san?” Brook asks, and Sanji wrenches himself violently back into his own body with the nicotine and the castle debris. Where had he gone, so deep inside his own head that he had forgotten that there was a talking skeleton beside him? Forgotten Zoro, fighting his way back from death. 

“I’m fine.” He whispers, because if he says it any louder someone might call him out on it, and he can't have that. 

“I didn't mean to-” But Sanji holds up a hand to silence him and leans forward like he’s trying not to vomit. 

“It's fine.” He says, which is a lie. “As long as you eat.” Which isn't the whole truth. 

-oOo-

It takes days which accumulate to what feel like years for Zoro to properly wake up. Sanji’s there, waiting, so full of new curses and threats and most likely held-back tears that he’s ready to explode. He’s a fucking bomb ready to go off, and he kind of wants to go off, but then Zoro’s eyes open slow and steady, and thats it. Bomb defused. 

“Elska thu.” Sanji whispers in the dark, and it was absolutely not what he wanted to say. But he feels the weight of each syllable in his throat, each word of that love you on his tongue, and it all comes together to be the only words that are left, so he lets them crawl over his skin and hide in the corners of the room. He’s not even just saying it to Zoro, he's saying it to the ship, the ocean, the days gone by. He’s trying very hard to say a little of it to himself, because Luffy once told him to do so. 

“Love you too.” Zoro croaks, sounding thoroughly damaged and broken, probably already half unconscious. Probably not even knowing what he’s saying, probably just letting the beat of his heart carry a sound, and isn't that a romantic little thought. 

-oOo-

Eggplant, it reads. 

Glad to know you’re not dead. Patty says he saw your captain in the paper, got himself a wanted poster. Looks like it was just him and that fellow with the nose, and the swordsman who got filleted. I thought that broccoli head died. Make sure you tell your doctor you’re a stupid shithead who’s been smoking for a decade so he can yell at you. Get some proper rest. Don't die. 

Zeff

Sanji folds the paper into a tiny, bulging square and then tucks it in his breast pocket. Then he takes it out and stares at it for a moment before putting it right back in the drawer. That’s where it's been for two years anyways.  

He makes seared tuna. He makes braised ribs. He makes a honeyed ham out of a sea pig that's so large it won't fit in the oven and he has to slice it up. He tosses 4 salads; a spinach with feta cheese, a raspberry vinaigrette, a sugared pekan and olive oil, sesame oil and seaweed. He makes twice baked potatoes and his favorite seafood fried rice. He makes salmon onigiri. He makes artichoke and veal ravioli. He makes a three tiered chocolate rum cake with clementine zest. He wants to feed the entire world, and he wants it to taste like home. 

Luffy is drawn by the smell of the ham, and Sanji only has to kick him twice to get him to sit down and sit still. He looks at the scar staring back at him from Luffy’s chest, screaming at him that the world is bad and wrong and dark. He looks at Luffy’s face and his eyes which are saying the world is good and warm and bright. He gives Luffy the ham. 

Sanji finishes the dishes at midnight with Zoro’s help, and then sits down at the table. Zoro kisses his cheek very gently, a hand warm and large on his shoulder, and then retires for the night. The cook picks up a quill and dips it in ink and sits there. 

When the ship picked us up , he wants to write, do you remember-

How I held onto you and wouldn't let go until I passed out and the ship's doctor had to uncurl my fingers from your filthy, torn clothes. How I couldn't stop shivering when I woke up again and the captain came down and said it's ok son, your dad’s going to be fine . How I was physically unable to step foot on dry land for months and how you never once sent me on supply runs because you understood that. How you taught me some fucked up things and some really important things. How I had nightmares for the rest of my life. How I really did love you like a father this whole time, even if you never wanted me. 

Sanji cannot bring himself to write such things though. Words like that require honesty and courage and he is afraid of very peculiar things like a father's love and gentle words. He is made of tender skin that was never meant to be thick and hard, and he made it so anyways. He has had to relearn the simplest ways of life through counting the calories of every meal and counting the inhale of each breath and counting the years he still owes to others. When he is tired he does not sleep because that feels like giving up. When he is sad he pretends he isn't because he does not have the right. When he is in love he does not know how to process. 

Dear Zeff, he writes. Maybe he’s not mature enough for that yet. He crosses it out. Dear old man. 

Still alive on my end. The crew keeps getting bigger, we’re up to nine right now. Franky and Brook don't have taste buds and Usopp accidentally inhaled so much pepper dust he probably lost all of his. Do you remember how much Luffy can eat? Heres a hint; it's a fucking lot. You never met Robin-can but you’d like her. She and Nami-san are the only crew members that eat normally. Our doctor eats more sugar than anyone I have ever met. Franky says it's ok that he eats lug nuts because he’s a cyborg but I think it's bullshit. What's a metal nut gonna give you nutrients wise? Zinc? Chopper doesn't know either. Chopper is the reindeer who is also the doctor by the way. I cut back on smoking because someone told me they wanted to grow old with me, and I thought, why not. It sounds nice. 

Don't die either you old shit,

Sanji

Chapter Text

-oOo-

He can see the history of genicide written on Law's skin. The man could cover every pore with ink and it’d still be in his posture, his pupils, his knuckles. Calluses from crawling on hands and knees for miles because that's survival at it's finest. He has death scrawled across his fingers, and Sanji wants to punch himself in the face because god help him, he wants to comfort Law. 

He makes him tea. He makes him north blue earl gray, the same kind Brook prefers. Brook never did remember where he was from, so he and Sanji look at the tea and think, whatever. It’s a hot drink and the world tends to be a cold front. Law takes the tea like he’s expecting either it to be a bomb or Sanji to explode right then and there. But Sanji’s already turned around on his heel, taking quick steps away because he knows the story of a sad north blue boy all too well. 

“Takk.” Law says later, very quietly in the hushed hours. His soft thanks crawls under Sanji's skin and stays there like a pin. He nods, continues rolling cigarettes by candle light, making excuses to not sleep. 

“Ekki mau.” Sanji replies easily. No problem . Why did he say that. He’s given this up, he reminds himself. This was a drug I quit.

But Law sits across from him, and Sanji can’t hate him or the words or the language itself. Everything with them translates to a tragedy, but the language will last, and Law and Sanji are still breathing. Maybe people will write about them, make them immortal with words. 

Law is a comfort that is not supposed to be a comfort. He is silent and cold and awkward, and sits in the galley like a bad decoration. But he is also sentimentality in a solitary survivor. Another lost kid who made it the fuck out of hell, but took some of hell with him. Sanji can't wait for him to leave and he can't imagine him gone. The saving grace is that Law doesn't want to talk about where he's from any more than Sanji does. They both pretend as easily as the rest of the world that they came from a nothingness so small and unimportant that it's not worth mentioning. 

Zoro is jealous of the way Law lingers in the galley. It's in the way he clings to Sanji a little tighter and a little longer in the mornings, their knees and elbows jammed awkwardly against each other in a hammock not made for two grown men. They really need to stop trying to fit in places they’ve outgrown, but it's familiar, and it's comfort. There are scratches in the side boards that Sanji likes to count like sheep, likes to run his fingers over while Zoro snores against his neck and sleep eludes him. There's no privacy and Usopp’s socks smell from the corner of the room, but Luffy mumbles in his sleep above them and Sanji knows he could never be safer. He becomes immortal in Zoro’s bunk at 2am. It doesn't mean he appreciates the way Zoro stalks around the ship, eyeing Law like the man’s a thief about to make a move. 

“You’ve never used that language before.” Zoro points out, murmuring against Sanji’s shoulder while the cook tries to cook. Law is trying to hide from Luffy somewhere in the storage. The doctor still hasn't figured out that it's only encouraging the Straw Hat captain more. 

Sanji knows what Zoro means is Robin tried to talk to you with those words once, and you sewed your mouth shut on the spot . So why is Law different, cook? What makes him special?

“Because I hate it.” He settles on, because he does. His throat forms a solid lump when he even thinks with those guttural sounds, and half the time he really does think he’s going to throw up. If he could he would stick his fingers down his throat and vomit up the whole alphabet, retching it all over the side of the ship just to be done with it all. 

“So why do you talk to him in it?” Zoro presses, his fingers going tap tap tap against the polished brass buttons on Sanji’s coat. 

“Because he hates it too.” Sanji says, watching the bubbles pop and hiss in the boiling pot. The steam washes over his face and he opens his mouth a little, imagining it going down his throat and cleaning him out. He wonders if Law thinks about cutting off his own tongue sometimes too. 

Zoro seems to understand something of this, because he leaves Law alone after that. The swordsman nods to their guest like he gets it now, even though he doesn't, and Sanji would hate the mosshead for it if he didn't love the guy so very, very much. 

-oOo-

It's never escaped him that he has his mother’s face. That despite the stupid, unflattering eyebrows, he has his mother’s chin and her soft eyes and sunflower hair. He thinks it's ok to like his face, to spend time making it smooth and as flattering as he can. He thinks he’s allowed this vanity because he spent so long with busted lips and eyes and then gaunt, gaunt cheeks, and now, finally, his face is his even if it's also hers . 

This is his downfall- these similarities with Sora. Sanji was her last and only successful act of defiance, and he continued that legacy perfectly on his own terms. Above all else he had made the grand mistake of not dying in that basement cell. The greatest failure to the Germa kingdom, the one who had the audacity to live. 

He studies Judge’s face now. He pays very close attention to the length and width of the man’s nose. Of his eyes. Of his ears. Where do these things show up on Sanji’s face? He read somewhere that genetics show in the brow, but he can't look at this dictator for more than a few minutes without feeling sick. The Vinsmoke sons, the real sons- looking at them is like looking in a funhouse mirror. Sanji knows their ears and noses and eyes and lips. They are all the same and at the same time not. He likes his face better now when it's bruised and swollen and looks like nothing more than a plain mess. 

Pudding is so sweet he knows it's fake. She thinks she’s selling it perfectly, but he knows sweetness and sugar and the ways to measure vanilla so exactly with nothing but a glance. Good sweetness requires combination and balance, and hers is nothing but tooth rotting chemicals. He lets her pretend because what does he care? He’s pretending things are bearable with just as much as a mask stitched on his face, and he doesn't know her story. Maybe he will one day if they actually end up married and she finds him tolerable. Maybe she’ll forgive him if he gets up one day and runs far, far away, screaming his head off because he doesn't know what the fuck he’s doing without Luffy. 

And then Luffy is right there in his face with Nami and Chopper, and he can't bear it, he really can't. He doesn't want to die but he does want Luffy to give him a painful, brutal death right then and there. He wants to know the relief of a simple, white hot pain, where he will finally be able to pinpoint the hurt in his body and blame all his problems on it. Sanji wishes that for once Luffy would be cruel to him.

He thinks about Zoro, dead to the world but still unconsciously curling an arm tight around Sanji’s body. The way the man would whisper those words, I love you because he knew that Sanji shivered from head to toe at the way the words felt like a physical caress on his neck. The way Sanji knew Zoro loved him because it was a conviction they had torn each other's souls apart over, lost blood over, carved into each other so violently it became sweet, and so sweetly it became violent. Sometimes Sanji thinks he must have broken a few ribs and pulled them out of his body to make room for the space Zoro had nestled into, all his organs pushed down and aside to accommodate. It doesn't hurt as much as he thought it would. He wonders if Zoro will carry him the way he carries his white sword, if Sanji will become a weight that cannot be put down. 

He makes tea sandwiches. He makes cotton candy. He makes hamburgers and french fries. He makes grilled pike and peels tangerines. He makes takoyaki and earl gray tea. He makes onigiri. He makes meat on the bone. He does not mean to make these things, but these are the things he was meant to make, and these are the things he chooses to carry. 

The way Pudding’s sweetness slides off isn't clean. It's with a sickly, dragging motion, peeling off in stained colors. It's a garment that makes her ugly, and he feels distantly horrified that he could even think such a thing. But her false sincerity wasn't taken off and folded neatly, it was burned and rotted, and he’s going to see the mass of it on her for the rest of his life. Judging from what she said, that won't be long. 

“Did you ever learn the old dialect?” He asks Reiju, trying to read her face for the pain that's supposed to be there. It's not because he wants her to feel it, he just wants to know that she can . 

“Of course.” She says easily. She sounds like they’re having tea. Sanji waits for her to elaborate, and she chooses not to. 

“Did mom know it?” He feels very small every time he says the word mom . Like maybe he will accidentally summon the ghost of all maternal beings who want to hold him like a child and tell him gentle things. It shouldn't be a frightening thought but it is. Reiju’s eye twitches minutely, the pleasant, fake smile never budging. 

“She did. She sang in it sometimes.”

He could pretend he remembers. It's a bitter thought but he knows that it's impossible to remember everything about her, everything from his years of having a barely formed brain. There's no choice in the way his memories work though, and he knows that the image of his childhood will always be painted as the cell. 

“Did you know-” He begins, stuttering to a halt like a broken machine. “We were, we never-”

He doesn't know what he's saying. He’s very, very tired, and they’re both a sunrise away from a possible death. What did Sanji know that Reiju didn't, in the end? She knew they were glorified lab rats, she knew they were bred out of a sacrificial need. Sora had a very simple gravestone, and Sanji never did know if Judge completely hated her in the end or not, but at least he gave her that. Big Mom would likely toss their bodies in the ocean, and for whatever reason he’s fine with that, because at least there's purpose to feeding fish by way of decaying. He’s not planning on dying though. Fuck that, he thinks. For once in his goddamn life, for once in his entire aching existence- he wants to walk out of hell and not get dragged back. He’s going to close the door, lock it, and swallow the key. 

“We grew up with 27 words for snow, and 1 word for love.” And what does that say about us? About that entire language? Sanji wants to ask, looking back at his sister. It's not so bad, this admittance of loving her. Someone had to inherit his love, and better her than the others. But what does it mean, that in a world that consisted of cracked vocabulary and dying mothers, he had learned to say grey snow and hard snow and wet snow and only much, much later, I love you . Could it be that this whole time they’d been formed by those words, sculpted down to the whites of their bones and wrapped in conjunctive prayers of hard, harsh things only? Maybe they were still reading the scripts, and Sanji had messed up his lines, falling out of sync, because he learned that one, devastating word of love . 

“The history of our culture is 200 years of freezing to death. We learned what was thought to be necessary.” Reiju says, eyes blank and hot at the same time. She would be so beautiful if she just knew how to be human. 

“Love is necessary.” And he surprises himself by saying this, by saying it with the calm conviction he didn't know he could possess in front of his older sister. He didn't even realize how true it was until the words formed on his tongue. Love was the imperative ingredient, after all this time, all along. He’d learn that language one day, become fluent in it, and share it with the world. Rewrite all those verbs and nouns of freezing and cold to say to love, to be loved, to always be loving. 

He blinks down at his hands, as the grass suddenly around him, at Luffy’s smile. He didn't remember moving, but of course he was here. Where else would he be. He has someone to feed.  

-oOo-

He’s more bandage than he is skin, but he feels better than he has in years. In eons. Like he’s had a flu this whole time, finally recovered. Like he somehow managed to quit smoking and didn't suffer the withdrawal. Did everyone else breath this easily? What would keep him from floating off the ground and into the stars now that he was so light and unknown inside. 

There's no time for a fully seated explanation and apology. It happens in bits and burts and glances. With his hand on Usopp’s arm, lingering in their joined bruises. With Robin's sympathetic eyes. Wano is a country of action, and so Sanji doesn't stop. He provides whatever is even remotely possible, and then he strives even further upon request. He opens a tiny noodle stand as soon as he can, and asks his customers what can I get you , because really, whatever they wanted, he’d do it. Anything in the whole wide world. 

Zoro stares at him for a long while as they gather around Luffy, the fire illuminating every fresh scar on all of them. Zoro looks him up and down and then inside out and sideways and every other way that there ever could be, and then he takes calm, steady steps forwards, pulls Sanji forwards, and holds him. 

“Cook.” He says, pressing the softest kiss to Sanji’s temple. The blonde folds into him, all but collapsing. Somehow he’d been walking and breathing without this, thinking he could survive. Somehow Zoro understands this, and takes his weight with ease. 

He sleeps for 18 hours straight. Chopper’s stethoscope is what wakes him up, ice cold and startling, the little reindeer apologizing profusely but anxious to determine healthiness. 

“It's alright, Chopper. Let him sleep.” The swordsman says, swooping down and picking up the doctor. 

He places a warm hand on Sanji’s cheek. The cook isn't sure if it's not all a dream, and he tries to get up and look around. He feels overly flushed, possibly feverish. Pretty fucking good all things considering. 

“Calm down.” Zoro murmurs, pushing him back down gently. 

“Don't-” He begins, Zoro’s hand cutting him off with it's careful tenderness. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Those large, calloused hands are so soft on Sanji’s raw skin, it's almost too much. “I know, don't tell you what to do. Just focus on healing, idiot.”

But Sanji reaches out as Zoro withdraws, desperate and ugly. His fingers feel like fragile, unsightly things that claw at the beautiful skin over iron hard muscle. The swordsman waits patiently, a little surprised, still cradling Chopper in his arms. 

“Don't go .” The cook whispers, throat dry. If this is a dream then he’s allowed to ask for things for once, and maybe he’s even allowed to have . 

He doesn't have to ask twice. Zoro lowers himself and Chopper to the futon, pulling the blankets around all three of them. Unconsciousness hits him two seconds after the familiar shape of Zoro molds to his back.

-oOo-

There's a small confrontation with Law. It goes in the ways of Sanji, the villain, exposed in all his hideous truth as the Germa suit he wears, and so Law is justified in his anger. Until he isn't. 

“Don't ever call me that. Don't you ever call me that name.” Sanji hisses, the tip of his tongue burning.

The surgeon scowls at him, judging. He opens his mouth, and the cook can see it in his eyes that this won't be forgotten, won't ever be forgiven maybe. 

“I should have known by the way you spoke.” Law says, already turning away, ready to disappear with the last word of contempt as if he were so very superior. Sanji grabs him by the arm and halts that motion. 

“You speak the same words, asshole.”

“No, we don't.” Law says, definitive. “My people were murdered. Your people were murdering.”

Sanji wants to lash out at the term of his people, offended beyond belief at such a notion in regards to Germa. His people are pirates, are chefs, are strange broken kids who follow a king. His people are beautiful. 

“Then I’ll give it to you.” Sanji says, and he feels like Luffy, giving away things that can't be given, but somehow, are. “Keep the words. Keep the whole fucked up alphabet. I don't want any of it.”

Law looks like he’s going to argue, or maybe start cutting bodies apart. Mostly he looks very tired, and Sanji can't blame him. It's a hard weight to carry, languages. It gets confusing and complicated and ends with a headache on top of a headache. The doctor looks like he’s had his fair share of confusing tongues and tripping over bilingual thoughts. Sanji would, if it were possible, split open his throat and take out ever sound he's ever made in the North Blue and hand it over like a gift. He’d cram every word in Law’s hand and say my god, please do something decent with this shit . Please make something nice out of it. Please carry it the way it's supposed to be carried. 

“That's not the way it works.” Law mutters, which is obvious because of course that's not how it works. Even the surgeon of death couldn't cut out an entire language, and what a pity. 

Law walks away, possibly forever, and Sanji thinks too late . I’ve given it all to you. It's yours now. Goodbye. 

-oOo-

“What's a song you heard as a kid?” He asks, fingers woven in Zoro’s hair, the man’s head in his lap. He still can't quite believe he’d been forgiven, that Zoro wants this closeness and contact and soft touches. There must be a current of anger hidden under the swordsman's skin, there must be, but Sanji can't find it no matter how deeply he looks. There's only a hard man with soft eyes to be found, holding Sanji as tightly as ever. 

“There's one about cicadas. One about farming.” Zoro mutters, cracking his one functioning eye open. He doesn't ask Sanji why or say who cares . He watches and looks and waits. 

“Our songs were about death.” He says softly. “They taught us about dying.” 

Because that's what he learned. To embrace the cruelty of life, and honor it, hone it, become it. But he failed that, didn't he? He became someone to serve up life on a porcelain plate with something warm to drink. He is loss, yes, but he is also consumption. He is vitality. 

“What about the songs you learned at the restaurant?” Zoro asks, drinking the whole of Sanji up. 

And Sanji hadn’t thought of that, of all those silly tunes the cooks that had raised him had hummed and murmured. What a perspective, to not think of the bad parts of his life. 

“Well we sang about cooking. We had a song for cutting carrots. Stuff like that.” 

His favorite one was about spices. Zeff used to sing it when he was a little drunk, a little tired. He’d go pap-ri-ka, pap-ri-ka . Sanji can't help but smile at the memory. 

“So sing about cooking. Sing about cutting carrots.” Zoro whispers, pulling Sanji down, down until their noses are brushing and there is no world around them. There’s them, and there's nothing, and that's a fine thing. 

So Sanji sings. Humming at first, and working his way up, getting used to his own voice. Chop, chop, chop, ends and stems. Chop, chop, chop . And he feels very silly, but it's not a bad thing. He smiles, and Zoro smiles, and you’d never believe they’d killed men earlier in the week. He changes the words a little because he’s allowed to do that, isn't he? Mixed in with all those things about when to add salt and how to cook beef, it's I love you . 

“I love you too.” Zoro says, the words forming like the period to a sentence. Like the universal end of every language ever spoken.