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Sanji woke up groggy, with a pounding headache, on the grass of the Sunny. The surroundings were all familiar; Luffy was chasing Usopp a ways over, Nami was reading in a chair and Zoro was probably napping somewhere. Robin was likely in the library, maybe with Chopper. Franky was surely off fixing something. Nothing unusual.
Something still felt off.
Sanji couldn’t place it, couldn’t even begin to describe the sensation of something being so slightly out of place, as if someone had moved your stuff a little to the left when you were gone. Not a cause for alarm, but unsettling.
Sanji brushed his hair out of his eyes and tried to shake the feeling, getting up on unsteady legs. He needed to get started on whatever meal was next, Luffy was probably hungry already-
What had he been doing before he woke up? He didn’t remember falling asleep. Didn’t remember being on the ship at all, in the first place. Now that he thought about it, the last thing he remembered, they’d docked at some random island with friendly enough people and he’d been out shopping by himself, and then this weird smell had started following him…
Sanji’s eyes were wide with alarm now. The thing that wasn’t right had become very apparent when he’d gotten to his feet, and it was the vest weighing down his torso, beeping a steady tone with a timer shining through his white dress shirt.
What the fuck.
Sanji forced himself to take a deep breath in through his nose, feeling sweat break out along his hairline, soaking his hands.
It was probably fine.
Maybe it was even fake, just something to scare him and the crew with. He even considered a prank from the others, but seeing as they paid him no attention, he didn’t think it likely.
The first thing he needed to do was see the timer and figure out how much time he had to fix this shit. Preferably without any of his crew finding out or being in danger.
With silent steps, Sanji hurried to the galley, locking the door after him. Only then did he stop to inhale deeply again.
His fingers shook slightly when he unbuttoned his shirt, but he felt this was enough of a crisis to allow some unsteadiness.
He swallowed hard before he opened the shirt.
12.19, the timer screamed silently in red letters.
He could see the explosives attached all around the vest, and it felt too real to be anything but.
Sanji grit his teeth.
12 minutes was pretty fucking tight. He had no idea how to disable this sort of shit, and the only thing he could think to do was run as far from the ship and people as possible and explode in peace there.
He didn’t really want to explode on a random Thursday, but if it was between that and taking his crew with him, he did not even have to think about it.
He was just about to button up his shirt and put on a convincing smile to leave the ship with, when a voice came from the other end of the galley.
“What the fuck is that, cook?”
Zoro, fucking Zoro , said - of course that idiot would be napping here of all places, fuck Sanji to hell and back - now he wouldn’t even be able to die in fucking peace.
“What? This? Oh, it’s nothing, just a new toy Usopp wanted me to try for him,” Sanji lied effortlessly.
“Really? Cuz that sort of looks like a bomb to me,” he said casually as he started walking over, and Sanji’s heart sped up as he backed away, trying to keep as much distance as possible.
“Huh, I didn’t even realise,” Sanji tried and winced as his tone missed ‘causal’ by a mile.
The deadpan Zoro sent his way had him cringing.
“Cut the bullshit, cook.” Zoro’s voice was cold, hard, determined. Serious, in a way that Sanji almost never heard, nor had rarely been the target of. It sent another type of chill through his bones, along with a quick thrumming panic telling him he needed to get away, and he knew Zoro was going to try to stop him.
There was only one thing he could do. Zoro was still far enough away to make him feel like he could pull it off.
He backed up until he was right beside the door, hands itching, and then he said:
“It’s gonna be fine. I have this under control.”
Then he clicked the lock, tore the door open and bolted.
What immediately followed him was a fierce, angry roar of “COOK!”, that only served to make him run faster. He rounded a corner, took the stairs three at a time and bursted out on the deck. Not wasting even a second breathing, and hearing the smattering of heavy booted steps close behind him, he ran to the railing and jumped it, trying to land as steadily as possible on the ground so as not to jostle the bomb.
The fucking bomb strapped to his chest.
He kept running.
When Zoro tore out onto the deck, he just saw the cook’s figure jump over the railing and hit the ground.
“SANJI!” He shouted, panting, and subsequently startled everybody on deck.
Nami immediately let out an exasperated sigh at what she thought was their regular antics, but Zoro didn’t have the time to explain the seriousness of the situation in detail to her.
“Captain!” Zoro’s voice was loud, and Luffy’s head snapped to him immediately, meeting his eyes head on, dead serious. “The cook has a bomb vest.”
Then he lept over the railing and followed the distinct smattering of steps he would recognise anywhere as they tried to get away from him.
Usopp broke the silence that had taken over the deck with a heartfelt, “What the fuck.”
Nami stood stunned, bent over her mikan trees, but Luffy had already put on his hat, eyes set in that serious way of his whenever they got into a pinch.
“Franky!” Luffy called.
Only a few seconds later, the shipwright was present on deck.
“What is a bomb vest?” Their captain - their Captain, Usopp lamented, how could he not know what a bomb vest was - asked.
Franky looked confused, but explained nonetheless.
“Um, it’s a vest filled with explosives that you would put on someone to make them explode and take all of the people close to them out along with that person. It’s usually rigged on a timer or has a remote button. Why?” The shipwright looked at the pale people gathered on deck with something close to apprehension.
Usopp finally gathered enough wits to reply, but it was something he never thought he would be saying.
“Zoro just said that Sanji has a bomb vest and they both ran away from the ship.”
The implications were heavy in the air. ‘Sanji has a bomb vest’ could mean that he was in possession of one and it wasn’t active and he’d been given one that they could use, Usopp reasoned. But the heavier implication, that would explain why Sanji ran away and Zoro followed him, would be that Sanji was wearing the bomb vest .
Usopp felt nauseous. Nami looked like she had made the same connection and was equally pale. Luffy still hadn’t said anything, and Franky’s face was set in a horrified grimace.
“If Sanji bro is wearing a bomb vest, he’s probably running as far away from people as possible before it explodes,” Franky broke the silence by saying.
“The other side of this island had no villages, and it’s isolated by a big forest,” Nami remembered. “It won’t take long for the Sunny to sail around the island,” she continued. There was a brief silence, until Luffy shifted.
He raised his arms in the air, fists clenched in that typical way of his, and declared: “Set sail!”
Get away from people, get away from people, get away from people was the only thing Sanji could think about as he ran along the outskirts of the city, following the coastline on the one cobbled road there was. He would have liked to run beside the sea, so he could throw himself in the water if he ran out of time before he stopped seeing anyone around, but the sand would slow him down too much. And he could still hear that godforsaken idiot swordsman’s heavy steps following behind him, and he knew if he even slowed his pace a little, that moron would catch up. Who ran after someone with a bomb strapped to them, Sanji desperately wondered, his panic fluttering uselessly in his pounding chest.
He kept running, even when he could feel blisters forming on his heels, when he couldn’t take a full breath. He tore through groups of tourists looking at the beach, he ran past playing children, mothers with babies, stalls full of ice cream and souvenirs. And he pushed himself to run even faster, could not bear the thought of being the cause of ending such happiness, carefreeness, with this stupid, stupid bomb vest.
He dared once to look at the timer. 6.13 the red numbers showed and he almost stumbled over a rock before he managed to catch his balance. 6 minutes to get further away.
After running for another minute or two, he noticed that the only thing he was seeing was trees, even the voices behind fading away. He was finally leaving the city, but that didn’t mean there weren’t small cottages hidden away from the village in the woods.
He had to keep going.
Soon, the sounds from the nearby village and its people were gone, and the only thing he could hear was his heavy breathing, his heart pounding in his chest, and his and Zoro’s synchronised footsteps.
Zoro was still behind him, not managing to catch up but not falling behind, keeping the exact same pace as Sanji. But he wasn’t far enough away, Sanji felt in his gut. He knew that if he blew up now, he would take Zoro with him.
Gathering up the last of his air, he filled his lungs and shouted:
“Don’t come any closer you fucking idiot!” He panted hard, mindful not to lose his pace because then Zoro would realise immediately and catch up and that would be the worst case scenario ever.
“There’s no one here but you and me, and if you just let me go then only one person has to get blown up today and everybody will keep being happy!” He shouted between heavy breaths and slamming footsteps.
He heard Zoro’s steps pick up speed, and groaned in frustration as he pushed himself to go even faster. Hopelessness and panic were clawing in his chest, bringing burning tears to his eyes as he ran, and he wiped them away with a stray arm to clear his vision so he wouldn’t stumble.
He checked the timer.
2.27
He quickly scanned his surroundings. To his left, there was the sea, a gritty beach. To his right, dense, thick forest. No signs of people.
Everybody should be safe now. Everybody, if that algae brained idiot hadn’t followed him and refused to stay the fuck away so he could just die by himself, because one loss was way better than two and it would just be his fault if he let Zoro die here with him, but what was he supposed to do?
He halted, forcing his body to an immediate stop and screamed at the top of his lungs: “STOP!”
Zoro stumbled out of his pace a few metres behind him, but regained his senses quick enough to begin stalking towards Sanji with big, determined steps.
Sanji was panting, hands on his knees in an effort to catch his breath, but it felt impossible with the sobs trying to claw their way out of his throat.
“Don’t come any closer!” He managed in a broken voice. The tears he’d held back were burning hot tracks down his cheeks, and when he looked at Zoro, the swordsman looked stricken.
A second later he took a small step and Sanji backed up immediately, hands out in front of him as if to push him away, but he wasn’t even that close.
“ Please, please , just let me do this,” he begged, voice hoarse from grating sobs. “I can’t die knowing I’m taking you with me, Zoro, please. ”
The tears were streaming, sobs wracking his weighed down frame, and the arms he’d had in front of him came down to hug himself in a last effort to bring himself some sort of comfort.
The sight of their cook holding himself, crying, absolutely broke Zoro’s heart.
“Cook. C’mon, we can fix this together. Just let me help you, alright?” Zoro said, jaw clenched tight because he couldn’t bear seeing Sanji doing this, and for what? To protect the crew? That included protecting himself , Zoro seethed in his mind. That stupid curlybrow always put himself after everybody else on the crew, not hesitating to take blows on someone else’s behalf, always throwing himself in harm's way to protect the others. Of course, Zoro knew this about him; he was first mate after all. Of course, Sanji would run away in this situation. He’d have made a clean escape, too, if Zoro hadn’t been napping in the galley. Some small logical part of him from before he joined Luffy’s crew knew that one loss was better than two, remembered people as replaceable instead of invaluable, but that didn’t- couldn’t - apply now, and he refused to accept the cooks wish to die alone. He would not let him die , not like this. Never like this.
Sanji couldn’t stop his body from trembling. He was breathing hard from all the running, and the sobbing, and the screaming. None of it had made the actual problem go away; none of it had saved him from this horror story of a reality.
Zoro was saying that they could solve this together, but Sanji could not see any other way out. He had no idea how to disable this thing, and he didn’t dare move it in case there was a fail-safe to blow it up even earlier. At this point, every second he was still breathing felt like a blessing.
And then Sanji heard a voice that sank his heart into the pit of his stomach.
His captain, on their ship, dropping anchor in the waters right beside him, screaming his name from his seat on Sunny’s head.
No. No, no, no no no no no no no.
This couldn’t be happening - he ran away to protect them, and now they were here ?
He watched in horror as they all disembarked the ship to the background tune of mechanical ticking of the timer. He backed up further against the trees to maintain distance that his crew did not heed.
A quick look at the timer had Sanji tripping over his own feet in his haste to back up.
1.30, it said.
“Guys, I promise it’s okay,” Sanji tried to convince his approaching crew, but it all seemed to fall on deaf ears. When they reached Zoro, who looked frozen to the ground after seeing the timer, turning to Luffy with desperate eyes, Sanji felt another wave of dread overtake him. He didn’t want this to happen and the timer was headless to his desperation. When Luffy made a move as if to come closer, Sanji almost started hyperventilating.
“There’s no more time, everybody, please stay away.” Sanji shouted, backing up, flailing his arms so they wouldn’t come closer as the ticking of the timer sped up as it reached its final minute.
Zoro was screaming something that could have been his name, or absolutely anything because Sanji couldn't hear anything except for the thudding of his heart and the ticking of the clock.
Luffy looked as if he’d seen a ghost as he held Zoro back from running to him with his whole strength, arms wound tightly around the swordsman’s torso as he struggled against the hold. Usopp looked frantic, searching his pockets for anything of use while throwing panicked looks his way. Nami was pale, hands raised in front of her mouth and tears welling in her eyes, only further breaking Sanji’s heart. He didn’t want it to end this way. Robin… Robin seemed distracted, her hands in her signature pose for using her devil fruit powers, and Franky was turned towards her, saying something that Sanji couldn’t catch, but it didn’t matter much as the ticking of the timer sped up even more.
Sanji didn’t want this to be the last time he saw his crewmates, their faces stricken by grief, horror, sadness and he tried to put on a brave smile, straightened his back to look proud at least even in his last moments, while his heart cried, a heartbroken, torn feeling. Sanji closed his eyes and braced for impact with a last roar of his name in Zoro’s voice ringing in his ears as the timer settled on a last long beeeee
eeeeeeee
eeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeee-
The wailing of the timer abruptly cut off.
The stillness in its wake left Sanji unbalanced, feeling as if the ground was swaying beneath him. His tightly clenched body flinched at every sound until he realised - the bomb didn’t go off.
It didn’t go off!
He heard a thud in the sand behind him and turned just in time to see a poof of flowers leaving a pair of pliers behind.
Robin must have- and Franky- and somehow-
Every thought was a jumbled mess as he tried to comprehend what had just happened. As he finally understood that the bomb didn’t explode and he was alive , he sank down on his knees in the sand. His hands were shaking, and he couldn’t get a full breath in but he was alive .
He looked up at his crew through the tears in his eyes just at the moment Luffy’s long arms snapped back into place and set Zoro free. The swordsman didn’t hesitate - he ran full speed towards Sanji, skidding the last distance on his knees to get as close as possible. His hands immediately grabbed Sanji’s trembling shoulders, steadying him and feeling him being in one piece, not exploded. Sanji was trying to grapple with the vest to finally get it off , but his fingers couldn’t even grip the zipper.
“I-I can’t, my h-hands-” Sanji tried to get out, but Zoro shushed him gently.
“It’s okay, I got it, I got it,” he said while he deftly unzipped the vest and all but tore it off Sanji. As soon as its weight left his frame, he toppled forward into Zoro, all but crashing into the swordsman as his muscles finally let go of all the tension and dread that had built up. Zoro’s arms grasped around his still shaking torso firmly, pressing him further into the other’s chest, grip strong and grounding.
Sanji couldn’t have stopped the sobs if he’d so tried with his whole heart, and now he felt so spent, emotionally and physically that he didn’t even bother, just letting himself cry as Zoro shushed him gently, rocking their bodies a little side to side.
When he finally calmed down enough to lift his face from where he’d been mushing it into Zoro shirt, it was Zoro who seemed reluctant to let go, still holding him close with almost a desperate grip around his back, and Sanji realised that Zoro had been just as panicked as himself, following him all the while despite the danger, trying to convince Sanji he could help him. In those last moments before he thought the bomb was gonna go off, Zoro had seemed frantic with worry and desperation, fighting Luffy to try and get to him. He’d never seen Zoro like that before, and couldn’t shake the picture of the terror in his eyes as he’d thought Sanji was gonna die out of his mind.
“I’m okay, moss, I’m okay, everything’s okay,” he whispered close to Zoro’s ear as he returned the embrace, holding him just as tightly back.
One of Zoro’s hands moved from his back to grip the back of his head, shoving his face into the swordsman’s broad shoulder to press his mouth to Sanji’s ear. A hoarse whisper of “Cook,” was all Sanji needed to hug him even closer, hands clenching tight in his shirt.
“Please, don’t ever do that again, Sanji,” Zoro pleaded, his hand unsteady as he gently carded it in Sanji’s hair. He pressed his face against that warm palm and tried to convince himself that everything was okay. He’d made it out, his crew were all here and safe with him. He breathed out the last of the lingering fear in his limbs and answered:
“Yeah, I can promise that.” He tried for a lighthearted chuckle with the words, but it got stuck in his throat as Zoro hugged him tight once again.
He felt Zoro sigh against him, some of the tension finally leaving his body, his grip easing enough that Sanji could peek over his shoulder at the rest of the crew.
They had come closer, but still left a respectful distance for Sanji to collect himself. He took a deep breath and wiped his eyes, before properly disengaging from Zoro’s embrace to stand and face the others.
Usopp was the first to run to him, absolutely tackling him in a hug and squeezing him tightly all the while crying into his shoulder.
“SANJI!” He wailed, and the others took that as their cue to surround him in a group hug. Both Franky and Chopper were crying, Nami was definitely a little misty eyed but tried to hide it, and Robin looked uncharacteristically relieved. They all looked just as overwhelmed and dazed by this past half hour as he felt, and his heart swelled with love for them all.
As soon as there was a little more space around him after a suitable amount of crying and hugging and crying some more, Sanji found himself with a face full of rubber. Luffy had wrapped both his arms and legs several times around him and clung to him like a little monkey, his head atop of Sanji’s and his chest pressed against Sanji’s face.
“Don’t run away again Sanji,” Luffy berated him in his petulant voice, but with a hint of audible relief. “I promise you can trust us to always help you,” the Captain continued. “I’m really glad Zoro followed you so you knew you weren’t alone.” And those words hit Sanji in the gut, making his eyes sting from tears yet again. He hugged his Captain with all his might, so he could show him how much those words meant even if he couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat.
“And I need the best cook on my crew! Can you make meat for dinner tonight Sanji?” Luffy then asked, make his adorable, puppy eyes, as if Sanji had ever denied a request of his before.
“‘course, Luf. Anything you want.”
“Let’s get back to the ship and get away from this shitty island before someone else tries to explode one of us,” Nami’s stern voice swiftly decided the next course of action, and the crew easily complied with agreeing nods. Sanji had to carry Luffy all the way to the ship because the captain refused to let go of him, but honestly, Sanji was hard pressed to mind. He looked at the setting sun from the Sunny’s deck and heard the excited chatter of the others in the background. Seems like today wasn’t a good day to get blown up after all.