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The first thing Sanji notices as he officially boards the deck of Merry is the fact that the Strawhats are weird. Like, weirder than he already thought they were.
For a start, the person who invited him to join the crew wasn’t even their captain. Luffy is apparently their sniper, though after seeing how the kid handled Baratie’s research papers, Sanji can’t imagine seeing him wield a single long-ranged weapon. Or any kind of weapon. Or anything, really.
Their captain—a long-nosed scaredy-cat who is more of a collection of fidgets than a person—doesn’t seem to mind. He takes Sanji’s presence in stride, tells him he was also recruited by Luffy, and proceeds to show off the flag he designed and drew with his own hands. Oh, and the long nose isn’t a devil fruit thing. Sanji asked.
And Nami—well. The ever-wonderful, ever-powerful swordswoman Nami-swan can’t be weird, but it is odd that she’s willing to go along with these two’s antics. He has seen her fight—her swordplay can easily attract bigger and more experienced crews—but then again, Sanji also wouldn’t trade Luffy for any other, either.
Weirdest of it all—they don’t seem to have a navigator.
“Um, isn’t it kind of important?” Sanji asks, neck craning as he surveys the deck. “Having a navigator, I mean.”
Nami looks up from cleaning her swords with a pained smile. “Well, yes and no.”
“Um,” he says. “What does that mean?”
“We... sort of have a navigator. I’d love to introduce him, but,” she releases a long, suffering sigh. “He’s currently lost somewhere on the island.”
Sanji blinks. “Our navigator is currently what?”
+
Roronoa Zoro, it turns out, is a navigator. Somehow. The worst kind there is, probably. Definitely pushing the boundaries of the word’s definition.
He gets lost all the time. He thinks North means above and South is below. He doesn’t know how to read a compass. Hell, Sanji is pretty sure he can’t even tell left from right.
Zoro knows how to use other basic navigation tools, but even Sanji can do that, and he’s their historian. Growing up on the research ship of Baratie definitely helped—surrounded by people who cared more about the different phenology of an island than to navigate Baratie out of an incoming storm, someone had to learn how to read maps. Knowing basic navigation tools is the bare minimum of any seafaring jobs, damn it.
The worst thing is, Zoro is also kind of the best navigator ever.
“Is that—is that an island? Guys, it’s an island!” Usopp bellows from the crow’s nest. Everyone groggily wobbles out of the bunk room, and Sanji watches Usopp jump down and run towards Zoro. “Didn’t the guy in the previous island say it’d take a week to get here? It’s only been three days!”
Zoro rubs his eyes and smiles smugly around his yawn. “You’re welcome.”
“No, really,” Usopp presses, “how did you do that.”
Zoro yawns again and starts scratching his exposed belly, before falling into a pensive silence. For a quick second, Sanji thought Zoro would finally say something smart, a piece of knowledge nobody except the greatest of navigators would know; and Sanji would have to apologize but ultimately spend the rest of his days in peace knowing that Merry and their travels are in good hands.
And then Zoro opens his mouth and says, “well, since the grounds moved a few miles every day—”
Sanji tunes him out. Worst best navigator ever.
+
“So,” Sanji begins, handing Zoro a large tankard, filled to the brim with Cocoyashi Village’s signature alcohol as a peace offering. “You want to draw the map of the world?”
They are in the middle of a feast; the village is celebrating the departure of Arlong and the return of their favorite thief-slash-swordswoman. Sanji is too busy stuffing his face to really pay attention to the others, though—they still haven’t got a cook on Merry, so ration has been pretty tight around the ship, and Sanji can’t afford to be hungry, not after—
“I want to travel through ‘em,” Zoro finally replies, pulling Sanji out of his thoughts. “The map’s secondary.”
Sanji hums, plopping down across Zoro on the small alleyway. “Wouldn’t that make you a traveler, then? Not a navigator?”
Zoro shrugs. “I guess so. Never really cared about titles. Don’t think any of us do.”
Zoro has a point. Usopp is their self-proclaimed great captain who barely deals out commands; Sanji’s a historian, which, what even is that job, and how is that even needed on a pirate ship; Luffy’s their sniper, even though his idea of sniping involves stretching his hand and punching a guy in the face with it from miles away. Nami is probably the only one true to her title, but then again, much like a historian, swordswoman isn’t technically a seafaring job.
“Either way,” Zoro continues, “to travel the world, I need to navigate. So, navigator.”
He flashes Sanji a proud smile, like he’s just said something really smart, and it makes something in Sanji’s stomach feel funny, so he scowls in return. “That’s not what the word means, dumbass—you know what, never mind.”
“Suit yourself,” Zoro says. “You know I’m right.”
“I know you’re not,” Sanji bites back, but he is in too much of a good mood to really mean it. The alleyway is small, and he watches the way the tips of their feet touch. He decides to move them away and nudge Zoro’s white sword with his right foot. “What’s with the sword, then?”
Zoro seems to instinctively touch the hilt of his sword. His expression turns somber, then, and he seems to hesitate to answer Sanji’s question before resolving himself. “I have a promise with someone. She’s—there wasn’t a single drop of blood we shared, but I’d call her a sister. This sword—Wadou—is hers. We were supposed to travel together. Be the best together.”
Sanji picked up the unspoken things, between the lines. “Were?”
Zoro nods. “She passed away,” he says, hand curling around the scabbard. “So I carried her dream with me now.”
He looks Sanji in the eye at that, almost defiantly, like daring Sanji to pity him. It is insulting, really, because all Sanji can think of is— “You’re lucky.”
Zoro raises his eyebrow at that. He looks taken aback. “…that’s new.”
Sanji laughs. “What? You want me to cry for you instead?”
“Tch. As if.”
“No offense, but I thought your dream would be the hardest thing ever for a directionless Marimo like you,” Sanji says. He thinks of All Blue, of a dream larger than your own life, and the people in his life who loved him enough to keep pushing him towards it. “But you have her with you, so it’s fine. She’ll show you the way.”
He takes one last puff of his cigarette before grinding its butt against the ground, and it’s only after he stands up and finishes dusting off his pants that he realizes Zoro is staring at him.
“What?”
“Nothin’,” Zoro sputters, like he’s caught red-handed with something; his face is flushed red, and he immediately looks away when he realizes Sanji is staring back at him.
Huh. Weird, but it's probably the drink.
“Right, I’ll see you around,” he says, and goes into the crowd, his passion to be a step closer towards his dream reignited. He’s going to get some leads for All Blue before they sail away—and if not, perhaps some interesting folklores and local history.
+
Merry sails on, and the crew grows. They now have Chopper, their shipwright (or the doctor of ships, as Chopper introduced himself by), and Robin, the most skilled, beautiful chef Sanji’s ever had the pleasure to be graced with. But some things don’t change: the crew is still as rowdy as ever; Luffy still gets them all into trouble; and Zoro continues to be the worst navigator ever.
“Where the hell are we?” Nami says, exasperated. She’s gotten used to Zoro’s… unorthodox navigation methods much quicker than Sanji did, but even this is a bit too much for her.
Sanji doesn’t fault her. They were woken up by a loud bang coming from everywhere, and when the ship finally stops lurching enough for them to drag their asses out of the bunk room, they are met with a sea of cloud as far as the eyes can sea. Merry bobs idly against the cloud, somehow floating, and there’s no land in sight.
“Awesome! The ocean is the sky now!” Luffy exclaims, wide-eyed; Sanji has to hold him by the collar to make sure he doesn’t do something reckless like jumping into the cloud and falling from the sky.
“Or the sky is the ocean,” Robin points out, wise as ever. “Either way, I’d advise not to be rash—unlike the seas, the sky does not exactly have a seafloor, and a misstep may send us plummeting to our death.”
“How did we even get here?” Usopp squeaks, a stark contrast to Luffy’s excitement; he’s barely taken a step out of the male bunk room.
Zoro, the person who should have the answers to all of these questions, simply shrugs.
Sanji glares at him.
“The water goes up,” he relents after some pestering, voice lazy, like the answer is obvious. There’s a duh somewhere there, unspoken. Sanji is going to strangle him.
“What?”
“The legend talked about islands in the sky and shit, right,” Zoro says, “so I looked for a place where the water would go up.”
Everyone stares at him, baffled, but Sanji has known the brute enough to start translating his Marimo Language, coupled with the knowledge from some encyclopedias he’s read when he was still a kid. “Oh, are you talking about the knock up stream?” He asks excitedly, “You know, those powerful pressurized water streams that shoot upwards to the sky, created by gas trapped in giant underwater… caves…”
He trails off as Zoro simply blinks at him, face blank.
A second passes; then two. “Yeah, I have no idea what the fuck you just said.”
Sanji groans. “Then how did you know how to get us up here?”
Zoro shrugs, and Sanji puts his head in his hands. One of these days, Sanji is going to wake up to half the crew dead, and they’d be lucky to even know where they’d be buried.
+
Robin—Sanji always loves to remind everyone—is a godsend. A chef was long overdue for the Strawhats, and Robin is the best of them all. No more burnt down kitchen. No more rotating rosters no one bothered to keep track of. No more late lunches, skipped dinners, and empty stomachs that hit a little too close to home—
(Sanji remembers being ten, running, sailing away. He remembers a solitary rock standing tall against the waves; cerulean sea boundless against the horizon; a dying man who’d sacrifice his dream for a kid he barely knew. He remembers the starvation, tucked between and around these memories, carving him up from the inside.
He remembers the fear, too. He’s never quite shaken that one off.)
But even if Robin makes the worst food Sanji’s ever tasted in his life, even if she can’t cook at all, Sanji would love her still. Sure, she jokes about accidentally poisoning the crew all the time, but kindness bleeds through the rest of her actions—the custom-brewed teas, the meticulous meal plans, the late night snacks. He knows she had a rough past—hurt and abandoned kids like him could spot one of their own easily—and yet she uses her thousand hands to feed. To give life.
Sanji knows a thing or two about that—about being left behind with an open wound, and still choosing to be kind. He knows how hard it is to make that choice, still, every day.
It is why he chooses to believe her now, boarding the Sea Train without a single moment of hesitation.
He tells the rest of the crew as much.
There are crackles from the other end of the Transponder Snail before Nami’s voice says, “how could she read the Poneglyph, then, if she is really who she said she was?”
Sanji racks his brain, thinking about all the books he’s read on languages. “It’s… actually not that odd, if you think about it. Do you know who, historically, were the first bilinguals?” He asks, but doesn’t wait for stupid answers that he knows are coming from Zoro and Luffy. “Not scholars or nobles, but merchants and cooks. Seafarers. People who travel and serve food for people in other nations. Languages are spread through trade; learning one in a classroom setting is a recent development in our culture.”
“Don’t need one of your boring history lessons right now, Curly,” Zoro cuts in, and is that a hint of—worry In his voice? “Listen, there are some real nasty people on that train! Just wait until we catch up.”
Sanji scoffs. “Aw, is Marimo-kun worried about me?”
“As if,” Zoro yells, and Sanji laughs, feeling giddy in ways he can’t really explain.
“Go ahead and tear things up,” Luffy says.
“I won’t hold back,” Sanji tells him, and crushes the receiver in his hand.
+
They lost a crewmember, that day, for once.
Merry sleeps eternally on the seabed, and Sunny’s deck is drowned in tears.
Franky plays a song on his guitar, somber and soft, but not dull; he doesn’t quite know how much Merry means to them—he can’t, even if he tries—but a good musician knows the weight of a good accompaniment. Franky’s song is not only a nostalgic tune for a long-lost friend, but also a lively ode for the adventures they’ve had with her.
Franky is amazing like that. He is so empathetic and expressive and loud, all the necessary qualities for a good man and an even better musician. He knows how to read the room, laughs at the right jokes, and—most importantly—plays the right songs.
Tonight’s song is something a little upbeat. There are only Sanji and Zoro left on the deck, cleaning up the remains of a barbeque dinner, and the atmosphere is light and easy and a little—charged, for a lack of better words.
Sanji wants to blame the alcohol.
(Zoro laughs at a joke he makes, wide and open and boyish, and Sanji thinks he’s a little drunk on something else, too.)
Franky’s song picks up in tempo, guitar riffs ringing clear as a day even all the way from the crow’s nest, and before Sanji realizes it he’s playfighting Zoro, shoving each other around in a way that doesn’t hurt.
“You’re such an asshole,” Sanji tells him with a few light kicks at Zoro’s shin, just as Franky’s music staccatoed—once, twice. Zoro bats them with his scabbard, a steady thump, thump, almost in rhythm.
“Only as bad as you are, Curly,” Zoro replies, and means it as much as Sanji did, which is, not at all.
The music weaves back and forth now, a thundering march, a delicate dance, but it is always in the same melody, never discordant, and Sanji wonders, this is us, isn’t it?
“You’re driving me insane, you know that?” Zoro growls.
“Ooh, am I really that important to you, Marimo?” He teases, and it’s only when Zoro doesn’t reply that he looks up.
There is something in Zoro’s eyes, a glint of something; Sanji looks up just in time to see Zoro’s gaze flits down towards his lips, before going back up.
“Yes,” Zoro breathes. There’s a bright flush on his cheeks. “You are, Curly.”
The song comes to a halt.
Sanji’s breath hitches in his throat, and he’s pretty sure there’s a blush on his face that mirrors Zoro’s. There’s a flash of hesitation on Zoro’s expression, and it is such a foreign expression on him that it startles Sanji enough to step into Zoro’s personal space and pulls him by the collar.
“You’re a dumbass, and a brute, and an asshole,” Sanji tells him, lips inches away from Zoro's own, “but I never take you for a coward. Kiss me, Mosshead.”
Zoro laughs, and leans in. Franky starts playing a new song, and Sanji’s heart sings.
+
Luffy invites new crewmembers at whim, but Sanji thinks there’s a method to his madness. There is, after all, no other explanation as to how Brook can come in when the Strawhats need him most—when Zoro, especially, needs him most.
There is still blood all over his hands and clothes—Zoro’s, not his—and Sanji thinks of all the wounds on Zoro’s body, on his ankles and limbs and torso. Sanji always had to be the one to stitch them all close, because he was the only one in the crew whose hands didn’t shake when soaked in blood.
This time, though, he isn’t even sure he can do that. His whole body has been wrecked with shivers ever since their encounter with Bartholomeow Kuma, and it has stubbornly refused to stop shaking.
If you look at it in the right ways, you can even say it is Sanji who needs Brook the most.
Brook finally emerges from the bedroom where he treats all his patients when the sun has set, and Sanji not-so-surreptitiously walks away from the crowd to approach him by the piano.
“Is he—” Sanji begins, but stops. The question sticking to his tongue feels a little too forward. He steps back a little, takes in the way Brook is sitting toward the piano, bony fingers tracing the keys in an all-too-familiar gesture, and instead asks, “oh, um, you can play the piano?”
Brook turns to face him. He has no lips or mouth, but Sanji can feel the soft smile on his expression. “You seem to have two questions, Sanji-san,” he says as he presses a few keys, surprisingly in tune with Franky’s strums in the background. “And I’d be delighted to answer both. For the second question: I can, and I may squander your musician’s graciousness to allow me be the occasional accompaniment. As for the first, unspoken one: your lover is stable. While the next few days may not be an easy battle, he can expect a full recovery eventually.”
Sanji is glad he hasn’t grabbed a tankard, because if he did, he would’ve sprayed the drink all over Brook. “We’re not—I’m not—” he sputters out of habit, but they are, aren’t they? Boyfriends. Partners. Lovers. “How did you know?”
Brook laughs. “I’ve lived longer than most, Sanji-san, I know where to look. And besides,” he says. “Your affections are unspoken, but not quiet.”
Sanji slumps against the piano, taking it all in. Brook waves at Franky from across the room, and there must be a particular language only musicians know, because Franky gives him a thumbs up and they start playing something more festive together.
“Thanks,” he says after a moment, “for saving the Mosshead. He can be a little reckless, and if you weren’t here—”
Nothing happened, Zoro’s voice rings in his ears, and Sanji balls his fist, trying to will it away.
“I was here,” Brook agrees, pulling Sanji away from his thoughts. “And I will be here, as long as our captain will have me.”
Perhaps it’s the confident way Brook said them, or the fact that Sanji’s seen him save Zoro’s life with his own eyes—either way, the words feel reassuring, and Sanji feels tension slowly bleed out of his shoulders.
He wonders how their crew could survive for so long without an actual doctor. Sanji doesn’t miss the irony: a dead man, nursing another to life. Or maybe he got it all backwards—after all, who is better at cheating death than a living skeleton?
(He tells Brook as much, and Brook laughs harder than he thought he would. Sounds like a joke I would make, he tells Sanji after another bout of uncontrollable giggles. It feels nice to be the one on the receiving end, for once. I tell them all the time, but an empty ship can’t laugh in return.
Sanji vows to tell Brook all the jokes he knows from now on.)
+
Zoro finds him at the Crow’s Nest.
The night sky is clear when they sail away, Thriller Bark disappearing into the horizon, and Zoro’s skin looks pale, washed out by the moonlight.
Zoro makes a, come here, motion, and Sanji relents, crossing the room and settling in between Zoro’s legs, his back to Zoro’s chest. He turns for a second to drape the blanket he’s been using all over the both of them, and Zoro makes a contented noise.
Sanji thinks of a quiet moment like this, back in Cocoyashi Village. They used to sit opposite one another, so far apart. It feels like a lifetime ago.
Zoro nudges his side with his leg. “Talk to me, Curly.”
Sanji chuckles, mind drifting back from the conversation from ages ago about duties and dreams. “Do you ever wonder,” he asks, “if you were the swordsman?”
Sanji can’t see Zoro’s voice, but he knows Zoro is wearing that expression he always wears when he can’t quite keep up with Sanji’s train of thoughts. He places a hand on Wadou. “I am a swordsman.”
“But you’re not the swordsman of the crew,” Sanji says. “That role is reserved for our dear Nami. But imagine, for a moment—you, the swordsman, and Nami is the navigator. We’d probably get lost a lot less.”
“I don’t get lost,” Zoro huffs, indignant. “And what would you be then, Curly? You’re a nerd. There’s no other job on this ship that’s as nerdy.”
“I’m educated,” Sanji counters. “And Robin is educated. Maybe I’ll be the ship cook! I can use all my knowledge on marine life to make fantastic recipes.”
Zoro leans forward, hooking his chin on Sanji’s shoulder. Their cheeks press against each other, and Sanji can feel Zoro’s smile as he says, “yeah? You’ll cook all the fish on the All Blue?”
Sanji gasps. “Not all, you brute—that would be devastating towards the ecosystem,” he points out, “but I’ll cook a couple of each, documenting its different tastes and textures.”
Zoro chuckles. “You’re still a nerd even when you’re a cook, huh. Still looking for that sea of yours.”
Zoro probably meant it as a passing comment, but something about it hits Sanji right in the very center of his chest, and settles deep in his gut. When he replies, the words feel final: “I can’t think of a version of me that isn’t looking for All Blue.”
He twists his body to face Zoro to—to what, he isn't sure; but he just needs to face him now. When their eyes meet, there is a small smile on Zoro’s face. “Of course, Cook,” Zoro says playfully, “wouldn’t expect any less from you.”
It’s a stupid joke—calling him Cook out of all things—but Sanji can’t help smiling back. He is suddenly overcome with the urge to touch, so he does, hand brushing up Zoro’s neck, palm resting on the Navigator’s cheek. He can feel Zoro’s own hands on his hips, thumbs making small, soothing circles on the small of Sanji’s back.
“You know,” Zoro says, out of the blue. “I think I can.”
Sanji tilts his head. He’s been a little distracted. “You can what?”
“Think of a version of me that isn’t going after the same goal as I am right now,” Zoro explains. “Nothing about maps, or traveling, or whatever.”
Sanji frowns, and pinches Zoro’s cheek. “That’s bullshit,” he says, “you’re the most single-minded guy I know. You can’t be yourself without that.”
“That’s the thing, though,” Zoro says, batting Sanji’s hand away, “what makes me… me, is my focus. My passion. My discipline. Trying to be the best navigator or the best swordsman—that’s still me, aiming to be the best version of myself. I would still be giving my all. And that’s me.”
It… makes a terrifying amount of sense, actually. “Huh,” Sanji says. “Did you just overwork your one brain cell to come up with that.”
“Oi—”
Sanji kisses him, then. Mostly to win the argument, but also because he can. Zoro doesn’t seem to complain, humming into the kiss, but Sanji pulls away before Zoro can lean in for an open-mouthed kiss. He doesn’t want to go any further than this, not yet, because he needs to ask—
“And this?” He says, resting his temple against Zoro, lips not quite touching. “Would we still have this?”
Zoro takes his hand, then, intertwining their fingers together, and something in Sanji’s chest warms at the gesture. Zoro kisses him again, chastely this time, so light and sweet it skitters under Sanji’s skin like static.
“I can’t think of a version of me that doesn’t love you.” Zoro says, and Sanji thinks, oh. What did I ever do to deserve him.
Zoro takes his silence the wrong way, though, because he knocks his temple against Sanji’s, pouting in that way of his that Sanji finds cute but would never admit even under gunpoint. “‘s that okay with you?”
Sanji grins. “Yeah,” he says, thinking of a thousand versions of Zoro and a thousand versions of himself, finding each other over and over again. He smiles against Zoro’s lips. “Good.”