Chapter Text
Fortunately, nothing had happened whilst he slept. He was still relatively on course and it only took a few minutes of drowsy steering to get the ship back on track. He couldn’t have been out for too long judging by the sky but still enough to avoid the worst of the sun’s rays. The rest of the voyage went by seamlessly until the island finally appeared off in the horizon.
He hummed as he approached, readying the ship to be docked. Just as he had predicted; he was more than capable of doing this. Even if he got in trouble once he came back, there could be no more denying he was incapable or too young to handle himself anymore.
He went over a checklist that he had pocketed away. It was relatively small, just a few things that the Baratie typically ran out of pretty fast. He had brought enough money to purchase the items, and though the list wouldn't take long to complete, he felt uneasy at the thought of sailing too long in the night. He was less familiar with this area than he was the restaurant’s waters. Resting here for the night couldn’t hurt. He would have more than enough money for a room but for this to work, he would need to venture out to other islands and gather more stock. He didn’t want to risk wasting it all now so perhaps the people here would take pity on an exhausted and too-skinny child.
Although, maybe he shouldn’t do that. What was the point of all this if he was hoping for people to take pity on him for his youth? Sanji was a man and goddamnit he was going to prove it! Even if it meant sleeping right here, on the ship itself with no blanket or pillow in the middle of the night– just so there couldn’t even be a possibility of people offering him hospitality.
Yeah, that would show them alright.
Decision made and boat docked, Sanji clambered down in search of food. He had faint memories of this place, having been once awhile ago, and headed in the direction of their marketplace. It wasn’t anything overly fancy, just a few of their seasonal crops and fishes, but he examined each meticulously. It was a delicate and time consuming task but he kept going, wishing to only bring back the finest. Some of the people were surprised to see such a young child running these errands so carefully but he paid them no mind, despite his raising irritation at the comments directed towards his age and lack of supervision.
Eventually, he made began to make his way back over to the docks. The bags in his hands were heavy and he struggled with resisting the urge to drag them. His arms ached under the strain from the bag and he hissed as cloth from his shirt rubbed against the limbs, aggravating the sting from his sunburns. The only part of him that wasn’t aching were his legs, which were strong from Zeff’s training. It made him a little more confident as that lack of pain signified his strength, but he slightly wilted as he remembered he would be sleeping on the ship. If he was sore now, he didn’t even want to think about how he would feel after a night of resting on wooden planks.
He set the bags down gingerly and laid down carefully, biting his bottom lip as his reddened skin rubbed against the wooden planks. If he woke up with splinters, he might actually lose his mind. The pack of cigarettes he had bought for himself poked uncomfortably through the pocket of his shirt. He had half a mind to light one up there but decided against it, choosing instead to settle as comfortably as he could before closing his eyes and willing sleep to take hold.
A faint breeze swept through the air, tickling the leaves of nearby trees. If he focused hard enough, he could hear the faint plips! of fishes jumping in and out of the nearby water that softly shook the boat. There was something else that stood out in the serenity of nature and Sanji’s brow twitched as he tried to figure out what it was.
It sounded like squeaking. Close by, cautious and slow. Sanji’s senses were on high alert as he heard it approaching. It didn’t seem like an animal or anything wet that had clambered on. Rather it was something else entirely, unnatural in a way that he had never heard before.
His eyes shot open and he found himself looking right into the dark eyes of another boy.
Sanji screamed- scrambling backgrounds until he hit a wall. The boy’s neck had been elongated just now, expanded just so that it would hover in front of his face, but at the sound of his panic it had snapped back into place. The boy tilted his head confusedly. They must have been about the same age, the boy maybe being a year or two younger, but he certainly seemed a little more…uncivilized than Sanji was. His black hair was wild from underneath a straw hat and his feet were bare, though in his hands he held a pair of sandles. The clothes he wore, jorts and a T-shirt, were clearly purchased from some sort of town though which ruined the possibility of him being some sort of feral child. The booger he flicked out threatened to bring that back.
“Who are you?” Sanji whispered, an edge of panic in his tone forcing it to waver. Boy or not, he had snuck onto the ship. “Where did you come from?”
“I’m Luffy.” The boy grinned. “Sorry for waking you up, I took off my shoes so you could sleep. What’s your name?”
Even in the night, his smile was so bright that Sanji was taken aback for a moment.
“Sanji.” The response came out before he could stop it. He shook himself, coming back to reality before circling back to his original question. “Where did you come from?” Luffy sat down in front of him, unbothered at the whole ordeal. His pinky went back up his nostril and he continued to dig for gold.
“Foosha village.”
“Where?”
Luffy shrugged. “It’s kinda far from here. I made a boat out of sticks and left because I want to be a pirate like Shanks. It was okay but then there was a lot of water and I can’t swim so I thought I was going to drown but then I saw this island and came here! Good thing I kept my treasure, huh?”
“Treasure?” He looked around for gold, wondering how much he could have even brought on a bundle of sticks.
“ This is my treasure,” He said, tapping the ridge of his straw hat. “Shanks gave it to me when he saved my life, and I promised that I would give it back some day. I’ll give it back when I’m King of the Pirates, so- until I find the One Piece- I guess this is the most important treasure I have!”
He kept going, laughing about how someone named Ace was going to be pissed when he came back, but one word had stood out in that rant that stood out to Sanji. Pirate . It left him horrified. There was no actual proof of Zeff being one, his ship having gone down in that fateful storm, but this boy was clearly well acquainted with piracy if he wished to become one. He knew Shanks and he had left the East Blue ages ago! What if this boy found out about Zeff and sent the marines after him?
Something else had been bothering him. “Your neck.” Sanji said, cutting the boy off and pointing at his own. “It stretched earlier. How?”
“Oh that one is easy!” The boy laughed as if having an expandable neck was the most natural thing on the planet. He lifted a hand– the same one that had just been in his nose– up to his mouth and stretched his grin out at an arms length. “I ate a gum-gum fruit! I’m a rubber man!”
He ate a devil fruit?
Sanji gaped. Not only did this boy, a complete child, somehow obtain and consume a devil fruit; but he also wanted to be a pirate ? Sanji had never actually met someone with a devil fruit, but even he knew about how the sea takes away the user’s ability to swim. For a moment, he considered that perhaps the boy was unaware of that fact before remembering how he had mentioned not being able to swim. And still ventured out to the ocean on nothing bundle of sticks.
“Are you crazy?” There was an edge of anger to his voice that crept in naturally, despite it being a genuine question. “You’ll drown if you go into the ocean, and you went without even having a boat!? How are you planning on getting home!?”
“That’s why I was here! I have a ship now, and a crew!”
Wait… Wait he couldn’t mean…
Sanji opened his mouth, closed it, then reopened it. So quietly, so low that you would have had to lean in to hear it, he asked. “Who’s on your crew?”
Another laugh. “You!”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I refuse.”
“I refuse your refusal.”
“You can’t just–” Sanji took a deep breath. “First of all, it doesn’t work like that. Second of all, I already have a job and it’s not being a pirate. I’m a chef. This is my ship and I’m using it to run errands.”
Luffy, once again, titled his head. “How can this be your ship if I’m the captain?”
“ Did you not hear me– ”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Yeah, you’re a cook. I kinda need one if I’m going to be King of the Pirates. Hey, what’s in that bag? Is it food? I’m so hungry!”
Before he could answer, Luffy crawled over to the bag and started to eat an entire fish. Raw. If he wasn’t horrified before, Saji definitely was now. To make it worse, the boy was eating the fish as if it was the best thing in his entire life.
That wouldn’t work. Before he even knew what he was doing, Sanji ripped the half-eaten fish out of the boy’s mouth (did he really chomp it in half with only one bite?) and hopped off the ship and the docks to a small stretch of sandy beach shore. A cry of indignation followed him as the boy stretched down, legs expanding in a way that he doubted he could ever get used to. He was complaining, very loudly, but Sanji paid no attention to it as he gathered together sticks that had fallen from the nearby trees. He worked quickly, rubbing two together after he had put together a small pile until it set ablaze.
He began roasting the fish. At some point Luffy had realized what he was doing and stopped trying to grab the food from him, but that didn’t keep him from whining. It took everything he had to clench his jaw and wait for the meat to cook instead of knocking him upside the head with his leg. But if the kid was saying that he was hungry, that meant anything else would just have to wait.
At last, he tossed the steaming fish back to Luffy who caught it immediately with his mouth. He watched with amusement as the boy swallowed the thing whole. Sure, it was disgusting, but he couldn’t fight the laughter that bubbled up and escaped his lips after Luffy took a solid ten seconds to notice that the food he had just eaten was hot.
He collapsed on his back, panting and waving his hands at his tongue in an attempt to cool it down. Sanji fell back onto the ground too, laughter clenching his stomach until it hurt. Joyful tears leaked from the sides of his eyes. How long has it been since he had fun like this? He loved the Baratie and, although he would never admit it, he loved Zeff too. But there was always something lacking. He always had to prove himself in some kind of way, always had to work and keep getting better and never slack off for to make sure that nobody would connect that a child would feel childlike emotions. He didn’t know why or how Luffy brought those feelings out of him, nor was he used to them, but it was exhilarating.
Eventually silence lapsed over them again. It was quite nice, the exhaustion from earlier wavering away and allowing him to be perfectly content with just being here. The two boys were sat facing the ocean, the moonlight reflecting off of it in a way that perfectly captured the silver waves and glints of aquatic life jumping in and out. Sanji was immersed in its beauty and to his side, Luffy was too. All at once, he understood how even someone incapable of swimming would be just as enticed by it as he was.
“So, are you joining my crew now?” Luffy’s hand was in his mouth, licking off the remnants of food. Sanji remained facing the sea, aware of the large eyes prickling against his side. It was a tough question. Realistically, Sanji knew that he could never abandon the life that he had created at the Baratie. He knew that he was young and that even if he proved his capabilities of running a restaurant, that wouldn’t necessarily translate into venturing across the Grandline. But one part of him, the part that begged to be let loose despite its irrational existence, dreamed of nothing more than discovering the All Blue. It was out there somewhere, hidden in the Grand Line. And he would find it.
Just not today.
“No. I don’t want to be a pirate.” That part wasn’t necessarily a lie. He was a cook through and through. Piracy would not rob him of that. However, Luffy seemed to disagree, making a disgruntled noise and looking down at the grains of sand between them. “I’m going back to my restaurant, the Baratie, after this. I have to make a few more stops in the morning, and I can take you back to your village, but I’m not going to stop until Zeff realizes that I’m a cook. And a man.”
Luffy’s head tilted. “Zeff? Is that like your dad? And he thinks you’re a girl?”
Now it was Sanji’s turn to be confused. “What? No! Well, kind of? To the dad thing– not the girl thing. I only met him a few years ago but he takes care of me. And he knows I’m a boy, but a boy is so much different than a man.”
Luffy nodded along though his look of confusion betrayed any attempts at pretending to understand. Sanji just sighed. The kid was younger than him after all, perhaps he just didn’t grasp the idea of manhood like him yet.
He decided to leave it at that. His hand fished around in his pockets for the cigarette packet. He had smoked a few times before, stealing from the other cooks who were downright addicted to the nicotine, but he never had his own before. Nor could he smoke freely, having to be cautious of someone possibly tattling on him. Out here though, he felt only calmness drafting over him as he blew out a cloud of smoke.
It drifted up to the sky, blending in with the approaching storm clouds. They were far off in the distance, nothing to be concerned about. Not that he would have been, living out at sea he was always able to determine which storms were cause for worry rather quickly. This would be a light one and, by the time it reached this little island, it will have probably turned into nothing more than a faint drizzle. Still, he watched as it rolled across the sky above the ocean.
“So…” Luffy pressed, because of course the kid couldn’t realize when a conversation was over. “Pirates, am I right? I’m going to be the King of Pirates, y’know?”
“I can’t just go and leave the Baratie.” Sanji replied, instantly knowing what he was getting ready to ask again. He smiled though, thinking dreamily of what was out there, and decided to indulge him a little. “But I’ll go there someday, to the Grand Line.”
Luffy laughed, smiling cheerfully. His arm closest to Sanji wrapped itself warmly around him. “Then let’s go now!”
“Not now.”
The storm brewed in the distance. Little bolts of lightning darted across the horizon and Sanji watched, mesmerized for a moment. It was dangerous out there but at the same time thrilling. He knew that firsthand, mind flashing back to the Orbit and pirates and the storm and starving, but how long could that really keep him away? After all, the entire reason he was still alive was out there. His dream.
“Hey!” Sanji turned away from the water and to Luffy, who appeared surprised at his sudden change in attention. “Have you ever heard of the All Blue?” His visible eye was alight with excitement and the smile he wore was large enough to take up half of his face. It rivaled Luffy’s from earlier, so bright that it seemed to illuminate the entire shore.
“Nope.” Luffy answered. Sanji faltered for a second, prepared to endure endless teasing on how something so fantastical as the All Blue could never be real. But it never came. Instead Luffy sat there, genuinely interested in a way that Sanji had only seen a select few times in Zeff and, long ago, Reiju.
“What? You haven’t!?” He was not about to miss his opportunity here to talk freely about it. He sat up straighter, excited. “It’s a mystical sea!”
He waited again, perhaps for Luffy to finally deliver the blow of not caring, or for him to recognize what it was that Sanji was talking about. But neither came, so he went on.
“In that sea, fish from all over– East Blue, West Blue, North Blue, and South Blue- can all be found! It’s a paradise for cooks! And it’s in the Grand Line! So, have you heard of it?”
Once again, Luffy confirmed that he, in fact, has never heard of such a place. As insane as that was to Sanji, he kept going. The topic was his favorite, as it should be, and regardless of his lack of intention to depart from the East Blue to find it, talking about it truly made Sanji feel alive . It reminded him that there was more out there, more to his life than what there currently is, and all he had to do was wait for it, however long it may be until the opportunity to leave arises.
This wasn’t that opportunity. Sanji knew it. Yet when he looked into Luffy’s eyes, all he could see was another dreamer like him. Perhaps being King of the Pirates was a little far fetched but with him, it felt possible. As did the chance of finding the All Blue.
With that, Sanji looked into those dream-filled eyes with a fierce determination. It would be a long time before that boy could ever head out to the Grand Line. He would need to grow up some first, be mature enough to be able to handle whatever was in store in those treacherous waters. He would need a real crew too, not just Sanji. Still, his trust in Luffy didn’t so much as waver. If anyone could accomplish their dream, it would be him.
“I want to join your crew.”
Luffy beamed. “Finally! I was starting to think you were serious about before!”
Sanji wasn’t sure of what to make of that, nor did he think Luffy would be secretly making a dig at him, so he just laughed. Head titled towards the pittering sky, cackling in a way he never had before. Because now, no matter what shit the world gave him, he would always be a Straw Hat pirate.