Chapter Text
“Careful out there,” Zeff says, when Sanji finally comes back to the restaurant the next day. “Heard there’s a land dweller ship wrecked out on one of the islands.”
“I know,” Sanji blurts out, before good sense can stop him. “I met them.”
Zeff stops cooking right in the middle of the lunch rush, leaving Patty to yelp and hurry to gather up the ingredients the shitty old man had been cutting before they can drift away. Growling something about holding the fort, Zeff grabs Sanji by the elbow and hauls him to his office.
“What happened?” Zeff demands, looking Sanji up and down and unceremoniously spinning him to check every inch of his tail for injuries.
“I’m fine, old man!” Sanji says. He pulls away, feeling guilty for making Zeff worry. “They’re… nice. The land dwellers.”
“Nice?” Zeff growls.
“I didn’t say anything about the restaurant,” Sanji hastily assures him. “Or the reef, or any of us. Nothing like that. I just…”
“I wasn’t worried about that,” Zeff says, when Sanji trails off. “What are you thinking, guppy?”
“Their ship isn’t too badly off,” Sanji responds, a little too slow. “They won’t be here long. It’s nothing.”
“That’s who you’ve been haring off to see,” Zeff observes. “Some marooned land dweller. What’d they do, get swept off a few days before their ship ran aground?”
“Something like that,” Sanji weakly says. This is hard enough without telling his old man all the unbelievable details.
“Oh, guppy,” Zeff sighs. “Don’t you know better than that?”
Apparently he doesn’t. Sanji shrugs, furling his fins in close under his old man’s scrutiny.
“Nothing good ever comes of getting involved with land dwellers,” Zeff continues, almost kindly. That makes it worse. Sanji knows he’s fucked up if the shitty geezer is worried about his feelings.
“You don’t have to tell me that,” he grumbles, managing to sound appropriately ungrateful about it.
“Just so long as you’re not listening to any of Iva’s bullshit,” Zeff shoots back.
“No chance of that!”
“Good!”
Zeff glares at him for a moment before giving a decisive nod, and Sanji bolts out of the office.
~o~
He starts thinking about Ivankov’s bullshit. There’s a lot of it, but most relevant are the fantasies, impossible romances between mers and land dwellers. That’s the kind of thing Ivankov trades in, wishes that no one else can grant, and Sanji has never understood the allure so completely before now.
If he wasn’t a mer, he could sail away with Luffy’s crew. He wouldn’t have to watch Brook leave. All the things he’s wanted to try are at his fingertips, and Sanji is too torn to make a choice. Sanji owes Zeff his life, but Zeff wants him to live his own life, and isn’t this chance everything he’s dreamed of?
Maybe Ivankov can’t actually do it. Sanji should at least go talk to them, and find out if it’s all been nothing but stories all along. After a close call with emotions like they just had, Zeff will kick Sanji out of the kitchen if he tries to go back to work, so it’s not like he has anything more productive to do.
Unfortunately, in the middle of the day, with the weather clear and the waves mild, Ivankov’s stretch of reef is teeming with colorful mers. Sanji considers turning around, but the memory of Brook explaining fire sticks in his head, the skeleton taking Sanji’s curiosity so seriously, so he grits his teeth and swims up into the shallows.
Some of Ivankov’s visitors call after him, knowing how Sanji scoffs at the sea witch’s powers, asking if he’s finally come around. Sanji supposes he has, but he’s not about to admit it to anyone less than the witch themself.
He must have quite the expression on his face, because Ivankov waves Sanji into their hollow and asks the pair of ribbon-tailed beauties they’d been gossiping with to leave.
“What brings you here, candy-boy?” Ivankov asks, sounding less abrasive than Sanji is used to. “Need something?”
“Your… help,” Sanji admits, and in the narrow space, he can’t dodge out of the way before Ivankov grabs him and spins him around, cackling.
“Finally getting honest with yourself, hmm?” Ivankov crows. “What’ll it be, then?”
“You already know about the shipwrecks,” Sanji grumbles. “Well, there’s…”
“A special someone?”
“What do you know?” Sanji retorts, even though it’s easier this way.
“Your old man said you’d been acting like a lovestruck guppy,” Ivankov gleefully tells him. “Or not, hee-HAW! Anyone with eyes can see that you’re mooning, candy!”
Sanji eyes them suspiciously. If Zeff was gossiping about him with Ivankov, and about this, he should leave right now and go knock the shitty geezer around the restaurant until he starts taking Sanji seriously.
“He’s just worried,” Ivankov adds. “For good reason, it sounds like. This isn’t some amusing little glamor you’re asking me for, is it?”
“Can you do it?” Sanji demands. “If I want to - to -”
“To walk on the sand?” Ivankov finishes, fluttering their colorful fins in a shiver of changing purples.
Sanji resists the urge to fan more water past his gills. He’s feeling stifled, but that won’t help. “It’s not a good idea, is it.” How could it be, when his whole life is here, and everything else is just fantasies? “I shouldn’t -”
“The mind says no,” Ivankov muses, “but the heart… the heart wants what she wants, candy! You should give it to her!”
Furling and unfurling his fins, Sanji wonders what it would be like to have land dweller legs and feet instead. “What my heart wants, huh?”
“You’re a repressed little thing,” Ivankov grumbles, “after growing up with Red Fins. He did his best, candy, but you’re allowed to want whatever you need.”
“I have everything I need.” Sanji protests. Zeff gave all of it to him. Daydreams about freely sailing the oceans with someone he… maybe doesn’t love, just yet, but wants to have the chance to… aren’t a need, they’re selfish and childish and -
“Come into the back,” Ivankov interrupts, holding aside a sheaf of pink fan corals to reveal a tunnel into the rock. Squeezing through, the sea witch vanishes, leaving Sanji with the choice to either follow, or swim away now with empty hands. That idea is bitter, no matter how conflicted he is, so Sanji follows.
Ivankov’s back room is dimly lit, half from glowstones suspended in netting, and half from shafts of sunlight sneaking through the perforated coral ceiling. Looking around, Sanji can see why Ivankov figured him out so easily - there are land dweller objects everywhere, mixed in with strange spell ingredients and more ordinary mer paraphernalia. Maybe the sea witch has even visited some of the same shipwrecks Sanji has.
“I can make you a spell,” Ivankov says, pulling this and that off their shelves, “but I won’t tell you what’s right.”
“What’s the price?” Sanji asks.
“It’s a trade,” Ivankov corrects him. “This isn’t a silly love spell I’ll cast you for a few fancy seashells, candy-boy. The cost won’t come from me.”
“A trade,” Sanji repeats, watching as Ivankov does… something… that makes unnatural light catch in their pile of oddments. It’s hard to see past the sea witch’s trailing fins.
“One self for another,” Ivankov says, “and a new life to match. You won’t be able to come back - or not! Who knows what else is out there? Maybe someone could turn you back, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
It’s a lot to balance, but for high magic that will change Sanji’s life forever, Ivankov’s spell takes hardly any time to cast. Not nearly enough for Sanji to make a decision as he watches the witch work.
“Be careful, candy,” Ivankov warns him, handing Sanji the finished spell. It’s cast in a salvaged float from a fisherman’s net, a disquieting glow caught in the thick blue glass. “One time use, hee-HAW! Break the glass, and it’s sunset walks on the beach forever! Pick the wrong moment, and you’re out of luck!”
“I can’t just take this for free,” Sanji protests.
“Then leave me a message I can give your old man if you don’t come back,” Ivankov sighs. There’s a basket sponge near the entrance full of dial shells, and the sea witch tosses Sanji a tone dial. “I’ll give you a minute. Come out when you’re ready.”
What could he possibly say? Sanji stares at the shell for a while, thoughts running in every direction. Once he gets them in order, it barely takes a few words for Sanji to start crying, and he can only hope that his message is still understandable. By the time he’s done, Sanji feels hoarse, as if the shell has stolen his voice entirely.
Ivankov rather kindly ignores the fact that he’s obviously been crying, and sends Sanji on his way with an all-too-gentle smile and a smothering hug. Even if he doesn’t use the spell, Sanji thinks he has a lot to be grateful to Ivankov for. Not that he’ll ever admit it.
Sanji goes hunting for snapper in the mangroves, cushioning the bespelled float in his bag with stunned fish. He circles a few small islands, knowing where he’ll end up, but not quite willing to think about it yet.
Coming in from a different approach, Sanji can’t miss the sight of the land dwellers’ ship propped up on the shore. It’s small, compared to some of the shipwrecks Sanji has explored, and looks friendly, with brightly painted decorations and detailing that speaks of care. From the edge of the reef, he can see people moving around it, but Sanji doesn’t dare get any closer. He isn’t sure what he would say, if he did; wondering what he might do is even worse.
His tower is empty, when he swims around the other side of the island. Full of his carefully collected land dweller objects, but empty. Sanji ties some of his catch to a line and attaches it to the ledge, hoping Brook and his new crew will find them, and leaves before it becomes too tempting to haul himself up and smash Ivankov’s spell on the black basalt wall leading to shore.
~o~
The weather turns while Sanji is back on the inner edges of the reef, half-heartedly diving for shellfish and putting off returning to the Baratie. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to swim away, keeping either his tower or the land dwellers’ ship in the corner of his vision for the past few hours as he hunted around the island. Now a fast-moving squall is whipping through the trees farther ashore, the sky clouding over and spitting rain, with a darker, more ferocious storm visible on the horizon.
Sanji pales, eyeing the waves crashing over the reef. Distraction is no excuse to get caught out like this, but here he is, on the seaward side of the island with whitecaps churning their way across the reef’s natural barrier. It would be safer to go back around the island and ride the storm out in his tower, but Sanji can’t do that. If he’s fast, he might still make it through the shallow sections of the reef before the swells become powerful enough to smash him against the corals.
Stealing one last glance at the ship on the shore, Sanji swims away from the island, fighting against the waves to get out over the reef. Lightning flashes in the distance, the clap of thunder sounding much closer, and the next big wave pulls so much of the ocean into its swell that Sanji’s tail scrapes the coral, leaving him thrashing for enough force to push himself onward. When the wave itself crashes over him, it’s all he can do not to crumple under its weight, forced back before the next one drags him over the corals again.
He should give up and go to shore. He can’t, because if he does, he’ll be too tempted to use the spell, and leave the ocean forever. Sanji gathers himself and surges forward again, trying to time his movements with the push and pull of the towering waves.
If it wasn’t low tide, he might have made it. Instead, the netting of his bag catches on the reef, and Sanji is brought up short, slamming into the rough surface. That still wouldn’t be enough to stop him, with the edge of a deeper channel barely an arm’s reach away, but as he collides with a massive brain coral, Sanji feels something crunch in the bag beneath his hip.
It hurts. Sanji gasps, coughing harshly as the seawater gets into his lungs instead of flowing through his gills, and at first, he thinks the shells in his bag must have shattered and stabbed into his tail. But the slicing pain is all-encompassing, from his hips to the tips of his fins, and his tail won’t move right. Sanji can’t seem to get his equilibrium back.
Wincing as his hands scrape against the rough coral, Sanji pushes his head above the water. Rain pelts him in the face, and everything feels cold , so much more biting than usual. Another wave quickly bowls him over, and Sanji tries to focus on breathing through his gills, before coming to the abrupt realization that he doesn’t have them anymore.
Opening his eyes in the salt water stings in a way it never has before, but Sanji gets a glimpse of himself before the surf sends him tumbling again. His tail is gone, and in its place, two pale human legs are doing nothing to keep him from getting smashed to ribbons on the sharp edges of the reef.
He manages to get his head above the surface again, sucking in a desperate breath of air, and movement catches his eye. Silhouetted by the increasingly frequent lightning strikes, a thin, familiar figure is running across the surging waves, headed right for him.
Sanji thinks he hears his name, and he flails in the newly-unfamiliar waves, feeling all the foreign surfaces of his changed body scrape against the reef. When Brook scoops him up, not even pausing as they race up the side of another towering wave, Sanji screams, clinging tight to the bones beneath his hands. Pressing his face to Brook’s shoulder against the cold sting of the rain, Sanji closes his eyes and doesn’t open them until they stop moving.
“Dear one?” Brook softly says, as a cacophony of shouting erupts around them. “Are you alright, Sanji?”
They’re surrounded by faces both familiar and not, and about half of them are yelling. Luffy is the loudest, closely challenged by a small, furry creature that barely reaches Brook’s knees. An otherwise ordinary-looking land dweller with an abnormally long nose is muttering a constant stream of concerns from a few steps back, with Zoro rolling his eyes at him and a large man who is… wearing?... strange metal apparatuses on his arms giving him a sympathetic pat. Robin is also hanging back, an island of calm in the storm, while another woman with bright orange hair shouts at Luffy to calm down.
“I thought mermaids turned into seafoam,” Zoro says, “not… dudes.”
“That’s just a story,” the redhead snaps.
“A rather similar story, it seems,” Robin muses, “though with the reciprocation of feelings, it looks like such an outcome can be avoided.”
“Recipro-what?” Luffy asks. “Does this mean Sanji is gonna join my crew?”
“He’s bleeding!” The furry creature taps its hard feet against Brook’s shins, and suddenly isn’t little at all, but nearly as tall as the skeleton, and broad enough to block Sanji’s view of the rest of them. “We need a doctor!”
“Shishishi! Chopper is the doctor!”
“Inside, everyone,” the redhead orders, and Brook carries Sanji into a well-lit, clean room on their ship, which the furry creature forbids anyone else from entering.
“What hurts?” He asks, shrinking back down to that first cute size. “I’m Chopper! Brook told us about you, Sanji, but this is a surprise!”
“What did you tell them?” Sanji asks, peering up into Brook’s eye sockets.
“That I would miss you,” Brook says, before jumping a little and seeming to realize he’s still cradling Sanji to his chest. “Ah, that is, can you stand, my dear?”
“Only one way to find out,” Sanji mutters, stowing that little admission for later.
Brook lowers him to the ground, but Sanji’s new knees buckle the moment he tries to put weight on them, so the skeleton has to slide an arm back around his waist. Testing the unfamiliar muscles, Sanji lifts one foot, then the other, figuring out how to use the joints.
“Well, we’ll need to get you some clothes,” Chopper critically observes. Brook coughs, looking away, and Sanji flushes, but the little doctor is unperturbed. “Looks like nothing serious, but let’s get those scrapes cleaned up.”
Brook retreats to a chair after helping Sanji to sit on the pristine, white bed, and Chopper gets busy. In no time at all, the blood is all cleaned away and all his scrapes covered, and one of the other crew members even pops in with dry clothes. Apparently they all noticed, but Sanji has more to worry about than his embarrassingly unprotected new private areas.
“You’re excellent at this,” he praises, flexing one arm. The bandage stays perfectly in place.
“That doesn’t make me happy at all!” Chopper yelps. “Now, stay here and rest, bastard! We’ll bring you something to eat!”
He scurries out, leaving Sanji alone with Brook.
“How did you know I was out there?”
“I spotted you hours ago,” Brook admits. “I was hoping you would come back, ohoho! Things seemed rather fraught when you left, so I was not sure if you would, but it lightened my heart to see you out in the waves, though I no longer have a heart. Skull joke!”
“I hadn’t decided,” Sanji says. Whether he would come back here at all, and certainly not whether he would leave the ocean. He’s not sure how he feels, now that the choice has been made for him. There’s a weight off his mind, but a clinging fog has replaced it, all uncertainty and disbelief.
“For what it’s worth, I am glad you’re here,” Brook tells him, leaning intently toward Sanji over his thin knees. “I know you have your own world here in these waters, but after hearing so much about your dreams, it seemed a shame to leave you behind!”
“Guess I’m part of your world now,” Sanji says, trying out the idea. It feels good to say, to his relief. “Hope you’re willing to keep helping me figure it out, shitty skeleton.”
“Ohoho! It will be my pleasure,” Brook laughs, “but with such a lively young crew around, are you certain you want my advice? It may be rather lifeless! Skull joke!”
“You’re at least as lively as anyone I’ve ever met,” Sanji grumbles. “Tired of me already, is that it?”
“Never!”
Sanji’s insecurities must show on his face, or the trembling of his unfamiliar knees, because Brook’s bright laugh softens, and he leaves his chair to sit beside Sanji on the bed.
“You need not worry that we will leave you high and dry,” Brook assures him. “I may not know these young Strawhats well, but I am sure that much is true! And for my part, you would have to kill me to keep me away from you, and that would be quite a challenge, as I am already dead, ohoho!”
Snickering, Sanji leans back against the wall, and does his best to take the reassurance to heart. “Thanks.”
Brook gives a decisive nod, and then several of their new crew members come barreling into the room, and any thought of being left alone vanishes from Sanji’s head. In fact, by the time they head off to bed, he’s beginning to think he’ll never get a moment’s peace, among this rambunctious crew.
~o~
Chopper insists that Sanji sleep in this room - the infirmary, he learns it’s called. Right outside is the galley, but no matter how much Sanji wants to explore it, especially after the mediocre meal he shared with the crew - all crammed into the little room, all the more stuffed with Luffy’s complaints about needing a real cook - the strange furry doctor won’t let him leave. Something about observation, and relapses, and what if you stop being able to breathe air in the middle of the night, what then Sanji, and no matter how he explains that he’s always been able to breathe air, it’s no use.
Everything is very quiet, or very loud. Sanji has never spent enough time above water to really appreciate what it’s like to live without the constant movement of the ocean all around him. Small noises are much more startling by comparison, and the spaces between them leave him waiting in wary anticipation.
Needless to say, he does not sleep well, though the crisp, clean sheets on the bed are a pleasant novelty. When the first blush of dawn begins to show through the port holes, he can hear someone without hoofed feet moving around in the kitchen, and sneaks out of the infirmary.
“Good morning, Sanji,” Robin greets him. She’s pouring something with a strong, bitter smell into a mug, steam rising off of it as she breathes in deep. “Would you like some coffee?”
Sanji nods, carefully putting one foot in front of the other until he makes it to the counter by her side. It’s easier with every step, like something merely forgotten instead of something entirely new. “Thank you!”
She watches with the faintly amused smile that Sanji is beginning to recognize as her default expression while he takes a sip. He nearly drops the mug she offered him. The drink is hotter than anything he and Zeff ever managed to serve at the Baratie, and the taste is even stronger than the smell.
“Some people say it’s an acquired taste,” Robin says, taking Sanji’s mug back and adding some additional ingredients to it. When she hands it back, the color is lighter, and the taste is much more mild and sweet.
“It’s delicious!” Sanji chirps. “Surely your crew doesn’t need a new cook, with a talented beauty like yourself aboard!”
“A flatterer, I see,” she muses, sipping her own coffee. “No matter how competent the rest of us might be, it is no substitute for someone who truly enjoys the work. Our new skeleton friend says that you do.”
“I probably know less than you do, out of the ocean,” Sanji dissembles. Even just watching Robin open the cupboards, Sanji can see dozens of ingredients he’s unfamiliar with.
“But you want to learn,” she observes. “The rest of us have different skills, and little patience for cooking. That passion makes a huge difference.”
“It’s not that special. I’m sure the rest of you have much more impressive talents -”
“Brook mentioned that he wishes he could help you chase your dreams,” Robin smoothly interrupts, “but he did not say what those were, aside from your love of cooking.”
Even though he’s sure she’ll let him down easy, won’t mean to hurt him by telling him that his dreams are a fantasy, Sanji hesitates. Maybe it’s best to get it over with, so the rest of these land dwellers aren’t disappointed in him later, but Sanji feels like he’s given them enough reasons to pity him already.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Robin says. “I know how personal a dream can be. Even if we don’t know what it is, we’ll do our best to help you see it through, just the same as Brook. It’s alright if you don’t trust the rest of us as much as you do him, just yet.”
“I want to find the All Blue,” Sanji blurts out, gripping his coffee tightly in order to avoid pulling at his hair. “I don’t know if land dwellers even know what that means - but most mers don’t believe it exists. A place where all the world’s currents meet. My old man almost died, looking for it, and I’m not - I wasn’t - built to cross the open ocean like he is. Now, though, on a ship…”
“I see why Brook was so emphatic,” Robin murmurs. “Your enthusiasm is contagious.”
“It’s silly,” Sanji says, before she can tell him it’s impossible. “I won’t trouble you all with it, mellorine!”
“Not at all! You need an extraordinary dream, to sail with this crew,” Robin laughs. “Luffy will not accept anything less. If he learns you’re holding back in the slightest, he won’t rest until you fully dedicate yourself to getting what you want.”
No one has told Sanji his dream is extraordinary before. He flushes, finally setting down his coffee and giving in to the urge to finger-comb some of his hair over his face, and mumbles some kind of platitude.
“You’ll have to speak with Nami later,” Robin tells him, propping her chin in one hand with an indulgent smile. “She is our crew’s navigator, and her dream is to create a chart of all the world’s oceans. Surely we’ll encounter your All Blue somewhere along the way. For the moment, though, is there anything else I can answer for you? I’m sure you’re still experiencing some shock.”
“Do you have tea?” Sanji asks, and at Robin’s bemused nod, “Could you teach me how to make it?”
“Of course,” she says, and Sanji feels like a young guppy at Zeff’s side again, as Robin shows him how to light the fire on the stovetop, and how long it takes to boil the water, and the right amount of fragrant dried leaves to put in the delicate metal strainer. Then it’s how long to wait, and the different options for preparation, but when Sanji recites the details Brook had told him about, she seems to catch on.
Robin gets out another delicate cup, setting them both on a tray as the teakettle begins to hiss. “I believe our new musician is out on the top deck,” she tells him once the tea is ready, leading Sanji to the door. “Just follow the stairs.”
Without her instructions, Sanji would still be able to find Brook easily. When the door opens, he realizes that one of the sounds at the edge of his hearing was music, and Sanji finds his feet carrying him toward it without thinking.
The ship is motionless in the sand, but Brook is swaying lightly from side to side as he sits on the rail, as if compensating for imagined waves while he strums a stringed instrument Sanji vaguely recognizes from spying on land dwellers. Pausing at the top of the stairs to listen, Sanji is struck again by the novelty of not having to hide.
He can see the moment Brook notices that he’s there, the skeleton straightening up with a particularly enthusiastic chord, though he continues humming and playing while Sanji approaches. A pleasant sort of anticipation thrums through his veins, and Sanji thinks he’ll easily get used to life on this ship, if it all feels like this.
“Robin taught me how to make tea,” Sanji says, as a few final notes fade away. The first thing he’s cooked as a land dweller, he somewhat belatedly realizes, and he’s glad it’s something for Brook. Handing over the steaming cup feels significant for more than just the tripping of his heart as their hands touch.
Brook’s fingers clatter against the thin porcelain and he sniffles, raising the cup to his face to breathe in the fragrant scent. “My dear Sanji, this is…”
Sanji stifles his desire to ask whether it’s good, and sets the tray aside, cradling his own teacup in his hands as Brook slowly takes his first sip. The thin cup does little to insulate against the heat of the liquid inside, but it’s comforting, in the faint morning chill. Trying a taste himself, Sanji is startled again by the temperature, but this flavor is much more appealing than his first impression of Robin’s coffee.
“It’s perfect,” Brook chokes out. His bones are nearly the same ivory as the teacup, and Sanji idly imagines the same delicate floral patterns spreading over Brook’s fingers.
Joining him at the rail, Sanji leans beside the skeleton and doesn’t say anything about the tears rolling down Brook’s cheekbones. They drink their tea in near-silence, watching the sun rise above the ocean, and even once its rays intensify enough to warm his skin, Sanji doesn’t feel the need to protect himself from its light.
Before long, more of their new crewmates wake up, and the atmosphere on the ship becomes just as exuberant as the previous night. Sanji and Brook are never alone, whirled around with the enthusiastic Strawhats, one or another of them always there to show off the library, or explain the plumbing in the bathroom, or tell them how Luffy is, under no circumstances, allowed in the galley alone, especially before mealtimes. They ask Brook to play music, and have endless questions for Sanji about being a mer, and Sanji feels so accepted already, he’s sure that meeting these people is nothing short of a miracle.
After a while, Chopper notices Sanji making a face as he runs his strangely dry tongue over his even drier lips, and comes running over.
“Sanji! Have you been drinking water?! You look like you’re getting red - have you been outside all day? Are you wearing sunscreen?”
“Drinking… water?”
The little doctor gawks at him, and then drags Sanji inside. Back in the cool shade of the infirmary, Sanji suddenly realizes that his skin does feel warm, like a much more subtle version of how he used to feel after lingering too long at the surface. Chopper thrusts a glass of fresh water into his hands, and it tastes like the best thing Sanji has ever had, refreshing and saltless in his mouth. It’s a strange experience, after the few times he approached an island with a freshwater stream and swam far enough up it for the lack of salt to itch at his gills. Before he realizes it, he’s drained the whole glass, and Chopper is frowning accusingly at him.
“Humans need to drink water! A lot of water!” Chopper scolds, refilling the glass and beginning a lecture on outdoor health and safety that ranges far beyond the topic of just sunlight and water, though the doctor has plenty to say about both of those.
When he goes back out on deck, the algae-haired swordsman teases him about getting lectured, and Sanji finds out that he can kick almost as hard as he could swing his tail. Balancing on one foot will take some getting used to, but judging by the way Zoro’s surprise fades into calculation, Sanji will get plenty of opportunities to practice.
It’s all very exciting, but Sanji is relieved when Robin points out a door he hasn’t ventured through yet, and ushers him into a room lit with familiar, susurrating patterns. She closes the door behind him with a wink, and for a moment, he thinks he’s underwater, but no, this room is full of air like all the others. It’s the walls of glass letting the comfortingly blue light in through a deep well of water, a little patch of ocean captured on the ship. Sanji isn’t sure how to feel about the fish swimming behind the glass, but the room is soothing after the chaos out under the sun.
He sits alone on one of the soft benches - sofa? - lining the room, and watches the fish, listening to the familiar sound of water moving all around him. It’s not unexpected when the door opens again, but Sanji is a little surprised when no shouting follows, only Brook with another glass of water in one boney hand.
“Miss Robin said you were catching your breath, and Chopper insisted,” Brook murmurs, handing the glass over and hovering at Sanji’s side until he thumps the cushions beside himself.
“This may be the strangest part,” Sanji says, taking a sip and watching the skeleton fold up next to him. “Remembering to hydrate. I always thought land dwellers drank for fun, I guess.”
“Ohoho! Often enough, that is the case,” Brook laughs. “Though to drink recreationally… alcohol actually dehydrates the body! I am somewhat relieved not to have to worry about that any more - nothing left to hydrate! Skull joke!”
Sanji finishes the third glass of water of his life, and curls up to face Brook. He’s glad Robin sent the skeleton in to spend time with him. It’s clearly not an accident. Whatever she sees between them, Sanji can only hope that it’s the same things he feels, and that Brook will want them too.
“When you said you would miss me, and all that, did you mean…”
“Nothing more than that,” Brook quickly says, “as I’m sure that you will want to explore your new life without any awkward attachments -”
“I like our attachment,” Sanji blurts, “I mean, if there is an attachment. I want it.”
Brook blinks, and gives a self-deprecating laugh. “Well, to imagine I might be anything more than a curiosity to a pretty thing like you, it would be terribly cocky of me, wouldn’t it, especially as I have no -”
“Don’t say it,” Sanji groans.
“Egotistical in the extreme, then,” Brook murmurs.
Sanji can’t understand why Brook thinks the oddities of his physical body are more important than the compassion he’s shown to him. Plenty of attractive mers flit through the Baratie every day, but Sanji has never felt this kind of connection with any of them, or wanted to pursue anything more than the fleeting flirtations he can share with them beneath its roof.
He scoots closer, putting his hands on the solid bone of Brook’s thighs beneath the thin fabric of his pants, and leans up into his face. “You were happy enough to flirt with me before.”
“How could I not be?” Brook asks, spreading his arms wide. “But I was sure you were merely playing along for the novelty, and had suitors lined up out the door beneath the waves. And now, you have the chance for so much more than what I can offer you.”
“Then it wasn’t real?” Sanji presses. He can impress upon Brook all the things he’s given him later.
“It was,” the skeleton admits, lowering his hands to gently trace along Sanji’s arms.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Ohoho, the heart is willing, more than willing, of course, but the body…”
“The body shouldn’t stop the heart from getting what it wants,” Sanji says, feeling a little nonsensical as he remembers Ivankov’s advice.
A loose-limbed little shiver rolls through Brook’s frame and he sighs. He touches the fine bones of his fingers to his teeth and reaches out to Sanji, brushing his lower lip with a knuckle in mimicry of passing a kiss. “Such certainty.”
“I mean it,” Sanji insists, darting in to kiss Brook’s cheekbone. “I wanted to leave the ocean for you. I don’t know if I could have done it, without… but I know I would have regretted letting the chance pass me by. I want to see where this goes.”
“Who could resist such an earnest confession?” Brook says, and reaches for Sanji’s hands. “Ohoho! Of course I would be overjoyed to share in your new life.”
“Your new life, too,” Sanji points out.
“True! But I at least know my own body, bones though it is!”
Sanji frees one of his hands to poke at his knees, kicking one foot out. Some of the others already promised that they’ll teach him how to swim like a land dweller, so it’s not like he’ll never get to enjoy being in the ocean again. “I think I’ll get used to it.”
“It has been many years, but I remember having flesh well enough,” Brook snickers, his unoccupied hand landing on Sanji’s waist. “I would be happy to give you some pointers, if you know what I mean, ohoho!”
“That probably isn’t too different.” Sanji rolls his eyes, suppressing a grin. “Unless you’re saying you want to watch, shitty skeleton.”
Brook giggles, the hand sliding around Sanji’s waist getting a little frisky for a public room the rest of their new friends know they’re in, and Sanji shoves the skeleton’s face away. What Brook thinks Sanji might prefer to get from anyone else, he really has no idea.
“Ohoho! Well, dear one, I am an expert on bones -”
“Shut up,” Sanji grumbles, knocking his forehead against Brook’s collar bone. He’s going to have to live with these terrible jokes for the foreseeable future, and Sanji is entirely thrilled about it. They’ll sail out of these waters and into who knows what, but Sanji is nothing but excited to see it all.