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It starts with a rather gut-busting sneeze that’s concerning enough to bring all conversation juddering to a halt.
Sanji blinks, absently patting his chest before furrowing his brow at a strange thickness congealing in his throat.
Another sneeze. Fuck.
Alright, let’s not panic. It’s just one sneeze—people do that. Maybe they aren’t always accompanied by a shitty ringing afterwards and blurring vision, but that’s beside the point. Sanji drops off the last plate on his buttercream tablecloth and wipes his hands. He regards Zoro—who hadn't even stopped mid-gorge—and points at him with a long nail.
His head spins with the thought: that’s a bit too long. He needs to file that down; might as well hit the whole hand while he’s at it. It's been so chaotic lately that he neglected basic maintenance in favour of basic survival. A lot has happened. He left home, locked lips with some gills, fucked his favourite pan by accidentally tossing it at a stowaway spider the size of sea king’s nutsack and now—
Allergies. Sanji snaps his fingers. He’s read about this kind of thing.
“Moss,” he accuses. Frowns. Sneezes hard enough for it to ring and multiply the number of mealtime attendees, the thickness of his skull undulating wildly.
“…Moss?”
Sanji hums and then he drops on the deck and flops like a fish.
The world comes back in waves. Real violent ones, with the pissy personality of a scorned lover.
As soon as the first one batters him so thoroughly he’s only able to perceive things in high-pitched whines and internal sloshing, Sanji decides he doesn’t like this ride anymore. He wants off.
“Tch,” Zoro scoffs, a wiggly string of seaweed frothing past. “Figured he’d be the one to bite it first.”
Luffy gasps, baleen hat threatening to engulf his head. “Sanji’s dying?”
He’s dying?
While there’s still shit in his oven?
Sanji wills the floor to come back to him and to his immeasurable delight, it does. He feels the hardness of the boards underneath him pushing back against his ass. Merry creaks and groans even if she’s supposedly never-been-sailed and these are her first steps into what will be a long journey.
He promises to step more lightly about her.
His arm materialises next to him, pushing him closer to upright. He makes it a fair distance when he realises that there is something he’s not strong enough to challenge blocking his path.
“Nami-san,” Sanji says, though he's not sure what comes out as sound and what shrugs and skips off to join the sandwich of shanties in his head. “…boobs?”
His goddess sighs and departs, exiting stage right. “He’s definitely got a fever,” Nami diagnoses. Lifts the hand from Sanji’s brow and he shivers at the loss of her. “And look—a perfectly normal eye.”
Actually, he feels a little blind. Water on the pupil, blurry shapes swimming in front of him.
“Eyes,” he corrects.
Nami stares at him. “Eyes?” she repeats, somehow managing to extend the word over an hour.
“Yes.” He tilts his head and all the seas come flooding into the space behind his eyes and nose. “Why would I only have one?”
Her hand starts to reach for his forehead again. Ah, she probably wants to check his temperature, but she need not worry. Sanji understands perfectly what’s going on. At least, enough to know that it’s not allergies—that wouldn’t have made sense anyway. He’s not allergic to anything. Patty always called him a lucky bastard whenever they docked somewhere with cats roaming about unchained.
Sanji feels for his infirmities. Fever. Sore throat. Deep-set fatigue that’s only getting worse. He looks at the food he made. The food he fed them. The syrup he tasted at the market had a nice sweetness to it. Rich, but not overpowering and freely allowing other flavours to take centre stage and shine. A perfect compliment to the matcha waffles in his mind’s eye—it hadn’t taken much convincing.
Damnit, what a rookie mistake.
Sanji staggers to his feet, not knowing what to think about how hard it suddenly is to achieve something so simple. Like someone had replaced his muscles with squid ink and his ligaments with thousands of buzzing sea urchins.
“I think you should lie back down…” Usopp says.
“Fuck off,” Sanji assures him, yanking himself over the wall of barnacles to lean against the counter. He moves to turn off the oven. Blinks. It’s off. Maybe it was never on in the first place. It’s all he can do to not collapse in premature relief—there’s something he still has to do. He gives her a comforting pat and turns to address the room. “How long was I out?”
“Just a second,” Luffy says at the same time Zoro says too long. Luffy snuggles the swordsman under an arm and grins. “It was really cool Sanji! You fell into a somersault and rolled back onto your feet! I've never seen someone faint like that before. Then you kicked Zoro because he tried to catch you—” that explains the moss-covered swelling that’s starting to balloon, “—and you stuck out your hands when you started falling again, but then you flipped over mid-air like a cat and landed on your back instead!”
Fingers root around in his pockets and bring out a carton of lint. He taps out a toothpick and lights it with a crumpled scrap of paper.
“Huh,” Sanji says. It’s the only thing he can manage, his throat sore and achy. He glances at the table, at the food left abandoned with Nami and Usopp standing up in their seats and Zoro standing not too far from him.
Luffy is suddenly very close. Sanji blinks and he’s there and rapidly growing taller or maybe Sanji is sinking. Another hand, this time cupping the long curve of his neck and keeping it safe. “Hm. Do you think we can try frying an egg on you?”
“Why not?” Sanji’s had a thought about that—bodies and heat, that is. Usually of the fun grinding variety, but he is a man of culture and has entertained self-immolation while dropping cognac into a pan and watching it catch. He gives Luffy a grin. One, perhaps, made a little bit weaker by the coughing fit into the sink, spitting out the toothpick, dust and reconstructed bacon fat. “Just wait a second, alright? Gotta do something first.”
Luffy smiles, eyes bottomless and the colour of basalt. Steps aside to let him do what he needs to do unchallenged.
The others follow his example.
Sanji wipes his mouth with a napkin he fishes from his lighter fluid and saunters over to the table. Zoro shoulder-checks him or Sanji maybe clips into him mid-stumble—the details are not that important. Neither is the steady look wearing down stoic walls, darkening Zoro’s brow.
To say nothing of the rubber crutch.
Sanji is all but dumped onto the bench, graceless and wheezing. He swings his legs over and faces his last meal.
“Did anyone eat this?” he asks, reaching for the knife lodged in a brick of butter and starts slathering a spare piece of toast.
“Just Luffy and Zoro,” Usopp says. “Um…what are you doing?”
Well, damn anemone, there’s only one plausible explanation after compiling the available evidence: a sudden collapse, boiling insides and an esophagus that Sanji wants to rip his out and string for a fishing rod.
Classic case of poison. The fish told him so.
No need to worry about Zoro and Luffy, then. Probably ate actual steaming piles of shit as kids so they have the stomach of dragons and pure bullshit force of will can make up the difference for the special cases.
“I’m eating,” Sanji says, tucking the tablecloth into his shirt. He piles his plate full of the last third of breakfast remaining. Slices through the twelve-stack even as the pungent sugary smell makes him want to reacquaint himself with the sink. The faucet’s already made a home in his nostrils, so that’ll have to do. Sorry, old girl, he’s gotta do this. “As far as ways to go, could be better, could be worse. I’ll write some notes for you guys later because this shit is fucking delicious”
Distantly, “Someone get the bucket.”
“Just toss him into the ocean.”
Sanji flicks his shoe and smiles when he hears a mossy ow.
“Is anyone going to point out that he missed his mouth and the waffle fell onto his lap?”
“Okay, Usopp, why don’t you try walking into the hurricane and ask it to stop because it’s making a mess.”
“Hmph. And he comes in here and talks shit about our table manners.”
Sanji frowns and grabs Zoro’s cup and finishes it off. Licks his lips and smiles. Hah. Knew the swordsman smuggled booze into it.
“You bast—”
“Can I have some too, Sanji?”
Sanji shakes his head and reaches out with a sweat-soaked foot. Luffy catches it and tilts him the rest of the way onto his back. His head becomes a fish, struggling against the current. For a very brief second, everyone scrambles to exist sideways, blurring at the edges. Bubbles, bubbles. Chewing, while trying not to choke about it.
“Noooo…Can’t, Luffy." Sanji says. “S’poisoned. Prob’ly.”
Usopp tea kettles, “...and you’re eating it!?”
Sanji shrugs as best as he can; it’s his responsibility as this ship’s chef. His hands start twitching as his body finally whips itself into a coherent enough state to start protesting in earnest. Why does everything ache? “Can’t waste food.” He sneezes. Again. “And m’goner anyway so—”
“Dibs on his share of the treasure,” Nami says. Usopp swallows his flabbergasted horror to glare at her. “Oh, you’re right, Sanji-kun already gives me his share.” Her eyes glaze over with math and a mental inventory of their stores. “Dibs on his suits,” she decides. Good choice. They’ll sell for a pretty coin, not terribly expensive, but they look very good and he has a lot of them.
“He’s not dead yet!”
A sheen. “I can help with that.”
“NO!”
The decimated battlefield that was once their dining table winks at Usopp all like hot slugs writhing under a dash of salt. Sanji bets it’ll still taste good. If he wasn’t so stuffed with mucus, he’d grab another bite and bask in the fact that even on his last legs, he’s still a damn good chef.
Luffy devours the lap waffle in his stead and Zoro dabs his mouth with Sanji’s limp sleeve.
“I’ll feed your asses to the sea kings,” Sanji says, struggling to say something when his brain needs to be flipped over to brown evenly. “‘n for Nami-san, I'll…I'll…”
Self-preservation blinks in for just a moment, telling him that dying is unquestionably a bad idea. Luffy’s going to eat them out of ship and store and it’s going to be Sanji’s fault for not being up to snuff. They’ll die without him or worse: they’ll run out of food.
He’s got to—
“It’s time to go, Sanji.”
The sweltering heat sweeps back in and shoves all of that crap back into its designated brain box. His fever pitches the key overboard to seal the deal and with that finished, Sanji finally yawns. “S’a pleasure sailing with you, cap’n,” he slurs, on the precipice. Light warms his back, painting his eyelids with crayon scribbles and thriving coral reefs.
Rubbery hands descend without mercy. The impact slides down his neck and smooths his brow, leaving a thick line through sweaty maize.
He exhales, long and slow.
Two fingers drag his eyes closed and his body melts into seafoam.
A sigh. “Took you long enough, Eyebrows.”
Sanji’s death knell thwaps Zoro clean across the nose with his remaining shoe and he hears the crack of bone just as his consciousness finally swims to a close.
The good news is that it’s the flu. Probably.
The bad news is that they’re the ones who have to deal with it.
“Limes aren’t going to help him,” Nami says, shoving Luffy off with her foot. She frowns at the makeshift mattress composed of spare sails, the piles of (unlaundered) clothes blanketing Sanji as he rests on the pillow she relinquished so kindly from her room.
Sanji looks appropriately dead, having ascended from the first whiff of her dandruff and the boys’ combined body odour.
“But it helped last time,” Luffy whines, wiping the juice on Sanji’s exposed pant legs. “Yosaku woke up when we fed him—”
“Seventeen,” Zoro fills in.
“—seventeen limes. Since Zoro says that Sanji is three times as strong as Yosaku, if we make him eat—”
“Fifty-one.”
“—fifty-one limes, he’ll get better right away.”
The logic is sound if you think about it from Luffy’s perspective. That she knows the rhythm of his thought waves is horrifying all on its own and she’s only just now recovering from the sight of Sanji trying to stuff all of breakfast into his mouth in a bid to spare them all from poison.
Surprise, there was no poison. Just a fever probably a few days in that Sanji had neglected to realise he even had. The idiot must have gotten it when he nearly drowned not too long ago.
Sanji gurgles.
“Stop trying to fit more limes in his mouth!”
Luffy whips a lime at the wall and Zoro lets it bounce off his forehead, face focused and unyielding. Yup, still sore about it. His nose bandage tweaks funny if he scowls. Or smiles. Or does anything at all.
“Why?” Luffy pouts.
“Because he doesn’t have scurvy. It’s probably just the flu,” Nami says, more confident than she feels.
“Or something worse,” Usopp adds from the kitchen. Zoro occupies himself by repaying Luffy for the wrestling from earlier, keeping their captain in a firm hold and dragging him away from both Sanji and the chicken Usopp’s pulling from the bone with a fork.
“Or something worse,” Nami acquiesces and the room sours.
Usopp yelps and opens the window. She looks out of it and glimpses at the shapes of islands in the distance. A cool breeze of a westerly wind blows strongly across her neck. They’ll make it to Loguetown in a few days at their current pace. If Sanji gets worse, at least they’ll have somewhere to take him.
They should really get a doctor. She thought about it when she heard Zoro’s caterwauling all the way from Bell-mère’s grave, but then again, there wasn’t much time for thinking about the future in the three straight days of celebrating being present and fucking alive. She was busy catching up with her sister and walking through old Cocoyasi haunts with the exhilaration of simply being able to, now richer with her freedom.
“We could always ship the cook back to the Baratie,” Zoro says. “He’s always homesick anyway.”
Nami says no at the same time as Luffy bites him and Usopp wheezes.
Zoro looks at Nami who arches a brow. “News Coo charges by the gram,” she explains.
“Yeah!” Luffy agrees. “And Sanji’s mine now, no reruns.”
“Returns.”
Luff nods, satisfied.
Usopp flails, the kitchen is a little bit on fire, guys!
“He’s diseased.” Zoro crosses his arms which means Luffy is sans oxygen for the moment. “And I don’t like him.”
Sanji scowls in reflexive irritation.
Good to know that part of him is still in working order. Nami wonders, for a moment, where his women lie in his priority checklist compared to Zoro. She wasn’t lying when she pointed out the conspicuous absence of his rose-coloured irises. He’s too sick for sweet sonnets and those high-pitched whines known only by dogs (and idiots).
She doesn’t not miss that stuff, but she does miss the drinks and the compliments on her shade of eyeshadow for the day. He always notices and always makes sure to stop and swoon. She misses fucking with him by changing it up at odd hours just to see how long he’ll keep it going.
(Always, is the answer. Because it’s not a game to him.)
Usopp grabs a chopping board and starts fanning away the bad thoughts.
Her eyes sting.
“Sanji’ll be fine,” Luffy says and somehow, it feels like he really will be. “He’s got us.”
Nami rubs her face. She leaves behind a smudge of grey around the eyes. “Well, that only means we're going to have to pick up his slack until he gets better.”
Zoro and Luffy stare blankly at her. To be fair, she also stares blankly right back. A guaranteed endpoint of sunshine and rainbows is nice and all, but she knows more than most that they can’t just skip over the days—days!—they’ll have to wade through just to get there.
She grits her teeth. Makes a note to bloat out Sanji’s section in the Merry Book of Debts and Expenditures for making her go through this.
Well. No use bellyaching about it now. They survived without Sanji before so they can do it again for a few days.
Nami turns towards the wall of smoke. “Is lunch ready yet, Usopp?”
Usopp emerges from the redecorated kitchen and drops a stockpot of chicken noodle soot onto the table. He waves his hands until the floating black flecks dissipate.
“It’s edible!” Usopp says like one would try to convince people that their baby is very cute if you just ignore the scrunched-up face and the visible veins. He brings a spoon up to his nose and gives it a sniff. Smiles at them with eyes on the verge of tears. “Try it!”
Luffy, captivated by Usopp's performance, opens his mouth to unload a river of drool onto the charcoal-charred tablecloth.
Nami sighs. No wasting food and no way around it. This is going to cost you, Sanji-kun, she thinks as she plugs her nose and stuffs her mouth.
It is, for once, exactly as Usopp advertises. Edible. Despite the horrid appearance, it’s seasoned well if you ignore the added smoke. And, if you're the kind of weakling who considers orangette close enough to the real fruit, you might even say that it’s tasty.
Oh, it’s going to be a long few days.
Usopp doesn’t know which is worse. A sad Luffy bumping an empty bowl against his arm every five minutes, constantly asking for seconds despite clearly being on his fourth serving or a dramatic Luffy draping himself over Zoro and whining about how he misses Sanji’s cooking.
It has been—Usopp looks at the egg timer—about a hundred and twenty eggs’ worth since Sanji first sneezed. They’ve eaten more rock than actual soup and Usopp is man enough to take the criticism of his culinary ability except Merry’s kitchen is…weird. As in, completely and utterly antagonistic towards anything approaching the act of cooking.
He had poked at a dial and the oven dropped open and belched at him. Spat smoke into his face and flew back closed like nothing had happened.
Predictably, no one believed him. Luffy laughed, Nami shook her head and Zoro didn't even give him the time of day.
"Play with Luffy," he said, dropping into a snore mid-sentence.
Of course, Sanji is the only one who understands. To think he’s been suffering in silence for so long.
“She smells fear,” Sanji explains, propped up on a pillow and thirteen balled-up combinations of overalls, tarp and red vests. “You have to show her who’s boss.”
“It’s a kitchen,” Usopp says. It's also right there, watching him.
As is Zoro.
“And she deserves your respect.” Sanji doesn’t blink at the rocky lumps and crunches straight through with diamond-tip teeth, swallowing the jagged hunks of poultry. He hums, letting the flavour sink in. “A bit too much salt.”
Usopp snorts. “You have sick people taste buds right now. I’m not trusting a word you say.”
“No, no,” Sanji insists with a hand paddling at Usopp’s nose. “Listen. I got the same stuff we used on the Baratie in stock. It’s usually more potent than the normal crap. I swear the geezer scrapes this shit right off the Baratie’s lips after a storm.”
“What…the fuck.”
A shrug. “Gotta use whatever shit you’ve got on hand. If it tastes good and it ain’t sending the customers packing, then it’s going on the menu.”
“I’ll…keep that in mind.” Horrific as that sounds. “So what do I do about her?”
A whole new egg can be soft-boiled in the time it takes for Sanji to parse that. “Nami-san?”
"No, the kitchen!"
Sanji’s face scrunches, finally exploring emotional ranges outside of a debonair calm, fiery rage and unapologetic joy. “What? Why?”
“Because I’ll be cooking later?” Usopp tilts his head, taking the empty bowl from Sanji’s limp hands. “I’d like to, you know, defeat the dragon and also cook something without setting Merry on fire in the process.”
“She would never,” Sanji says, offended. “She’s on this ship too, you know.”
“Um.”
Sanji shakes his head and then needs a moment when that sends his internal equilibrium back into the at-risk-of-vomit zone. He digs through his pockets for stability and takes out old cigarette stubs and some meat on the bone that's flaky on the meat but heavy on the bone.
“Luffy said eat that to get better,” Zoro informs him.
Sanji ignores the local flora. Grabs Usopp by the overalls and levels the sniper with a glare. Somehow, the sweaty flush and pallid complexion only add to the threat. “Oi, where’s my shit?”
“Confiscated,” Usopp squeaks.
“Wh—”
“By Nami,” Usopp rushes, poking at a strategic location and ducking when Sanji hacks and coughs. He rips away from Usopp to muffle his fury against a very brave tea towel that now sobs with snot. Usopp gesticulates wildly, “See? You’re in bad shape, Sanji! Let’s not flirt with complete respiratory failure any more than you already do.”
Sanji does not take that well. “How the hell am I supposed to cook?”
“That’s the thing, you don’t!” Usopp says, deciding he won’t address the obvious hammer in the coffin regarding Sanji’s nicotine addiction. Usopp pulls the clothes behind his friend’s back to force him back into horizontal stasis. Enough with this being awake business. “You’re sick, Sanji. You just have to rest and recover.”
The atmospheric changes are severe enough to make Sanji whine in dizziness.
“I’m not though,” Sanji rasps.
“Not what?”
“Not sick!”
Sanji visibly swallows something down and breathes out into his palm. It smells fucking vile. Then, because everything is more credible when it’s repeated twice, Sanji rubs one of Luffy’s shorts across his mouth and reiterates, “I’m not sick, asshole. So, if you excuse me, I’m going to do my job.”
Now, Usopp’s aware that he doesn’t have a leg to stand on for this. Ignoring the list of The Great Captain Usopp’s Known Bullshit Diseases posted on the wall alongside Luffy’s wanted poster, he’s never actually been sick before. He knows what sickness looks like. It looks like his mother, it looks like Kaya. Looks like Onion and Carrot bedridden while Pepper knocks on their windows, holding up the personalised cards that Usopp helped make.
Aside from a bad case of definitely poisonous mushrooms that one time, he’s never so much as sniffled unless it was to cry.
Usopp turns his eyes to Sanji. At the dark flush choking down the cook’s open shirt collar and the messy hair that’s more tumbleweed than his usual coif. No matter how Sanji tries, his one eye can't focus on anything.
His mother used to wave away her illness like it was nothing. Laughed and hid everything up until she couldn’t.
“Let’s come at this from a different angle,” Usopp says, forcing his fingers to relax their death grip on his knees. “Sanji, how are you sure that you’re not sick.”
Sanji holds up his hands, fingers out. “Fever,” he says, curling his index finger, “—cough, sore throat, runny nose and body aches.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No headaches. No dry or scratchy throat.” Sanji taps his head and rubs his throat, moving down to rest over his stomach. “No vomiting.”
“Sanji…Do you think that symptoms are a checklist?”
“Are they not?” Sanji asks, genuinely surprised.
“No!!!”
“Usopp and his three exclamation points are right—you’re an idiot, Curly.”
Sanji looks down, eyes blown. He frowns, looking for all the world like someone had just come in and told him there was no more mayonnaise on the ship. “But I was just about to check off vomiting…"
Usopp screams.
“Not a word,” Zoro grinds, wringing water from his shirt.
Usopp nods vigorously before assessing the current situation and the giant fish they ended up catching alongside a rapidly sinking cook. Usopp makes the wise decision to make himself scarce.
Zoro sighs and looks down at the graceless deer on the deck clinging to his boot.
“You motherfucker,” Sanji gurgles, sputtering seawater. “I'm going to gut you. I will flense and flay your skin from your bones and feed it to you. I will rip your fucking entrails out and toss them to the gulls. They’ll cackle and caw and Davy Jones will reject your entry into his locker because your liver is worth jackshit in this economy. They’ll have to piece your entry ticket from the stomachs of seven hundred vultures. I’ll—”
Of course, he’s most lucid while laying into Zoro for saving his fucking ass.
“Don’t be stupid, you’d sooner make a meal out of me,” Zoro states, flicking his shirt and hanging it over the bulwark to dry. “At least get your cook bullshit straight.”
“Yeah? You’re not the first man I’ve had to learn how to butcher so there.”
Zoro glances at Nami balloon tying Luffy to the mast as punishment for joining the all-men-overboard disaster, yelling about how she shouldn’t be forced to save their dumb asses over something so stupid.
Stupid, like the cook turning green and immediately running for the sea.
“Why the hell did you go overboard if the bucket was right there?”
What a baffling decision.
Zoro used to get sick constantly as a kid. It was really fucking annoying because he then couldn’t train, but he could still hear the classes going on through the open windows. Every time he tried to escape, Kuina would beat the shit out of him and rack up unofficial wins while Koushirou turned the other way.
Over time, he ate enough dirt that he stopped getting sick. Someone deemed him a medical marvel and Zoro shrugged at the accolades and demanded to move onto the higher tier of lessons as a reward.
Why couldn’t Sanji just do that? Luffy definitely managed it and who knows with Usopp, but he’s their foremost expert on whatever the fuck Sanji has aside from Nami. The witch…probably pushed more kids into the dirt than partook in immunizations herself. At least she's not an idiot which is more than can be said for Luffy and the cook.
The point is: Zoro knows what the fuck to do when your insides want to be outside. Just push them back in, will the weakness away or simply not get sick in the first place. Easy.
Sanji bites his boot. “Hnngn!” he snarls, lucky that Zoro is quite possibly the only person in the world who can understand speech muffled by object-in-mouth.
Shithead Moss, Sanji curses into Zoro’s caked-on layers of dirt and grime that are at least several hundred weeks deep. You're the one who told me to go to the sea!
“…you’re dumber than Luffy,” Zoro says, allowing the awe to pass through his ironclad gates because he knows the cook won’t remember shit about this. He sneaked a temperature check-in while Usopp was cleaning the kitchen. The cook is fully scrambled inside or well on his way to be. Maybe Usopp’s been eyeing the egg timer for this precise moment.
Cook’s already salted and, based on Sanji's occasional comments, very open to being eaten.
What kind of person just says that? Zoro can’t get a bead on him that isn't immediately batted away by a foot or strung onto a necklace of catgut.
He sighs.
“Oi,” Zoro says, shaking his foot. “Let go”
Sanji does, though less out of obedience and more so because he’s beholden to physics. Nothing to keep him afloat due to the fact that he’s clearly passed out right now.
Hm.
“Nami!” Zoro shouts.
“Yeah?”
“Cook’s fucked.”
Nami stops shoelacing Luffy’s fingers around one of the steering oars.
“Well, unfuck him!” She yells. “Put him to bed or something!”
Zoro grunts and hauls the limp noodle of a man over his shoulders, descending below deck towards the witch's cabin. Drops him on the floor and starts stripping him of his wet clothes. He covers Sanji up with a blanket from the bed before squeezing into the emergency exit to raid the cook’s trunk.
A hatch creaks open and someone starts stomping down the stairs while he’s fussing with the lock. A pause. “You better swab up your watery footprints, Zoro,” Nami says before a chair grinds against the floor and papers start rustling. “And you could have just put him on the bed. If he gets sicker from this, you’ll be footing the tavern and restocking bill when we make landfall in Loguetown.”
Zoro exhales, exercising restraint. One thing at a time. He needs to play nice enough to get the beri he needs to buy new swords.
Clean and dry clothes acquired, Zoro steps back through and starts yanking the cook’s chopstick limbs through the appropriate holes.
Like everything about the cook, his clothes make no goddamn sense. How the fuck the cook manages to squeeze his arms and legs through the thin tubes with no give, Zoro will never know. There’s a bit of bending logistics and a lot of popped seams, but it’s all fine in the grand scheme of things.
He manages.
What gets Zoro is the way he’s forced into uncomfortable proximity with the fact that, aside from seeing Sanji just collapse onto the floor with no rhyme or reason, the most unsettling thing about this entire experience is how still he is. There’s not even any movement behind the eyelid. Were it not for the slight part of his lips and the rise and fall of his chest, Sanji would be dead enough to consider throwing overboard.
“Shitty cook,” Zoro grumbles. “So you can go toe to fin with a fishman, but you get struck down by a fever? Pathetic.”
Sanji instinctively retaliates with a kick in the stomach. Zoro nimbly evades joining the up-chuck club while Nami screeches about his big fancy dodge messing up her bookcase.
“It’s his fault,” Zoro complains, persuading an atlas off from his haramaki. “Why don’t you charge him?”
“I’m not a monster,” Nami sniffs, flicking her hair. “I don’t push the sick into debt.”
Zoro pauses mid-shelving. “So when the cook is better—”
“A flat rate of fifty-thousand per day of missed work,” she grins, showing off her calculations. “Plus a breaking-and-entering fee and he’s gonna have to cough up extra for renting my bed—all tripled because this is Sanji we’re talking about.”
“Harsh,” he says. Because it is. Zoro’s financed himself for years and he’s never met someone so gleeful about gouging people of their savings.
Swords, Zoro reminds himself. Do it for them.
Nami turns towards Sanji’s feverish form. Zoro can’t see her eyes, hidden as they are behind a thicket of mikans, but she seems fruitlessly melancholic for no reason. “Well,” she says, “—he’d probably thank me for it.”
Zoro frowns and Nami cackles at the sheer combination of reluctant agreement and disgust on his face.
“…dirt,” Usopp deadpans, dry as the pantry feels empty without Sanji there to fill the space.
Zoro nods. “Dirt.”
“Dirt.”
“Dirt.”
“We’re in the middle of the ocean,” Usopp says. “You know, surrounded on all sides by water and oh, if you look out to your left—no, the other left—you’ll see something interesting! Luffy!” Usopp bows towards him, hands out to present him to the audience of one swordsman. “Luffy, tell me, what do you see?”
“Meat…” Luffy sighs dreamily, thinking of the water shifting and rising to reveal that sea cow. He feels nostalgic for that small kitchen Sanji had in the Shimashima Shopping. Sanji’s first meal, simple as it might have been in the cook’s eyes, was everything Luffy dreamed of when he thought about setting sail on the open seas.
“…you know what, that’s on me.”
“Wait…” Zoro thumbs his sword, deep in thought. “Did the cook grow up on the sea?”
“Now, I know I’m all-powerful and all-knowing, but we kind of found out today that Sanji has two eyes so how the hell am I supposed to know that?”
Luffy pipes up, “He did.”
Both Usopp and Zoro whip their heads around.
“What?” one of them asks.
“Sanji spent his whole life on the water. Duh.”
Zoro narrows his eyes. “And how do you know that?”
Luffy sticks a finger up his nose, digging around. “He smells like salt.”
Usopp looks tired while Zoro looks thoughtful. The swordsman disappears momentarily before reappearing, throwing the galley door open with an enlightened look. “Smells like salt,” he says, definitive.
“That’s because he’s sweating.” Usopp brandishes a spatula at Zoro, fish crackling on the stove. “He’s sweating because he has a fever.”
Zoro waves his hand. “It’s different.”
Luffy nods, showing his agreement. Zoro ruffles his hair and Luffy reaches up the pat his hand, subtly wiping the booger on a knuckle. Zoro slams his palm down and Luffy bow ties around his wrist. They start wrestling around in the galley, scrambling to get the upper hand before they knock torso first into the whipstaff.
“WHY ARE WE TURNING LEFT!?” Nami immediately screeches through several floors.
“LUFFY DID IT!” Usopp and Zoro yell back.
“I DON’T CARE. FIX IT OR I’LL GET SANJI-KUN TO MAKE GOOD ON HIS THREATS TO COOK YOUR ASSES!”
Zoro makes to move before rubber banding back into the wall, Luffy giggling with him. Usopp grabs a basket strainer and catapults a potato into the staff just hard enough to get them back on course.
Luffy makes an opportunistic attack, abandoning his catch to wiggle over to the stove. Usopp, still in battle mode, doesn’t miss a beat and baseball bats his hand with a hot pan.
“Ouch!”
Zoro looks impressed. “Nice swing.”
“Oh…thanks.” The fish starts sliding off the pan.
Usopp yelps and dashes to catch it before it plops on the floor like Sanji this morning. “Oh fuck, just barely made it.”
Something in the oven rumbles ominously. Luffy tilts his head.
“Hey, Usopp,” Luffy begins.
Usopp pauses, cautiously letting his eyes leave the oven window to acknowledge Luffy. “Yeah, Luffy?”
“What’s in the oven?”
“Nothing—”
The kettle shrills to a boil and Usopp yelps, drawing back until he’s firmly behind Zoro. “Stop—er, what does Sanji always say? Belay! Belay that, demon!”
Zoro perks up. “Demon?”
“Luffy! Get Sanji, this is an emergency!” Usopp panics, ducking under the table as adrenaline breaks over Zoro’s teeth, battle-ready grin as bright as the gleaming sword he brings out.
“Sure thing, Usopp!” Luffy bounces away, spearing through the door and hurrying down the stairs.
“Nami!” He calls out brightly, knocking on the hatch in the storage room. There’s a put-upon sigh before Nami spends a minute and a half undoing the locks.
Both of them ignore Usopp screaming.
“What,” she says flatly. A large black smear decorates half her forehead and as she glares at him, Luffy can see the ripples of her brow muscles, struggling to maintain themselves.
Oh, so she’s not mad.
“I need to ask Sanji something.”
She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Luffy…” she begins before a groggy mumble answers for her.
“W’sit?” Sanji pants, appearing behind Nami. It’s like someone dipped the cook into hot oil and left him unattended on the grill. An amateur mistake; Sanji would never be so careless.
Sometimes Luffy wishes he would be.
“What do you do if the oven’s threatening to eat Usopp?”
Sanji blinks, pretty blue eye being swallowed by clumped-up lashes. “Um,” he says eloquently, throwing a hand on the wall to catch himself. “Turn it off and on again?”
Luffy yells that answer across and turns back with a grin.
“Alright, back to bed with you,” Nami says, sweeping him downwards. Sanji, never one to disobey her even with half his mental faculties currently about him, goes without a complaint.
“Okay, Nami-san,” he murmurs, tripping on the last step. He lays there, flat on his stomach before deciding to crawl by way of worm the rest of the way.
Nami’s already turned back to her maps. Luffy stretches his neck over to look and he spies long black lines rippling through the paper, a perfect match to the contours stuck on her face.
Luffy slithers down, sitting on the floor and looking up at Sanji now resting comfortably on two mattresses and a single pea.
“What’s wrong?” Luffy asks.
Sanji wrings his hands, looking up at the ceiling. “Are they…alright?”
“They’re making dinner, but they have to beat up the oven monster first.”
“Oh.”
“Usopp thinks the kitchen is haunted. Or possessed. Whichever is more dangerous or uh—” Luffy tilts his head, reaching for the answer. His arm goes a very long way into the dark recesses of his mind. “Good for the story.”
An ink well slides down as the boat tilts from a heavy application of force. About 108 pounds of it.
Nami catches it without looking. She turns over her shoulder to look at them, scar peeking out from under her tank top. “Usopp’s not used to cooking on a ship,” she says. “That’s probably why he’s having so much trouble since everything keeps moving.”
“Yeah,” Sanji agrees, dazed. “It’s also hard cooking for a lot of people and getting the proportions right.”
“Does that mean the kitchen’s not actually haunted?”
Nami opens her mouth, “Of course—”
“—she is.”
Paper crumples underneath Nami’s hand as she discards the past three lines, throwing it away, simply not in the mood to deal with it.
“Cooking’s pretty tough, huh?” Luffy muses, rubbing his chin in thought. “Good thing we picked you up!”
“Idiot, you basically dragged him with you.”
Luffy giggles. He takes the cloth on Sanji’s forehead and dips it into the water bowl beside him, wrings it and starts wiping at the sweat starting to slide down into his ears. Sanji watches him unblinking for a long time, letting Luffy roll up his sleeves and wipe down his arms and neck.
“Get better soon, Sanji.”
“I will,” Sanji says, suddenly serious. His glassy eye (one of two! Maybe he has a cool scar like Shanks) finally finds purchase on the missing button in Luffy’s vest before rolling back up to his captain’s equally serious face “‘Cause you’re pretty hungry, huh?”
“I’m bored,” Luffy flops over the blanket. It’s not as fun with just the four of them. He knows that they’re still incomplete and that feeling won’t stop unless they finally get to a round ten, but Luffy thinks going back a number because someone’s sick is secretly worse than being unfinished. He jolts up all of a sudden, straddling Sanji’s chest. “Do you want to hear what we’ve had to do all day?”
Sanji closes his eyes, one at a time, at different intervals. It might have been a blink. “Sure.”
“Well, first Nami made us swab the deck because you always complain about moss growing in and making Merry sick so we did that except then you burst out of the galley and fell over so we had to rescue instead. That was fun,” Luffy reminisces as Sanji’s hands follow the motions of lighting a cigarette even with nothing there. “Then Usopp said we had to do all the laundry and I had to pedal really really hard to pump up water, but apparently I did it too hard and Nami yelled at me. She tried to show us how it’s done, but she was even worse at it—”
“Hey! I pulled more water than any of you idiots.”
“But Namiiii,” Luffy whines. “You’re the one who told us that wasn’t the point.”
The bed rustles and Luffy frowns when a duvet-padded knee knocks him into the head. “Be nice or I’ll—” Sanji warns before dissolving into coughs.
Luffy whips out one of the salt-crusted handkerchiefs that came out of the first wash. He wipes Sanji’s mouth with it and tucks it into Sanji’s shirt pocket where it belongs.
“It all got done in the end,” Luffy assures him before launching into the next terrible tale.
Sanji’s out before Luffy gets to the good part about seeing Zoro spend a whole hour trying to find where the potatoes were being kept.
“Another change of clothes?” Zoro complains, already moving towards the connecting exit. “The hell are you sweating so much for? All you do is sleep all day and complain.”
“Takes one to know one,” Sanji says archly.
“I work out.” He makes his pectoral muscles bounce underneath his shirt to prove it. Sanji frowns at the show, watching it the same way he would watch lobsters wriggling with their claws taped up, scrambling to escape the boiling pot.
“And I’m still cooking.” Sanji’s head bobs, chin nearly puncturing through his sternum. “Myself, that is,” he manages to finish. “Anyway, I want the ones on the left side of my trunk near the bottom—underneath the paisley. The ones you chose last time were fucking awful. Are you colourblind in addition to being incapable of telling his ports from his rights?”
Zoro emerges from the hatch. “Don’t,” locked teeth, neck veins bulging, “—fuck with me.”
“I would never, Marimo-kun,” Sanji says sweetly, trying to flutter his lashes, but they keep sticking to each other and his eyelids.
After the sixth attempt, Zoro finally finds the right shade of black among the folded piles of coal and throws it over the cook’s head.
Sanji grumbles but starts yanking his shirt off and replacing the sweat-soaked garments with the new ones. Zoro collects the discarded clothes with a grimace. Pinches it delicately like he’ll catch the cook’s stupid if he’s not careful.
“You should take a bath,” Sanji suggests, teeth clenched on a cigarette and match striking down the strip and bursting into flames. “No one’s been around to kick your stinky ass.”
“You’re the one who smells like a workhorse that’s been left behind in a swamp with nothing but a bunch of durians in her bag.”
“Oddly specific, but alright.” Sanji waves the match out and leans back against the wall, sighing.
Zoro feels like there’s something wrong with this picture, but he can’t figure out what. He narrows his eyes.
“Why those clothes?” he asks carefully.
Sanji opens his mouth before taking a hard turn starboard into attempting to remove his respiratory system via violent nasal ejection. Grey clouds billow from his mouth, stinking up Nami’s place with smoke.
“Nami’s going to kill you.”
“That I should be so lucky,” Sanji rasps dreamily, endangered hearts returning to his eyes for a spell.
“Lovestruck idiot.”
“Idiot moss.”
The hatch creaks open, slamming down with a loud thunk to signal someone’s entrance.
Sanji’s coughing covers it up.
Remembering Luffy’s ramblings, Zoro fishes out a bright red square of cloth from the old shirt in his hands. Sanji looks as bewildered as he does when it just keeps going. Green next, then orange and yellow and finally, a monogrammed blue.
Zoro balls it up and beans Sanji in the forehead with it, startling when he makes the same noise that cutlery does when it clinks against a plate.
Nice pitch, he says to himself, but no one else will.
“I have dinner! Oops—” a precarious rattle and the sound of sloshing water. “Alright, Usopp, try not to fuck this up.”
Sanji wipes his mouth and his hands, shaking his head like he’s trying to will away the ringing. “Wanna fight, you sorry excuse for a plankton?”
Wado sings under Zoro’s palm. “Finally. I thought you’d never—”
“It’s, ah, a little bit ashier than it should be, but the char this time is intentionAL—WHY IS SANJI SMOKING!?”
Sanji pats the pocket of the suit jacket Zoro got him and grins. Cook-eyed bastard. Of course he has secret stashes tucked away in every corner of the ship.
Usopp, emboldened by a long day spent slaving away at a rebellious stove, flings a fork at Zoro and it rings all three of his earrings and stabs into the wooden wall behind his head, tines digging all the way in.
Zoro looks at it. Looks back at Usopp and gives him a single clap.
Nami wakes up at the ass-crack of the morning.
Sanji-kun, she attempts to say, but comes out more like “Hngee ‘uhn?”
A hand, wrapped up in a chain of handkerchiefs, pats her shoulder and leaves behind a searing mark. “Sanji-kun?” she says, stronger this time. More awake.
“Go back to sleep, Nami-sw—ack!” A loud trip, accompanied by a chain reaction of yelps and thuds as the room floods with light and grumpy groans.
“Someone better be fucking dead,” Zoro grumbles, turning his head into Usopp’s hair to blot out the light. “If someone doesn’t turn the sun off right now, I’ll cut you all up one-sword style.”
Usopp pushes Sanji off of him. Looks down at the fallen cook breathing deeply on his side. “Oh, Sanji passed out again.” He flops back down and is instantly out like the lights Zoro shatters with a pillow.
Nami lays back down, tossing away the rock and hiding a smile at the idea of charging him for that later.
“Greet her good morning.”
Usopp squints at that, peeking out from over Sanji’s overheated shoulder. He pulls down his goggles and stalks forward, hands trembling. Sanji does the heavy breathing for both of them, propped up by the rest of their crew all standing by. That he’s lucid enough to guide them through this is a good sign.
Batshit as this all is.
“Good morning, erm…kitchen demon—ghost…thing. Person!” A glance back at the cook, gesticulating around for the name. Sanji shrugs.
“Just a good morning is fine enough,” Sanji says. He smiles, almost wistful. “Honestly, she’s just a little lonely.”
“…and is this a normal thing? That just happens?”
Sanji snores.
Nami shakes him furiously, “You’re not Zoro! You can’t just avoid answering the question by sleeping!”
“It never works,” Zoro mumbles to himself, unheard.
Sanji brings out the meat thermometer and everyone gathers over Nami’s shoulders as they all eye the screen intensely.
The numbers flash.
Low 40s. High 30s. A heart-stopping 50.
38.2.
“We’re out of the brain damage territory!” Nami reports, pleased as the sun. “Thank. Fuck.”
Luffy’s eyes shine, echoing Sanji’s sniffles. “Does that mean we can have real food for dinner tonight?”
Nami’s mouth twists. “No,” she says, cutting in before Sanji can speak for himself. She regards Sanji, sweeping over the kicked puppy look to peer at the still hands and lack of shivers. She lilts, hopeful, “But maybe tomorrow?”
“TOMORROW!” Luffy decrees.
And it was so.
Luffy takes a bite of properly cooked steak and promptly cries. He sobs, red around the eyes and nostrils, crying about how this is the best thing he’s ever had and nothing will ever top it.
“Usopp made those,” Sanji says like a proud mother, slamming his hand into Usopp’s spine in congratulations. “Finally figured it out.”
Nami covers her mouth, whimpering into the fluffy orange shortcake Sanji brings out for dessert.
“For you, mellorine~” Sanji winks and Nami ignores it in favour of devouring the cake before Luffy can even think of jumping for it.
Zoro momentarily suspends his quest for payback to lose himself in rice and meat and the small fountain of sake Sanji pours for him. He’s still a little ill, otherwise, he would have questioned a lot sooner if Zoro had enough to drink about two bottles ago.
Zoro gets woken up mid-nap with a kick that he blocks with Wado’s sheath.
Sanji dances up on top of the bulwark for good measure, cheering and revelling in being able to stand on his own two feet.
The sea roars, apoplectic and green.
Sanji doesn’t hesitate to meet him halfway. Luffy turns around, eyes lighting up as he slingshots his way in between them from his favourite seat, knocking their skulls together. Nami winces and Usopp rubs his forehead in sympathetic pain.
Luffy grins, cheeks ruddy and pleased to squeeze them into his chest, Zoro and Sanji complaining, but not actually trying that hard to escape.
Bathing, by the strictest definition, is a success.
Though, now Zoro and Luffy smell like peach blossoms and Sanji feels more like a person now that he’s freshly cooked and rubbed raw that his skin squeaks when you run a finger along his arms.
His clipped nails make for a pleasant experience.
His first cigarette with clear lungs is a miracle. Sanji savours the flavour. The pure euphoria at the first taste of smoke on his tongue.
Saves it. Preserves it. He’ll figure out a way to replicate this joy for them.
Usopp calls for him, holding up a bowl of soft-boiled eggs and Sanji throws his head back and laughs.
They spend one last night crammed into the space together, snoring in concert as Merry sails towards Loguetown, carrying them ever forward and ever on.