Chapter Text
Nami has no idea how a tangerine tree should fare out at sea.
Trees have roots. They are not meant to set sail. Her feet stay fixed to the stern deck each morning as she watches them grow. She checks for signs of damage. She counts each and every fruit like her own secret treasure. She wonders (and fears) that if she loses this one piece of her past and her home then she’ll be the one who’s left rootless.
Sanji watches them too.
After a stormy night, he is always there before her. Sweeping the deck of any dead leaves, salvaging the lost and unspoiled tangerines, defending her treasures from the hungry reach and greedy eyes of her always starving shipmates. On the too hot days, he takes whatever water can be spared to douse their thirsty soil, wielding a soup ladle like he’s back at the Baratie.
She has never dared to ask him why. She still doesn’t know him very well.
Her relationship with the others is something that she can understand. They have a history together, are bonded by shared experience; but the Straw Hat Pirates’ chef joined during the time that she had left. Something was forged between them without her. Maybe she was the reason for it, but that somehow makes the distinction worse. Why should he care at all? Even if it’s just down to physical attraction, his motives make no sense to her. His unsolicited kindness gets right under her skin and threatens to make it crawl.
“Good morning, Nami.”
It goes like this every day. They are both the first to rise, and if he has not got up before her to go tend to her trees, then he is waiting in the kitchen with her breakfast underway.
“Morning.”
He always smiles when he sees her. The kind of smile that lights up his whole annoying face. She couldn’t even tell you what annoys her about it. His cooking is so damn good that she swallows it down, along with her irritation.
“Radiant as always,” he tells her when she’s still unwashed and crusty eyed, her ablutions always second to her morning routine of tree watching and eating whatever he has made.
“I hate morning people.”
He smiles at her then like he knows that she’s lying. She’s one of those stupid morning people as well.
It’s not long before the others appear: Luffy and Usopp either first or second or together, and Zoro always the undisputed last.
“Unlike you, I win at sleeping.”
“You must be too tired from playing with your sword.”
Sanji and Zoro taunt each other to the precarious edge of bloody duel, but there’s still something safe and familiar about it. Mostly they play to their select and knowing audience. So, why should it be different between Sanji and her? There are too many private moments, a secret history that the others don’t see, and it’s shaping their relationship into its own entity. A tree with searching roots that is yet to bear any fruit.
Does such a tree belong on this boat?
She catches him alone at night sometimes, the others staying below deck in order to sleep or drink or play cards. They don’t question Sanji for his solitary habits since he’s the only one on board who likes to smoke.
Nami hates smoking. (There are memories it triggers, bad and good and in between.) She wishes that he wouldn’t do it in front of her treasure. His favorite spot seems to be the one at the stern, though there’s never any trace, not even a speck of ash that he was there. It’s only the moments like this when she finds him standing in the dark. It’s like he’s been expecting her or hoping at least. A thief can die from curiosity. A chef needs to escape the heat.
“You must be sick of tangerines,” he says, surveying the lowly orchard.
Nami takes the opportunity to survey him.
He cuts a sharp silhouette in his suit. The broad shape of his shoulders. The long stretch of his legs. The contrast of his pale hair, caught by a sea breeze, and the beacon glow from his cigarette tip as he inhales and looks her way.
“I used to be,” she says, “but out here, I guess I prefer them to catching scurvy.”
The flash of white teeth when he laughs at her lame joke. The unguarded, joyful noise of it. At night, the effect leaves her blind and dumbfounded.
“I like them.” He leans back with elbows on the railing and guides a trail of smoke up to the sky. “They’re surprisingly tough and versatile,” he says.
Nami decides to sit before her trees, her back to their wooden bases like she is their sentry and not the one in desperate need of protection. “Is that some kind of metaphor about me?” Offense is the best defense, be it her bo staff or a blunt retort.
“If you want it to be.”
She shrugs and picks at the toe of her boot. “Knock yourself out.”
“You mean,” he gesticulates with his cigarette by the twist of an elegant wrist, “like a rough defensive skin surrounding all that sweetness?”
“I mean knock yourself unconscious.”
“Sweet and tart.” He grins.
Nami shifts around to face her trees. The air is cool. Her face is warm. She dips her fingers in the soil of the tree box closest to her, reaching for a change of subject. “You watered them again,” she says.
“If I could, I’d water them daily, but the people must come first.”
“Why?”
“Why must people come first?”
“Why do you care at all?”
His shoes creek softly on the deck. She doesn’t turn around, but she can sense all his movements, the shift in the atmosphere as he comes up behind her. Then a blanketing heat and the fresh scent of burning tobacco. His jacket sits loose about her shoulders (she felt his hands on her as he had placed it there). She can smell other things embedded in its fabric. The fish stew he’d painstakingly prepared for dinner mixed with the salt of harsh hours spent waiting for said dinner to bite.
“Tangerine trees aren’t meant to freeze.”
There lingers a trace of sweetness as well.
He leaves her as if he was never there at all. No cigarette ash or butt. Does he sweep as he goes? All that remains is his jacket, but now maybe it belongs to her. She takes it back to her quarters like stolen goods, not a gift. Lies with it. Sleeps and dreams of a dance in a tangerine grove. Large hands at her waist. Her best summer dress on. No music to guide them, but the rhythmic swirl of cigarette smoke.
His eyes had followed her that night during the party at Coco Village. He had flirted with every girl, including (and especially) her sister. No spoken words for Nami. Just a hand-delivered plate of food and a beautifully handwritten note:
Save a dance for me later.
“Good morning, Sanji.”
At breakfast, she returns his jacket and thanks him with her treasure.
“Don’t want you catching scurvy,” she says as she places the tangerine in his palm and gently curls his long fingers around it.
Small acts of kindness don’t have to hurt or come with a nefarious agenda. Her skin does not crawl where it touches his. It yearns, and it calls.
“You finally going sweet on me?” he says, surprised and surprisingly touched by her actions. He has kind eyes. The kind of kind eyes that she’s known.
“I want you to keep cooking, so yeah.”
He guides her to a seat at the table and sets down a ready plate of food.
“Always at your service, darling, so eat.”
She does as she is told, always thinking: what do I do for you? Is this a transaction? Do you need me to draw you a map of the world and show you where the All Blue is?
(Do you want me for me or to chain me to your dream?)
When he finally sits down to join her, he peels her fruit so carefully, Nami finds herself holding back tears.
“You okay?” He is wilfully observant. “Why don’t you try it?”
“What?”
“You know, something sweet for somebody sweet.”
He holds a ripe orange segment up, and even now, he winks. Nami reaches for it, reaches for something, and grips him by an elegant wrist. Her lips wrap around the sweet fruit bursting with her memories and also, inadvertently, Sanji’s thumb tip.
“Am I interrupting?” Zoro is awake.
“Did you set an alarm just to ruin my morning?” Sanji says, irate. “Of course, you were interrupting—!” His eyes never leave her face.
“Interrupting what?” Luffy is oblivious to all except: “Are there tangerines for breakfast?!”
“No!” Sanji stamps his foot hard enough to jolt the table. “This one is mine,” then he licks the wet pad of his thumb.
“Why’s Nami blushing?” Usopp does not care—“Breakfast, breakfast, breakfast!”—so long as he is fed.
Nami does care; she feels exposed. Did the rest of the crew just witness something that was meant for only them?
“It’s true,” she says. Help me. She gathers her courage and what is left of her treasure, offering it up to its rightful owner. “This belongs to Sanji.” Without hesitation and for all to see, he eats out of her palms.
“Could the shithead waiter stop flirting at breakfast?”
“As captain, I’ll allow it!”
“I swear I never stole any… except for maybe that one time.”
Nami laughs, unguarded and joyful, and Sanji’s not so (never really) whole annoying face lights up in her hands.
Somehow, it feels like sunlight and water. Here out at sea, the roots dig in deeper; the fruit begins to take form.