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“How did you know?”
The sand sifts through Sanji’s bare fingers. Little tumbles of finery slipping against the pads of his fingers, gentle, shaking free with each vicious tremble that shudders through his hands. There’s a part of him—a distinctly, iron-caged and terrified part of him—that itches to bolt. To stand and run as far as his skywalk will take him. He doesn’t. He locks every joint in his body instead.
Yamato hums from where he’s kneeled next to him, rocking himself back and forth in small motions as he fiddles with the hem of his clothing. “About?” He asks softly. “I’m more than welcome to listen, if that’s what you need, but ah.” And he looks so—confused but reassuring and welcoming, and something in Sanji just. Surrenders. The fear doesn’t dissipate, not exactly, but it abates just a little bit into a steady, quiet thrum. “Wouldn’t your captain understand a bit more?”
Sanji thinks back to the scars lining Luffy’s chest, symmetrical against the jaggedness of the large X that paints his chest, and sighs. “Yes and no,” Sanji mutters, tugging on a stray strand of his hair. Would Luffy understand? Probably not in the way Sanji is struggling. He’s always known who he is—that he’s Monkey D. Luffy and that he will be King of the Pirates. Whatever body he had didn’t matter. If he thought himself a man, he was a man. Euphoria donned him along with his straw hat, not a too-tight skin that squeezes at his lungs tight enough to suffocate.
But he’d listen. And he’d care. And he’d probably laugh and go, Well, duh! Sanji’s Sanji. Just like Luffy is Luffy and Zoro is Zoro and—whatever. The list goes on. And if there’s anything his captain had taught him, it’s that sometimes it is just as simple as you would think. But, well. Sanji’s not a simple person by any means.
So, he puts his head in his hands and spits out: “How’d you figure out you were—a guy? Not… not who you were beforehand. Or. Who you thought you were. Before.”
Dammit, fuck. He wants to throw himself into the ocean.
Yamato’s quiet for a long moment: long enough that it has Sanji rethinking all of his life decisions in the span of several agonizing moments. Yamato was open with who he was, just as Luffy and Zoro and Robin were when Sanji first met them, and—shit, he was wrong to assume Yamato would’ve been open to discussing anything with him. Especially something so personal. He should’ve just fucking rang Iva and dealt with all their hemming and hawing.
(Though, he knows, deep down, that if he really called about it, assuming they were in range, they would’ve listened. The teasing would just come later.)
But then Yamato smiles. “Well,” he starts, soft, “it started with Oden. Of course it did. He and his stories—what he did… I saw his execution. I saw it all. And I wanted to do everything in my power to help him.” He stops, and Sanji doesn’t press. He doesn’t need the details, and he won’t ask for anything Yamato’s not willing to give. “He was great. A legend. He wanted what was best for people, and he was kind, and he was loved, and that was—all I wanted. I didn’t want to be a man; I wanted to be Kouzuki Oden.”
Yamato hums, low and quiet against the slow-brought chill of the sea. “So I adopted that,” he finally says with a shrug. “I memorized his traits, his phrases, his legends, and the first time I announced myself as Oden, I’d never felt happier. That hasn’t changed. I am Kouzuki Oden, just as I’m Yamato, just as I am a man.”
He doesn’t add anymore, and Sanji doesn’t expect him to. The sand shifts beneath him. “Our crew had been split up for a time,” he murmurs, and he doesn’t need to see Yamato in order to feel his gaze land on him, encouraging. “It wasn’t by choice. We—all got sent somewhere. The brute to the man he’s going to defeat; Usopp to a forest filled with food; Luffy to…” Sanji grimaces. “You know that part of his story. They were all places for us to—to grow. And I got sent to an island where everything and everyone was different. And they were proud of that.
“There were men and women, and there were people who didn’t fit into either of those terms, and there were people who were men one day and women for the next week. There were men who dressed as women and women who dressed as men; people who identified as nothing except for who they loved. Men who loved men. Women who loved women. People who loved neither or all, and—it was beautiful.” Sanji tangles a hand in his hair, tugging it ever so slightly as the words spill out. “It really was. And I was terrified. I still am. It’s not every day you get forced into a dress for fun and end up feeling like everything’s just… fallen into place. That you like the silk against your skin, or the way heels make you several inches taller, or that—that you feel like you belong in a piece of clothing you weren’t ever supposed to wear to begin with.”
He laughs, shaky. It sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. “It’s not as if that was my every day, either, you know? Sometimes I liked how my suits fit. I liked feeling like a man. And then there came the days that the suits felt too tight and my beard too itchy and the feel of a dress felt better than anything else. And the days where suits were fine, the hair was fine, but I wanted makeup or painted nails, or I was in a dress and I didn’t feel the pressing urge to shave, and… I don’t—know where that leaves me.”
The sun has started its dip beyond the horizon, lanterns slipping upwards, and Sanji feels himself start to cry along with the gentle lap of the waves against the shoreline. He sniffles. “I don’t know,” he whispers. “Luffy’s—he’s always known who he is. So has Zoro, and Robin’s known because she had the books to teach her, and I know they’d understand if I told them. They’re my crew. My best friends. But I—” He hisses against a sob bubbling in his throat. “I didn’t. Know. I know now, I think. It’s—as you said. The happiness leading to who you are. But I can’t—I don’t—”
“You can, and you do,” Yamato interrupts. He knocks his shoulder against Sanji’s own, and—surprisingly, Sanji doesn’t find the gesture entirely unwelcome. Rather, he catches himself leaning into it. Yamato lets him. “You didn’t know until then, or maybe until just now, but you discovered it, didn’t you? It’s yours. And you are who you want to be, whenever you figure that bit out—whether it be from the moment you put on a dress, or whether it comes to you slow in the middle of the night years down the line. So what if you’re a man sometimes and a woman others—you’re still the chef of the Strawhat Pirates.”
Maybe once he would’ve flinched. Maybe once he would’ve said that anyone could be who he is to Luffy, to Nami, to Brook, to them all. But Whole Cake Island rings true in his mind, and his heart slows, if only a little bit. “Yeah,” he says. “I am.”
“You are,” Yamato agrees.
When Sanji glances up at him, the man’s positively beaming. “Thank you,” he says, soft, and Yamato nudges him just shy of his still-healing ribs. Though, Sanji supposes after a beat, those may as well be brand new. But now’s not the time for that. Yamato’s laughing, bright, Wano has begun to ignite in celebration—and Sanji can’t help but smile.