Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bonney Jewlery, having finally managed to drag her pirate scum ass to the Grand Line, is feeling great. She's managed to avoid dying, losing any limbs (shout-out to Eustass Kid), or even horrible facial scarring (shout-out to Killer, may the stick lodged up his ass be removed soon)! And the food she's been eating, well, there's just so much. She's never weighed this much before, and it feels so fucking good.  

Life as a pirate is definitely better than life as an orphan on the streets.

So, yeah, Bonney Jewlery is currently eating her way through the first half of the Grand Line, and though it is definitely harder to bully the chefs here than back home, she's trying her damn hardest.

Of course, she's not the only one interested in threatening a free meal or two or three from restaurants, but she can hold her own. And if she can't, she can turn as many people into confused and crying babies as she can before running like the devil is chasing her down.

Sometimes, though - sometimes, it's nice to sit down and eat with some strangers. Odds are, either she or they will end up dead before they have to kill each other at Raftel, so, why not?

-

She's stuffing her face with as much food as she can reach - pizza with the cheese still practically melting, chicken legs that coat her fingers in grease, the occasional lonely piece of lettuce, lost amidst all the meat - when some wannabe pirates saunter in. Now, normally, she would leave them alone, not kick up a big fuss or make a huge scene, but one of 'em has a stomach like an endless vacuum. She wishes she was joking.

She counts them off - a paltry crew, really, five members total if there aren’t any others waiting on their ship - and figures she can take them if she has to. They must be good if they’ve gotten this far though, and she hasn’t survived this long by being an utter idiot.

Bonney licks the grease off her fingers and smears her saliva off on her oft-abused shorts. “Hey, Ida, check the papers for me? Tell me if those goons over there are worth something.” She makes a disgusted motion at the black-haired brat who’s making a racket fit for a crowd.

“Oooh,” Ida coos from her left. “We gonna fight?” There’s rustling around the table as someone pulls out the morning’s paper and hands it to Ida.

Bonney groans loudly. “Uggghh, I hope not. I just want to eat, and they’re stealing my food.”

Juno, on her right, pats her shoulder with a light hand. “I can cook for you back on the ship,” he says, a little wearily, but resigned to his fate. Bonney drapes herself over him and gives him a bone-crushing hug. He winces.

“Oh, oh! Found him,” Ida sing-songs. Bonney turns back towards her, stealing a fistful of fries off Juno’s plate for good measure. “Monkey D. Luffy, thirty million beli, bounty first issued a couple months ago after he wrecked some fishman over in East Blue. Captain of the Straw Hat Pirates.”

“He’s from East Blue?” Bonney snorts. “While I was up north dealing with Eustass?” Murmurs of sympathy and agreement sound, the former from the newer members and the latter from the old ones.

Throwing a glance over her shoulder, she sees that the Straw Hats’ captain has not, in fact, stopped eating and that the other customers are looking worriedly between the two rowdy pirate crews. She doubts this monkey kid is going to pay for his meal either, which means they need to resolve this quickly before some pansy calls the marines in.

She gives the nearest plate one last lick and chugs some weirdly orangey tasting drink she’d ordered for kicks. Sighing, she heaves her way out of her chair. “Let’s go, everyone. Time to teach some brats a lesson.” Behind her, Ida and her crowd cheer.

Bonney sizes the pirates up real quick as she approaches their table. The swordsman looks like the biggest threat, and Luffy, too, judging by his bounty. The chubby redhead and the long-nosed guy don’t look particularly strong, but for all she knows they could be devil fruit users. There’s a blond too, face obscured by long bangs and a cloud of smoke, complaining about the quality of the food. She decides immediately that she likes him the least.

“Oi,” she says, and reaches over to snatch a hunk of meat right from the captain’s hands.

Annoyingly, the brat doesn’t pay her any mind and just stretches his neck up an inhuman amount to chomp down on the meat. “Thif if mine,” he says around it. Bonney can’t help it - she smiles.

“Yeah, okay, but I was here first,” she says in reply, a little petulantly perhaps, but, whatever. Who needs manners right before a brawl anyways.

Straw Hat scrunches his face up in confusion while gnawing the last pieces of meat off the bone. Obviously, she’ll need to explain -

“Mademoiselle!” an obnoxious voice exclaims. “We’ll leave immediately, but might I make it up to you? Such a gorgeous lady-” Bonney’s eyes are glazing over at this point, but she looks over, annoyed already, and - of course, it’s the blond, a cigarette drooping from his fingers. The way he’s eyeing her gives her the goddamn creeps too, like some pathetic, leery teen.

“OI, OI!” shouts Ida from the back, and Bonney kicks her sharply in the shins and pointedly turns away from the besotted man.

She clears her throat. “Straw Hat, right?” She’s about to extend her hand for a good ol’, friendly shake before she remembers the grease practically dripping on it. Then she sticks her hand out anyways.

Straw Hat breaks out a disarmingly cheerful grin and firmly grabs her hand with his own oily one. Truly, a good sign.

“Yeah, Monkey D. Luffy! I’m going to become the King of Pirates.” He laughs afterwards, genuine and intimate, like he’s telling you a treasure of a truth. Bonney just gapes a bit, then throws her crew the middle finger behind her back, a well-practiced sign that means ‘don’t you dare do anything stupid, or we’ll see how much you like having arthritis for a week.’ She side-eyes his crew, and they all seem absolutely fine with this statement - this one, of all possible grand declarations you could make in the age of pirates, on the Grand Line no less.

There’s a couple of seconds where Straw Hat Luffy maintains eye contact with her, but she really can’t think of much to say. Hopefully, one day soon, some kind, kind pirates will kindly kick this kid’s ass, let him down gently and all that, but Bonney? She is not going to be that woman.

“Well, I’m Bonney Jewlery,” she says instead. “Maybe we’ll both survive until Raftel and then we can duke it out, or something.” She thinks she’d like that, and so does Straw Hat judging by the way he’s laughing. She also thinks she could win, looking at him and his crew right now, but underestimating people has always led to some rather tight situations for her, and the look in Straw Hat’s cheerful eyes shows a steely will.

In her peripheral vision, she can see the other members of the Straw Hat start to get fidgety. Long-nose is crouching next to the redhead, seemingly listing all the catastrophes that could happen. Tuning him out, Bonney tries to get this over with.

She claps her hands together and tries to look… Nice, instead of deadly ravenous. “I didn’t come here just to socialize! I’m here to say that I was here first, and that with two hungry pirate crews jockeying for free food, we’re both going to end up utterly screwed by our dear, old friends, the marines.” She’s smiling, but she’s gritting her teeth, because this whole clashing-with-random-pirates-on-seemingly-nice-islands thing keeps happening to her, and last time she’d had to run from the marines before the Bonney Pirates could finish resupplying. The following week out at sea had been rather unpleasant. She’d contemplated feeding some of the newer crew members to the sea so rations wouldn’t be so bad.

She could pay, of course, but it was the principle of the thing. She was Big Eater Bonney Jewelry, and she was never going to scrabble for another meal in her goddamn life. She looks down at Straw Hat, wondering if she’s going to have to fight him now.

Straw Hat stares at her blankly. Bonney stares back. It’s a little unnerving, actually, but she has a feeling that what he thinks of her right here will be important in some way, just like she knew her first time seeing the sea that it was going to be her destiny.

“Okay,” Straw Hat says finally, decisively. “Let’s eat together then!” He laughs, half through his teeth so that the sound rushes out harshly, then swivels around in his chair to face the blond. “Hey, Sanji! Let’s have a super festive pirate party!”

Sanji - Bonney rolls the name over in her mind a few times - perks up immediately and ignores whatever the swordsman he’d been trying to argue with says next. “I would never turn down the chance to cook for a beautiful lady,” he says, bowing deeply from the waist and with one arm outrageously outstretched. The way he says “lady” makes Bonney’s skin crawl, but she is distracted by sudden comprehension.

“Wait,” she says. “What?”

The orange-haired woman pops up beside Straw Hat and grips his arm tightly. “Yeah, Luffy, what?”

“I want to eat together!” is Luffy’s sole response, no matter how hard the woman punches him, and she seems to be trying pretty hard.

“I mean, they don’t call me Big Eater for nothing, kid. Are you - are you sure?” Bonney squints at Straw Hat quizzically, as if this is all some cosmic misunderstanding.

“You don’t want to fight, right?” he asks, and when she nods, he laughs, again - again - and turns back to stretch his arm across the table and grab something off the long-nosed guy’s plate. Words muffled by a mouthful of food between gnashing teeth, he says, “And we both want to eat, right?”

A deep voice, seemingly apathetic and resigned, speaks up - the mossy-headed swordsman. “Well, Captain’s orders,” he rumbles, and everyone settles down. The redhead mutters to herself, “We do have to wait for the logpose, but…”

Bonney needs to come up with a hand signal that tells her crew, “why can’t you all behave like that?”

“Okay,” she says, instead of looking an enigmatic gift horse in the mouth. “Well, uh, you guys can have Juno and his team for the night then.” She hooks her leg behind his and kicks him forward. He stumbles into the table, barely managing to avoid falling face first into a platter of roasted duck. Juno gives her a look like he’s been thrown into a den of wild, starving animals. She ruffles his hair.

“Juno’s my cook and my second favorite thing on earth. He’ll help you guys out for the night.” She slaps him hard on the back, laughing loudly, and he’s saved from falling forward once more by his tight grip on the table.

“Bonney-” he begs.

“Excuse me, Lady Bonney, but I can handle the cooking perfectly fine by myself.”

Bonney looks up, and, oh, of course the Straw Hats’ cook is the snobbish blond. No wonder the captain eats like he’s starving - she bets the cook makes dishes in tiny portions with inedible flowers sprinkled on the side, or whatever.

He keeps going. “I will prepare for you a feast like you’ve never had before, something to match your heavenly beauty! As long as you will grace me with your presence.”  

Bonney looks down at the grease stains on her shirt, thinks she hears someone mutter ‘shut the fuck up’ in the background, and has to agree.

“You’re going to be cooking for my crew and yours, and you’re going to be completely fine?” Bonney gestures at Straw Hat, persistently still eating, then at her own abandoned table, where the plates are piled messily atop one another.

“Driven by your beauty, there won’t be anything I can’t accomplish! If only we weren’t in such a lowly establishment right now so that I could feed you something worthy of you.”

Desperately freaked out, Bonney looks at the freckled woman standing behind the Straw Hat cook. She offers Bonney a regretful look and shakes her head.

Sanji looks at her expectantly.

“Juno can tell you what we eat,” Bonney says at last. Deciding that the best course of action would be to just ignore the man, she asks Straw Hat, “So, can I see your ship?”

His eyes gleam.

-

Bonney is buzzed and full - so full of good food, so she laughs a deep-belly laugh into the night, filling the spaces in the air between the chattering and the crackling and the curses.

“Kid,” she says, shaking her head. She’s sticky from sweat - her hair is plastered to her skin. “You’re crazy, y’know that?”

“It’d be fun,” he says, and Bonney doesn’t doubt him in the least. She punches him good-naturedly in the shoulder, and her fist springs back at her. Rubber devil fruit - fuckin’ amazing.

“I’ve already got a crew, like, look!” She jerks a thumb over at the idiots intermingling with the Straw Hat pirates.

Straw Hat’s gaze follows her finger, and he looks intensely at the people dancing and eating - oh, eating, maybe she should join his crew, if only to steal the leery cook away - and he seems to understand. “Okay,” he says, smiles that full smile, and gets up to dance.

Bonney’s just about to get up and follow him when she spies the pretty woman navigator from the corner of her eye, so she calls out, “Oi, navigator! Yeah, you! What’s your name - Nami? Nami!”

The woman’s thumb is rubbing circles into a golden coin and her face is flushed bright red. She walks over, the corners of her mouth pleasantly upturned at Bonney’s antics, or maybe just the feel of gold.

“Did you get into pirating because of your horrible gambling debts? Or is the captain better than her crew?” Nami asks Bonney. The coin goes into a small purse hanging low by her hip, and she sits down in the space Luffy left.

“Ha!” Bonney laughs like a bellow. “I’m a pirate for the job security, of course! Just like how the  idiots who can’t keep their money in their pockets are pirates for the charity.”

Nami snickers. “So you’re here on the Grand Line for kicks? Some thrills?”

“Oof, loaded question. It’d take a lot more of your cook’s food and a couple more drinks for me to answer that,” Bonney teases, only half kidding. There’s something about Straw Hat and his crew that makes her want to be honest, or at least as honest as a wanted pirate can be. “But, yeah. I guess I am. It’s like I want to see how far I can go like this. Wouldn’t it be amazing if I could make it all the way to the end?”

Their shoulders are nearly touching. Bonney notices that there is a patchwork of ugly scars mottling Nami’s shoulder, and is reminded of her own - a bullet wound on her right thigh, some ugly slashes across her rib cage, a burn scar on her left hand.

Nami says, “I get that. Luffy makes me feel like I can have it, too.” Her thick fingers drift up to worry at her left shoulder. “It’s the treasure that’s really important though.” She smiles at Bonney as if she were starving.

“Money and food,” Bonney sighs wistfully, carefully cataloguing Nami’s mention of Luffy to the back of her mind, where she keeps her thoughts on Kid and Killer and the other menaces of the seas. “You think I could buy your cook from you?”

The night seems to split for a second as Nami practically barks out a short laugh. “Please,” she says. “Take him if you can. He’d never leave us, even if sometimes I wish he would.”

Bonney winces in sympathy. “That bad?”

“Never touches, is sweet as hell, and gives me all the good food I could ask for, but,” and Nami gestures helplessly in the general direction of the bonfire, where the cook is doubtless trying to woo half Bonney’s crew.

Bonney gently bumps her shoulder against Nami’s. “Yeeeep.” She pops the ‘p’ of that ‘yep’ like the bubblegum she used to chew voraciously as a kid. “Wanna join my crew instead? Promise there aren’t any like him, though Juno’s cooking does pale in comparison.”

She sizes Bonney up with critical eyes, says, “Wouldn’t leave this crew unless you could give me all the treasure in the world.”

Oh, Bonney likes this woman as much as she likes Straw Hat, and she can’t help but wonder if their entire crew is like this.

“So why’s he sailing with you? Why not with a bunch of pampering women or some rich fucks who can pay the price his food deserves?” Bonney’s surprised to find herself genuinely curious. She’s never been the nosy type, but each member of this patchwork crew seems to want to draw itself together. This is what the strongest crews must be like - like, Whitebeard’s, or Red Haired Shanks’, or maybe even Gold Roger’s.

“I wasn’t actually there when he joined,” Nami says. She looks mildly abashed as she explains, “I’d stolen the ship and run.”

Bonney’s not surprised at all now, though the statement still manages to push deep laughter whooshing out of her. “I would have had your head for that. What kind of a pirate captain is Straw Hat even? How have any of you survived?”

Nami shrugs, smiles fondly, vaguely traces the swirls of her tattoo. “I’ll answer one question for a hundred beli,” she says at last.

“Sorry, all my money’s for food and other important pirating supplies. Like, more food and some cannonballs.”

“I’m starting to think all pirate captains are like this,” Nami sighs. Stretching as she gets up and brushes some stray grains of sand off her clothes, she extends Bonney a hand. “Want to dance? It’ll be free, too, unless you decide you really want to pay.”

Bonney grabs the outstretched hand and jumps up, practically flying into Nami’s face. She thinks she’s going to regret having to kick the Straw Hats’ asses one day.

-

Maybe this is how pirate alliances form - two hungry crews inexplicably meet, get drunk together, and dance rowdily on the beach of some forgettable island. After a few rounds through the crowd, Bonney adores practically every member of the Straw Hat crew. She’s shared drinks with everyone, save the cook, which is perfect, because now she’s drunk enough to stand him.

She slips away from the bonfire and sits down against a large piece of driftwood. Some sand sneaks its way into Bonney’s shorts, and she contorts her face into a grimace, wondering if she’ll have to try and do laundry on this island too.

Sand in her ass or not, she takes the time to look out at the waves lapping at the shore and enjoy the warmth in her stomach while she waits. True to form, barely ten minutes pass before he’s in front of her. It’s like the guy’s got a freaky sensor that tells him when women are alone. He shows up bearing a tray with a ridiculous number of colorful drinks in hand and a plate of fruit on his head, like some ridiculous show put on just for her.

“Miss Bonney,” he says. Someone kinder would compare his voice to smooth chocolate. Bonney just thinks it sounds hilariously fake. “Would you care for a drink?”

Bonney pats the sand next to her, inviting him to sit down. She hopes he gets sand in his pants, but his face is all lit up like he’s just won the lottery, and he shows no sign of discomfort.

“You,” Bonney accuses of him.

“Yes?” His eyelashes are practically fluttering.

Bonney is struck with an idea - she usually has many good pirating ideas when she’s drunk, like seeing if Ida’s alcohol tolerance would change if she were ten years old again. Anyways, she points at the tray, placed delicately between them, and demands, “Drink.” Maybe he’ll be more bearable if he’s drunk and she’s drunk. It’s a brilliant idea.

“Oh, but these were made especially for you, Miss Bonney! I mixed them with your beauty in mind, I poured my love into these masterpieces-”

Not very subtly at all, she says, “I’ll leave.”

“Oh,” Sanji says, quiet for a moment. Then, “Of course I’ll drink, I merely could not believe you would sacrifice your own drinks to me.”

If this were anybody else, her crew or Straw Hat’s, she would be chanting “chug, chug, chug” as they downed the drink, but talking to Sanji is more like reluctantly scratching an itch that won’t go away instead of talking to someone she can stand. So she waits until the cook’s done with the martini glass he’d grabbed before speaking again.

“So, you’re Sanji, right?” Seeing him nod, she continues, “Join my crew.”

His hands clutch at his chest and his face fills with bliss so exaggerated Bonney could gag. “Anything for you,” he sing-songs, and Bonney remembers Nami’s words - he’d never leave us - and she is filled with sudden, unexpected disgust.

She spits at his feet, and the cook’s expression freezes comically fast. “Scum,” she hisses, too tipsy, much too tipsy really, to care that she might be getting herself into a fight. “Your crew loves you so much - even Nami, despite all you put her through - and you would leave them for the next biggest pair of tits that walk by?”

The cook is sputtering. Bonney notices some wrinkles in his nice suit, feels satisfaction gurgle up in her.

“I would have your head for something like that,” she says distantly, an echo from earlier that night. If this were any other crew, Bonney would have laughed, perhaps, left it alone as a throwaway joke, but something about the Straw Hats makes her stomach clench up in some kind of want. She wants to see what they can do, how they would conquer the seas, how she would beat them to satisfy the hunger clawing inside of her. She cares a laughable amount for them considering they’re opposing pirate crews on the Grand Line. But this here, is scum.

She hears the cook swallow loudly, and his eyes dart around for a few seconds before he seems to collect himself, plaster that smarmy grin back on his face. “You are stunning, even when you are ripping my heart out and grinding it beneath your feet,” he begins.

Bonney cuts him off before he can gain anymore momentum, needs to see if, kept off balance, she can find in him what Straw Hat fought so hard for. “Why are you a pirate?” she asks of him, and tries to be quiet - serious - instead of loud and brash and booming.

He turns his head away, to look at the sea, cold and dark in the night. His long fingers fiddle nervously with the edges of his tie like he can pull the answers out from it if he plays it just right. Bonney feels a little sorry for this inept man. Just a little.

“C’mon,” she says, slurring her words a little more than necessary, trying to appear drunk and curious and genuine (two of the three are true, at least). “I want to know. I won’t laugh, and I’ll tell you my reason. That’s more than a fair trade, I think.”

His face is still turned away from her when he starts talking in a voice that’s oceans away. “Have you ever heard of the All Blue?”

“No,” she says, warily.

His tense fingers relax around his tie, and his hands drift down to his lap.

“It’s a story you’re bound to hear when you’ve been a cook on the seas for long enough. Cooks will talk about a legendary sea where all four seas of the world - North, South, East, and West Blue, where they all meet. They say you can catch any fish in the world there, that it’s any cook’s dream.”

Bonney’s eyebrows raise when the cook first starts talking, having expected an answer other than something this dreamlike. But as he talks, she listens, and she is reminded of herself, young and cold and landlocked, telling the woman who caught her digging in the trash cans that she would be a legend one day, far, far away.

“And?” Bonney asks in a gentle breath, like she wishes someone had asked her.

The cook turns around, looking straight through Bonney, and his blue eyes seem to throw back the light of the night a thousandfold stronger. “I know it’s real. I know All Blue is here, on the Grand Line, and I’m going to find it and see it with my own eyes.” His voice goes up at the end, fading away, but the conviction in it seeps into Bonney, just like Straw Hat’s own words had.

He keeps looking at her even after he finishes talking, and eventually it’s Bonney who has to look away, cowed by the sheer and pure desire in his gaze. She looks at her clothes instead, stained and torn and patched up together again.

“Sanji? You’re… actually alright,” Bonney says at last. She waits a beat to let that sink in before she tacks on, “For an absolute disgusting perv.”

Sanji makes a sound caught between a choke and a cough, and Bonney sees that while her gaze was averted, he’d grabbed another drink. She decides that he has the right idea and that the Straw Hat pirates probably weren’t the kind of people to steal her shit in the middle of the night. Like, thirty percent probably. Whatever, she hates having feelings without alcohol.

The flickering shadows the bonfire casts through the forms of bodies near and far fill up her view. It’s colder now that she’s not dancing and she can’t lean in close to somebody’s warmth. Bonney wishes she were next to Ida, big and rowdy and warm, but she’s got her word to keep, and a pirate’s word amongst pirates is really all she’s got.

Her mouth is dry. She says, “My turn now.” She licks her chapped lips.

“No,” Sanji says. He stands up like he’s carrying lead heavy on his shoulders. He cracks his back with an obscenely loud noise that Bonney is sure is a bad damn sign. “It’s fine. I - should go. I should go, Miss Bonney.”

Bonney blinks up at him, blearily slow on the uptake. “What?”

“I’ll have what looks like two hungover crews to cook for tomorrow. So, good night, Miss Bonney. Thank you for gracing me with your presence this lovely evening.”

Sanji’s bow before he steadily stalks away seems more self-deprecating than some surface-level gibberish, and he’s halfway to his own ship by the time Bonney even tries of thinking something to say. She sees smoke start to trail behind his far-away figure and is, horribly, sort of glad she can’t smell it.

It’s sort of pathetic, Bonney thinks, that his last half-hearted compliment to her was the most genuine she’s heard all day. It’s probably a sign that she ought to throw herself back into her own crew and leave the Straw Hat pirates’ problems to fend for themselves.

-

Bonney wakes up the next morning feeling uncharacteristically grouchy, and her crew wakes up hungover, half of them broke by the hands of pretty navigator Nami. Juno is horrified to discover that Sanji had cooked enough breakfast for both crews languishing in their own ships and had even had the initiative to carry platters and platters of it to the Bonney pirates’ ship’s front doorstep. Shipstep. Whatever.

This means that although Bonney gets to tease Juno mercilessly for his incompetence for the next week at least, she misses the chance to see Sanji and how he’s changed in the light of day. She growls as she reminds herself that she doesn’t care and grips the edge of the table so hard that the end of it creaks ominously and splinters. When Juno asks what’s wrong, she tells him to shut up and just bring her more food.

The sun is high in the sky when the log pose finally sets, long after Bonney has become anxious to cast off, to sail as far as she can and prove her name.

“We don’t have the time to be getting so chummy with some delusional pirates,” she’d complained this morning in between angry bites of a monstrously large, disgustingly delicious muffin. She’d probably sprayed crumbs all over Evvie, her poor hulking navigator.

Now, Evvie is in front of her again, rumbling pleasantly, “We can set sail as soon as you’re ready, Captain.”

“Finally,” Bonney groans, and heaves her legs off the scuffed-up table in her quarters.

As she bursts out of the darkness of the ship’s belly, Evvie lumbering behind her, she shouts out, “Hey! We ready yet or what?” Bonney pretends that her eyes are adjusting to the blazing noon sun so that her crew has the time to scramble up from where they were lazing around on deck.

After a moment of indecision, Bonney strides all the way to the edge of the ship, yards and yards away from the Going Merry. Seeing nearly all five members of the tiny crew onboard, she breathes in deep, cups her hands around her mouth, and hollers with all her might.

“STRAW HAT!” she yells. A flock of gulls squawks loudly and take off in flight.

She sees Straw Hat wave enthusiastically from where he is carelessly perched on the sheep figurehead.

“THANKS FOR THE FOOD! GOOD LUCK ON THE GRAND LINE!” Bonney lets a challenge slip into her voice and is pleased with herself when she hears hissing laughter drift over.

Definitely one of the better pirate encounters of Bonney’s life.

She turns around smartly and bellows just as loudly, “WE’RE SETTING SAIL FOLKS!” There’s some half-hearted cheering, and Bonney figures she can forgive her crew this time, seeing as they must be suffering from some pretty bad hangovers.

Sneaking up on Juno, she slings an arm around him and asks, “So, in the meantime, what’re you planning on cooking me?”

The helpless look on his face is priceless. Bonney laughs with the gulls.

-

“Why do unidentifiable monsters always have to be so brutal,” Bonney complains from her highly dignified and captainly position on the ground.

A couple of her crewmates groan. Bonney makes a horrible hacking noise in the back of her throat and coughs up a nasty glob of blood. There’s a weak scream from a couple feet to the left of her, so she rolls her head over just in time to see Ereda pop Ida’s shoulder back into its joint. Bonney winces in sympathy.

She looks back at the sky and realizes that it’s actually pretty far in the day by now, which is sort of disappointing. Originally, she had just planned on punching a few terrifying adult monsters into weak toddler monsters, plowing her way through some ancient traps, and just taking the goddamn treasure. Turns out that even toddler hippo-dinosaur-giant-beast-things were, well, fucking horrible.

“Hey, Ida,” she calls out.

“Hey, Captain, I’m, uh, a little busy here having, y’know, Ereda put me the fuck back together again.”

“Listen, this is your fault, you have a gun, you don’t need to punch everything!”

“Hey-”

“Shut up and stop moving,” Bonney hears Ereda hiss. There’s the sound of skin slapping on skin, and Bonney assumes Ereda’s just covered Ida’s mouth with her hand.

“Anyways,” Bonney says. “I vote we send Juno’s team to get through the traps, and then I can babysit the ship and not get mauled.” She rolls onto her side so that she can look at Ida more directly. She herself is actually already patched up, which is one of the perks of having the ship doctor look after you first.

“You know that if Juno dies - Ereda I’m fine, look, I’ll punch Bonney for you, my arm’s working perfectly - nobody else is gonna cook for you, right?”

Ereda huffs as Ida swats her away, but picks up her bandages and salves to move to the next victim.

“Hrrgh,” Bonney says.

She’s trying to calculate how bad they actually need some treasure and the odds of it still being where the shady map says it should be when a bird starts to lazily circle its way down to earth. Bonney squints up at it, though she mostly gets only a faceful of sun. Seemingly, the bird is able to tell, because it coos at her loudly.

“Oh sweet, a news coo,” she mumbles, pushing herself into a sort of upright position. She shoves her hand into her surprisingly deep back pocket. An energy bar, some loose threads, the crumpled treasure map that had led her to the horrible dinosaur beasts, where - ?

Just as she’s about ready to give up and ask her crew for some spare change, she pulls out a fistful of sticky, grimy coins.

“Hey,” she says, beckoning to the gull pecking around in the dirt. It eyes her suspiciously while she menacingly jingles the coins in her hand.

“Come on,” she sighs. Animals never trusted her, probably because she never trusted them. She counts out exactly a hundred beli and throws it at the gull’s webbed feet, and in exchange, it uses its beak to pull out a rolled up newspaper and tosses it to her.

The news coo flaps its lengthy wings to get back into the air, and then it soars. There are a couple more newspapers left in its bag, which means its work isn’t done. Pirating is a much easier profession in Bonney’s opinion.

“Hey!” she calls. “Paper’s here!”

Moaning and groaning resound, and Bonney unrolls the paper, says, “Jesus” savagely under her breath when she sees the front page image.

Like always, Ida is the first to plop down beside her, rolling her left shoulder around and around. “Captain?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Bonney says, “Yeah, go ahead.” She hands the paper over to Ida, wishing for the thousandth time that someone had thought to teach her to read before leaving her to die in the streets.

Ida, having grown up relatively well-off before pirates burned her village down and she took to the seas, scans the paper quickly, eyes widening.

“Well, shit,” she says. Bonney elbows her in the ribs - just a tap, really, just in case Ida broke anything there.

The noise around them grows as more people settle down around them, Ereda angrily weaving her way around, a basin of dirty water in hand. Bonney elbows the person to her left - Jubilee - who takes the hint and elbows the person to their left. As everyone quiets down, except for the poor sod whose bleeding Ereda is trying to stop, Ida starts to read.

“Alabastan regime saved by marines - fallen warlord of the sea arrested, to be taken to Impel Down. A new era to be led by recently returned princess Nefertari Vivi. ”

“Who the fuck,” Bonney demands. “Like, that’s Crocodile, right? The sad-looking rat in the picture there? Who took him down?” She pokes viciously at the black and white photo of a snarling man in seastone cuffs, a cigar still drooping from his lips.

“Hey, cap’n, let me read.” Ida swats Bonney’s hand away.

Bonney jiggles her leg and taps her fingers on the ground.

“Okay, okay, so Smoker - used to be a captain, now commodore, impressive - fought Crocodile and defeated him, thus preventing Alabastan civil war. Blah blah blah, it is to the World Government’s deepest regret that a former government-sanctioned pirate would be found abusing his gifted power like this, blah blah - it’s all bullshit, Bonney.”

Bonney furrows her brows and tries to think out what this means. For her. For the marines. For her and the marines. For her and the marines and the pirates on the seas. She clenches and unclenches her hands, clawing at the dirt, wishing she had some gum to chew.

“Anybody know if good old Commodore Smoker here is a devil fruit user?” she asks at last, because that’s as good a starting point as any.

One of their newest recruits, a scraggly looking girl who had bitten Bonney when they’d first met, raises her hand.

“Oho?” Bonney says, and leans forward.

The girl has a voice like a creaking door. “He’s a logia user, captain. Smoke smoke devil’s fruit. I used to live in Loguetown, back where he was stationed, before I left for the Grand Line. I hear he’s brutal towards pirates.”

“You got here though,” Ereda points out from her spot at the back, washing the blood off her hands.

“I was part of a good crew. Nobody had to know we were pirates, and we just sailed right off.” The girl smiles crookedly.

“So, he’s good.” Bonney chews at her bottom lip, a bad habit. “But Crocodile was really good, and logia users can’t really beat other logia users. They can’t touch each other unless they’ve got seastone or some really special tricks that I’d love to get my hands on.” Bonney swivels her head around and narrows her eyes. “Does Smoker got any special tricks?”

Crooked girl shakes her head indecisively.

“Bonney.”

“Ugh, what does this mean? I want food,” she moans, pulling at her hair.

“Bonney.”

“Why isn’t Juno here? Why do we never take Juno with us? I get hungry! I fought, like, a dinosaur, I deserve-”

Ida elbows her. Bonney slumps over.

“Captain, I don’t think it was Smoker.” Ida’s face is earnest, if exasperated, and Bonney dislikes how she needs Ida for everything, for everything she never got, but she nods her head anyways.

Ida nods back, pleased. “See, I don’t think we’ll be able to know if Smoker and Crocodile fought, or how they beat each other, right? Unless one of them popped up right now, and we jumped on ‘im and started punching and won, which, yeah, Bonney, you’re good, but - But anyways, the newspaper is really vague about it all. Apparently Smoker got his info on the “deliberately devised civil war” from “inside sources”. And the princess, who’d been gone for, like, years up until now, just shows up and takes the crown? It’s weird, you see?”

Ereda, still in that deadpan voice, still busying herself with her own affairs a couple feet behind the crowd, pipes up, says, “I say the princess did it. Left to get help, came back with it, but the marines didn’t like who the help was.”

Bonney perks up immediately, because she knows very, very well the kind of people the marines don’t like. “Ida, Ida, check the bounties. Look for any big rises in bounty, but without any clear-cut reasons. No news, no nothing.” She’s practically bouncing at this point, jittery with the excitement of revelation.

Ida, dependable Ida, is already flipping through the pages. A few moments pass, Ida getting increasingly frustrated with each page she skims, before she just flips the newspaper around and shakes until sheets of paper, the recognizable faded brown of bounties, come fluttering out.

Since Evvie is the one who keeps track of all the maps, it had been unspoken agreement that she would keep track of the bounties as well. So there’s a moment of confusion where Bonney’s standing up, and Ida’s asking if anyone can keep track of numbers well, and some people have got what’s going on and some haven’t, until they all realize that Evvie is back on the ship.

Bonney grinds her teeth as she looks at the yawning cave entrance, where treasure could await, then back at the way they came, where she could satisfy her goddamn curiosity. Everyone is looking up at her, waiting for whatever rush her next whim will bring. She scowls as she tries to think logically instead of just going to impulse, and the question is, what do they need?

They need some more infamy, and for that, they’re going to need more money.

Bonney points at the crooked-looking girl. “You.”

“Name’s Jel, captain.” When she smiles up, Bonney realizes that she’s missing a front tooth.

“Jel, take the newspaper and bounties to Evvie as fast as you can, and tell her to start looking for unwarranted jumps in prices.” She pauses for a moment, contemplating the grumbling inside of her. “And if you get Juno to make me a snack for our triumphant return, you and me, we’ll go drinking the next time we find a nice town instead of a jungle.”

Jel’s up on her feet already, scooping up the papers, crumpling them in her fists. “Aye-aye,” she says, and when she smiles again, Bonney decides that the gap is sort of charming, even though it must make it harder to eat.

When she’s sure that Jel has set off in definitely the right direction, her hands drift to her hips to make sure her guns are still there, and her favorite knife too, even though now it’ll stink of blood and guts for weeks. She squints up at the sun, trying to calculate how much light they still have left in the day and wishing she’d brought a lantern.

Her stomach grumbles loudly.

“You hear that everyone? I’m hungry,” she yells out. “So we better finish this damn quick before I decide to eat one of you for a snack!”

There’s nervous laughter from the crew members scattered around as they get up, following her lead in a brief weapons check. Bonney knows that they’re unsure of whether or not she’s joking, and she likes to keep it that way.

“Let’s get going,” she says, and she marches her way into the cave, Ida already lighting a torch three steps behind her.

-

Back on her beloved ship - in the infirmary to be specific - Bonney hisses through her teeth as Ereda pours alcohol over the gash in her arm. Frankly, she sounds a little like the giant venomous spiders that she had not expected to show up in the dark, damp cave. Except the spiders had been bigger, uglier, and had had more legs than her. Anyways, making them older had just made them huge, and making them younger had just made them relatively small, and making them relatively small had just made it easier for them to clamber up on her and bite.

“You’re fucking lucky that those spiders are pretty common and I already had enough antidote for the whole crew,” Ereda mutters. The look on her face is dark, and she bandages Bonney’s arm probably more tightly than strictly necessary. Bonney gives a one-armed shrug with a careless smile on the side. If Ereda wasn’t excellent at what she did, Bonney would not have spent an entire month hounding her with offers of glory on the high seas.

The second Ereda relinquishes her arm, she slings it around the poor doctor’s neck.

“Thanks, Eri,” she sing-songs before kicking herself off the creaky cot that always dips in the middle. She snags a bag of potato chips off of Ereda’s desk, orderly and neat except for the mugs of abandoned coffee and empty syringes that lay around.

After calling in the next patient, Ereda points at the chips already in Bonney’s mouth and says, “those were mine,” which is a total lie, because everyone knows that she keeps the snacks around in the infirmary specially for the captain.

She gives Ereda the nastiest kiss on the cheek, getting grease and potato chip crumbs all over her face. Laughing, Bonney’s about to duck around Jubilee and out the door when she runs straight into a very solid body.

“Evvie!” she shouts, overjoyed that now she can use her duties as an excuse for escaping Ereda’s vengeance. “You finished looking through the bounties?”

“Yeah, and you’re going to love what she found,” Juno says, poking his head out from behind Evvie’s lumbering form.

Her eyebrows climb up her face as she squeezes out of the infirmary and heads for the kitchen. Evvie and Juno follow, used to this route by now.

“God, whoever it is, I hope they’re ready for an ass-kicking. We’ve been so boring lately. We’re pirates, and we’re being boring.” She crumples the now empty chip bag into a ball and tosses it behind her. Either someone will catch it and throw it out for her, or someone will eventually clean it up.

Evvie says something.

It’s relatively quiet, apart from the ever-present drone of the waves and the loud crunching between Bonney’s teeth, so, really, she can’t have missed what Evvie just said.

She swivels around and asks anyways. “Excuse me?”

“It was Strawhat and his crew,” and every word Evvie says soars clear through Bonney’s mind.

Juno bounces nervously on the toes of his feet as Evvie wordlessly hands her three sheets of paper. Three?

The rustling of paper seems especially loud to Bonney in this moment as she tries to let the information sink in.

“You’re kidding me,” Bonney breathes out, doesn’t even lift her head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

She crumples the bounties in her fist, sucks in as much air as she can stand to hold, then screams for a second, eyes scrunched shut. And then - then she starts laughing.

Juno’s thin voice drifts over. “Um, captain, are you alright?”

“Jesus, Juno,” she says, looking up at the whorled wooden planks of the ceiling. “One hundred million - Juno, this kid got his bounty upped by seventy million beli.”

“Roronoa’s first bounty is at sixty million,” Evvie points out, ever helpful.

“That too! Where’s Ida, I need to tell her to step up her goddamn game.” She can hear her voice getting higher, and she’s practically trembling. Is she scared? She hasn’t been truly scared in a long, long time. She’s excited, she’s thrilled, she was right, the Straw Hat crew is going to change the world.

“Evvie,” Bonney says, voice calm and far away. “Evvie, I love you. Can you find us some pirates to fight? Some towns to terrorize? Not small fry. We’re going big, we’re aiming for the top.”

“It’s the Grand Line, boss,” Evvie says, which is as good an answer as any.

“Good. Great! Juno, tell me you can make me some steak. I’m starving.” Her nails curl into her palms. She’s ravenous.

-

Bonney doesn’t stalk the Straw Hat pirates, per se. It’s the Grand Line - it’s almost always not worth the effort it takes to track someone down across islands that are practically worlds of their own. But, she keeps tabs on them, maybe even more closely than she does for Kid or this new schmuck who the papers keep calling the “Surgeon of Death”.

If destiny was real, Bonney would think that it simultaneously loved and detested Straw Hat and his crew in equal measure. She doesn’t know if they know exactly what they’re doing, or if they somehow, almost every time, end up going to the most dangerous or unfortunate islands in this first half of the Grand Line.

Not always, though. Not always. Which is how she meets them again on Julep Island, an island she had specifically tracked down for its, you guessed it, famous Mint Julep. It’s not really her thing, but she gets cravings every once in a while. (A couple months ago it had been the meat of a stegosaurus-mountain lion hybrid. Juno had had fun cooking that one.)

So Bonney’s sitting with her crew at an otherwise empty bar, ready to experience the luxury that an infamous reputation could bring, when a blur hurtles itself into the room, slamming the door open with a bang, apparently desperate for meat.

She’s got a cold, dented pewter cup in her hand, the other poised to swat Juno’s arm when this happens. She catches a glimpse of a straw hat and a red vest as the kid sprints forward toward the counter, and she smiles sharp and wide.

Bonney swats Juno anyways, and eyes Straw Hat who is now grinning eagerly at the overwhelmed bartender.

“Food,” he says, voice as loud as she remembers. “Lots of it. And meat! No vegetables.”

“I’ll pay for his first dish,” Bonney chimes in. Straw Hat looks over, eyes shining.

“How’s it been, Straw Hat?” she says. The bartender scurries away fearfully, probably wondering why the hell they thought a bar would be serving steak, but - not Bonney’s problem. That was the great thing about being an infamous pirate. Most things weren’t her problem anymore.

The door creaks open cautiously, and Bonney sees the rest of Straw Hat’s crew starts to straggle in, obviously outpaced by the hungry boy-captain. Nami’s face shows a hint of surprise - recognition, followed by the sniper and the swordsman and, joy of joys, the cook and - wait. One more? Two?

“Uh,” Luffy says, drawing her attention back, front and center. “Who are you again?”

Bonney feels her eyebrows raise. Juno takes one look at her face and starts coughing ferociously to cover his giggles.

This is a question she hasn’t seriously heard in a long time, considering the fact that her bounty has been ever on the rise and excluding the fact that she had shared drinks and food with this kid and literally ripped some meat out of his hands.

She’s sort of both pissed and amused.

Someone kicks Straw Hat hard in the head, leg arcing gracefully through the air before landing with a solid thonk.

“This lovely lady - even more radiant than before, might I add - shared dinner with us on that Flat Circle island a couple months ago, you idiot.”

Ah, the cook with his smarmy voice and ways. She blatantly refuses to make eye contact even though she can feel his puppy-dog eyes boring a hole through her skull. Or her boobs, more probably.

“Who?” Straw Hat asks, clutching his head.

“Yeah, who?” the swordsman echoes, having slipped up from behind, and maybe they’re a whole crew of dumbasses. That would make so much more sense.

Bonney tries an approach more suited for dumbasses, now that she’s got that in order.

“I stole your meat, but you ate it anyways, and then you got the cook over there to make food for both our crews.” A simple summary with all the key details - food, food, and food.

Ah, how enlightenment dawns. Straw Hat’s smile is wide enough to dazzle, and he swings an arm around her shoulders like they’re old friends.

“Hey, you’re the jewelry lady! I’ll make sure to enjoy the meat you’re buying for me!”

“It’s Bonney, you bozo,” she says, and she’s almost relaxed, strangely enough, before her eyes catch a very familiar face. She narrows her eyes.

“You,” she says, and points a figure at the woman hanging on the edges of Straw Hat’s cheery crew.

“Me?” Her voice is deep and sweet, and Bonney doesn’t trust it for a goddamn second.

“I’ve seen your face before,” and she whips her head around. “Juno, tell me I’m right. We’ve definitely seen her before!”

There’s an edge in the air between them now, and Juno is opening his mouth to speak when Straw Hat, as guileless as ever, says, “That’s Robin! She joined our crew after we kicked her boss’s ass in Alabasta!”

And that’s a goldmine of information, but she needs to place this face, a need that comes from instinct that’s been saving her hide since birth.

“Robin, Robin… Robin?” It clicks. “Oh my god, Nico Robin? Devil Child Nico Robin is part of your crew now?” Bonney jumps off and away from her stool, resting on her toes, knowing the danger that that name brings.

“Yeah,” Straw Hat says, still smiling. “And Chopper!” He waves at the ground, and Bonney is pretty sure that’s a deer. A dog? A tanuki???

“Y-your food, sir!” someone squeaks, a high-pitched mood-ruiner, and it turns out the bartender found someone to cook for him after all, because there’s a sizzling steak on the counter and a trembling man behind it.

“Thanks,” Straw Hat says and digs in like he’s been starving for days.

“Yeah, thanks,” Bonney says, hoping she sounds as venomous as she feels. If she’s this uneasy now, then everyone else better be too or somebody better explain things fast. Straw Hat may be friendly enough, but there’s no denying that he’s now a one hundred million bounty pirate accompanied by a hellish swordsman and now fucking Devil Child Nico Robin apparently.

“Hey, Juno,” she whispers, slumping back into her seat. “What would you say our chances would be if we took ‘em on right now.”

Juno leans away from the other anxious crewmembers and says, “Well, remember when I said I would follow you to Hell? Yeah, on second thought-”

Bonney smirks and grinds her fist into his head. “I can always count on you, can’t I?” Ignoring his yelps, she turns to stare at Straw Hat, her fingers tapping impatiently against the sticky countertop.

“So,” she says.

“Mph?” he says.

She gestures at the crowd of pirates sitting on his other side. “So anyone want to explain?”

Long-nosed Usopp looks up, eyes alight, and wasn’t he the one with a penchant for lies? He sits up a little straighter and clears his throat with a sound like a deep cracking, and Bonney just knows she’s about to hear the wildest bull-fucking-shit in her life. She breaks her gaze away for just long enough to motion viciously at the cowering bartender to keep the drinks coming.

“I, the great Usopp, hero of the seas,” he begins. Bonney hears Ida choke on her drink.

Like always, Bonney was absolutely right. Wild story, utter bullshit. While Luffy just eats and laughs and drinks, the other Straw Hats chime in every once in a while to admonish Usopp or amend his tale or, in the child-reindeer’s case, to gasp in confounded awe, and eventually Bonney’s got an image that makes some sort of sense in her mind.

The room has dimmed to shades of blue and she’s switched from mint juleps to straight shots of vodka by the end of it all. Ida had challenged Zoro to a drinking contest at some point, before they were both soundly beaten by Nami, which was hilarious, and, somehow, Bonney trusts Robin a little more, despite all the gaps of information missing between her transition from island-destroyer to Baroque Works agent to Straw Hat pirate. As a former garbage-digging rat,Bonney knows that tragedies speak to each other in the silences in between violent mistakes.

Speaking of violent mistakes -

“Let me - let me get this straight,” Bonney says, her words jumbling together a little bit. She feels warm. “You, and a reindeer who’s also a human, whatever, kicked the ass of the former king of a winter island?”

Chopper nods when nobody else responds, small head wobbling unsteadily after the single shot everyone had pressured him into downing. His legs swing back and forth off the edge of the barstool, and it’s fucking adorable.

“And then the five of you saved Alabasta from one of the Seven Warlords of the Seas?” Juno, having grown far less reserved after a couple drinks, stares with disbelief spattered across his face, one eyebrow trying to escape, or so it seems.

A hand sprouts from the side of the countertop to hold Chopper steady on his chair. Nico Robin leans in, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and says, very simply, “Yes.”

“And Straw Hat - he fought Crocodile? And won?” Bonney asks. Her fingers curl around empty air, wanting to hold a gun or some food or something.

“It took a few tries,” Nami says. “But he won, in the end. He always does.” And when she says that, her stare holds the same sure steel Bonney has seen in the eyes of every ferocious captain who made it to the Grand Line.

Bonney feels the pit of wanting inside of her stomach open up wider, like the earth has broken up beneath her feet.

“I’m starving,” she says. “I want your cook to cook for me.”

Sanji is on the other side of the bar, but he’s bowing slightly behind Bonney seconds after the words leave her mouth. Nami, without even sparing Sanji a glance, holds out her hand for the drink Sanji is carrying, and Bonney can’t remember when Sanji started mixing the drinks instead of the bartender, who, she now realizes, is nowhere in sight.

“Miss Bonney, I would love to cook for you anytime you would like, but I would need a kitchen to create something that could even come close to being worthy of gracing your lips.”

When he pauses to take a breath, Ida begins to cackle loud enough to cover his ensuing words.

“I thought your hearing was supposed to suck, you asshole,” Bonney shouts, choosing to focus on Ida’s reaction over Sanji’s words. But just thinking about what she’d eaten last time makes her want to drool and cry and possibly demand where he had been when she was a starving child, but-

“Let’s find you a goddamn kitchen, then,” Bonney says.

-

It takes both crews another half hour to stumble out into the streets together, five minutes of which was spent threatening the surprisingly courageous bar owner who wanted extra compensation for having all his customers scared off. Bonney called the townies pansies and let Ida’s glare do the talking for her.

“It’s so dark out,” Chopper mumbles sleepily, curled up in Robin’s arms.

“What time is it even?” someone from Bonney’s crew asks flippantly. “Are there even any restaurants open right now?”

“We’ll make them open,” Bonney says, excitement thrilling through her.

Luffy is either completely unaffected by alcohol or just has a boundless reserve of energy, even while drunk, so she lets him take the lead. Sooner or later he’ll bump into some place with a kitchen, and then she can bribe and threaten the owners of said kitchen until she gets control of it. It’s a solid plan, and she considers celebrating her genius underneath the flickering lamplight.

The night air is colder than Bonney had expected, and she holds her arms, huddling tighter into herself as she stalks forward. Sanji is walking beside her, their respective crews in small groups further ahead or behind, and though he sees her shiver, he makes no move. Like Nami said a long, long time ago, he doesn’t touch. It’s almost as if he’s scared to.

“Hey,” she says.

He perks up immediately. “Yes, Miss Bonney?”

“Want to join my crew?” She keeps her tone light-hearted, doesn’t look at him, just keeps walking forward.

Sanji stills for a heartbeat, then trots to catch up with Bonney once more. He’s quiet.

The crowd ahead of them bursts into noise, and if Bonney squints, she can make out the word “Restaurant” on the side of the building they’ve surrounded. She picks up her pace, ready to forget about Sanji and how unsettled she is by his easy loyalty.

“No,” he says. “No, Miss Bonney, I don’t.”

She starts, looks over her shoulder. Sanji is smiling uncomfortably, looking very small underneath the vast darkness of the night.

“Perfect,” Bonney says in return. “Now you can cook for me.” She turns back to the warm arc of light coming from the doorway of the dingy restaurant and pushes her way in, knowing that she should stop Straw Hat before he does anything too careless.

Sanji follows her, kicking people aside and telling them to make way for the ladies, which warrants a grimace, but, there’s hope, right? Maybe she or Nami or Devil Child Nico Robin, or - or even Straw Hat himself, can break him of that trait.

After all, eating food made by people she can stand is definitely a better experience.

-

“This is sad,” Sanji whines, rather overdramatically in Bonney’s opinion. He’s pacing the length of the kitchen, which she will admit is sort of small, and letting his hand graze against the appliances methodically. When he seems to be satisfied, he pulls out a small bundle, unraveling it gently to reveal a set of gleaming kitchen knives.

“What are you doing?” she asks. She’s clambered onto the shiny, stainless silver counter in the middle of the space.

“What,” he says. By this point, he’s wandered further away, and his disembodied voice floats over muffled from behind the thick doors of the freezer. A moment passes. Arms laden with hunks of frosted over meat, he walks back out. “What?” he says again.

“What was the,” and Bonney mimes stroking the countertop lovingly.

“Oh.” He doesn’t quite manage to meet her eyes as he says, “I don’t just like to intrude on someone else’s kitchen. If I’m not invited, I should, introduce myself, I guess?” He does an about face and starts to busy himself with pulling out pots and pans.

That’s… That’s pretty cute, actually, Bonney thinks to herself, a little aghast.

Nobody says anything for a bit. There’s just the clanging of metal against metal, the rattling of bottles as Sanji pulls out spices upon spices from the shelves, and the hiss of water spraying into the metal sink. Layered beneath all that are the raucous sounds of two drunk pirate crews. She bets they’re giving the waitstaff hell.

There’s the glint of a carefully sharpened knife in hand, then Sanji stands before her, looking happier than she’s ever seen him.

“Any special requests, Miss Bonney?” He flips the knife in the air and catches it with his left hand. At the last second, he seems to remember who he’s supposed to be and tacks on, “I’d cook anything for you, Miss Bonney - I would follow you to the ends of the earth, for your beauty is that of the sun that lights my way -”

“Stop talking. Please. Okay, now do that again, so I can stand you.”

He does, throwing the knife even higher this time, and Bonney loves it when cooks listen to her. Juno always insists that he needs time to cook for her, so will she please stop bothering him to cook for her, because that is what he would be doing if she wasn’t here, bothering him, and did he mention that he was incredibly busy? Anyways, back to the matter at hand.

“Go wild,” Bonney says. “Cook normally, I guess. Do whatever, pretend I’m not here.”

He seems to be on the verge of blurting out something that’ll make Bonney want to puke her guts up, but he thinks better of it and instead says “aye-aye,” with a lopsided smile, and starts to wash the rows of vegetables all lined up neatly beside the sink. “Do you cook?”

Bonney makes a sound between a sad choke and a laugh, because, “I’m too busy eating to learn to cook.

“Besides,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m the captain.”

“Hm,” Sanji says. It sounds more like a hum than a statement of any kind, Sanji too intent on moving things around and checking the knives and filling a pot with water, and it’s sort of like seeing someone feeling their skin sit right around their bones for the first time.

“Hey.” She wants to make sure she drives this into the cook’s idiot skull before he gets too caught up in his work. “I’m starving. Cook for me, alright?”

She thinks of furtively licking the grease off empty bowls in one of the coldest winters she can remember.

“Ah,” Sanji says. “Yes, of course. Of course.” He looks feverish for a second, almost in pain, like he’s thinking of drawn-out days spent in desperation too. Like he’s hungry, too.

Then the moment is broken, and Sanji begins to move with true intent. Time stops in that cramped, little kitchen - there’s just the absolute concentration on Sanji’s face and the miracles his hands bring.

There’s hardly any waste, is the thing - luxurious waste that Bonney had hated, yet needed to live off of. No potato skins thrown aside, no leek greens pushed away, not even bones - all perfectly good, perfect for the void inside her stomach - went in the trash. (There was one winter where Bonney had found a butcher’s trash can full of bones, and had feasted like the king of a dump.)

Juno loves cooking, tells Bonney all the time about how he grew up trotting after his mother in the kitchen, but even then, he cooks like it’s his job. Sanji cooks like he’s dying for it, would die for it if he could. There’s a million things going on at any given time, knife flashing through the air or oil being poured into a pan, sizzling and popping upon contact, and he moves through it all, finally at peace with every movement, every heavy, flesh-laden limb, everything he does.

He’s happy, Bonney realizes. His hunger is gone.

She watches Sanji freeze time for himself, wonders how she could do that.

He finishes cooking slowly, coming back to himself and his body, but - content. Still giddy, a child after a long day at the nearby park.

“For you,” Sanji says, and Bonney blinks like she’s waking up from a weird, faraway dream.

She’s presented with a huge platter of fried rice - white rice with eggs and beef and tomatoes and small bits of chopped scallions, soy sauce drizzled on. Not dripping with grease or fat or everything Bonney craves to hasten a bloated death.

“Thanks for the meal,” she mutters, uncertain of how she’s feeling. Sanji is finishing up the other dishes, presumably for the others, still outside. Bonney doesn’t look up and just grabs the shiny spoon beside the plate.

She shovels it into her mouth, and - and it’s good, even better than the food she’d eaten months ago on the beach of some forgettable island. It tastes so good, and full, and warm, everything she’s ever wanted from a meal. She almost chokes in her haste to swallow it down, wants to say something to Sanji. Her stomach’s always done most of her thinking for her though, and instead, she grabs the plate, foregoing any dignity completely, and just tries to eat as much as she can, as fast as she can.  

It’s messy. There’s probably horrible shit all over her face and in her hair, but the rice tastes like the first solid meal she’d had in a long time as a child - the first time, the worst time. The first time, she had thrown it all up and cried, wondering if she could eat up her own vomit again.

Sanji’s smiling at her when she finally lowers the plate from her face, having licked up every last crumb. Now, there’s a cold glass of water in front of her, water beading up along the sides, ice cubes clinking coldly against each other.

“Thanks,” she says awkwardly, grabbing it. Her throat is dry, but if she drinks, the taste in her mouth will go away.

“I can make you more, if you’re still hungry,” Sanji says.

Fuck, Bonney thinks to herself, then starts to chug the water.

When she’s done, crunched the very last ice cube between her teeth, she licks her lips and slams the empty glass down with a painful clang onto the counter. She glares at Sanji with every bit of starved anger she can muster up when she’s this full and demands, “Where did Straw Hat even find you? How’d he - how’d he get you?”

There are no heart-filled puppy eyes now, just gleaming, earned pride. “There’s a little sailing restaurant called the Baratie back in East Blue,” he says. “A shitty old man there taught me how to cook before Luffy tempted me away.”

“Jesus,” she says vehemently, and Sanji looks like he’s on the verge of glowing.

“You’re sort of beautiful when you cook, has anyone ever told you that?” Bonney blurts out in a rush, against all common sense.

Sanji looks caught as the words sink in, flushes a little, vibrant against his pale skin. Two parts surprised, one part scared, but he adjusts quickly enough, says, “Ah, but your beauty is constantly breathtaking.”

Smooth. Bonney snorts. “I’m fat and loud and demanding, you jackass.”

“No, no,” he says, so earnest, as if she doesn’t understand. “Women are all so incredible, and beautiful. You are.”

He leans in, hands tight on the edge of the counter, still thrumming with the energy from earlier, and Bonney feels like he’s turning the tables on her, trapping her instead.

“There, there aren’t many women pirates,” Bonney notes, offhandedly, searching for something to say.

“If I,” he begins to say. “If I were - a woman -”

The kitchen doors slam open with such force that Bonney thinks trouble is coming, fast, and she has a pistol out and aimed in a matter of seconds.

“I’m huuungryyy,” comes the now familiar whine of Straw Hat, collapsed on the piece of counter right in front of Bonney.

“Goddammit, I would have shot you,” Bonney says. She twirls the pistol emphatically before sliding it back into its holster, wondering what it would have been like if Straw Hat’s story had ended here, in a small kitchen on Julep Island. It would be sort of funny. Disappointing, too.

“Get out of my kitchen,” Sanji growls and kicks Straw Hat so hard the short captain goes flying backwards, out through the swinging doors again.

Sanji lines up three different platters on one outstretched arm and places one on his head, perfectly poised, smiling slightly. He marches toward the doors, but stops before he pushes through, says, “Bullets don’t work on Luffy. Rubber devil’s fruit, remember?”

He waltzes out.

“Damn,” Bonney says. It’s going to be harder to kill Straw Hat than she thought. She thinks of the food Sanji is doubtless serving right now and starts to salivate again. “Fucking damn.”

She charges through the doors, ready, always ready, to eat.

-

It’s freezing tonight, and it’s especially freezing when she’s in a dingy little dinghy so close to the ocean’s spray. She’s also squashed between the hulking forms of Evvie and Ida, whose arms strain as they row ceaselessly towards the marine ship that looms before them, anchored for the night off the shore of some dry island.

“This sucks,” Bonney hisses under her breath, voice high and thin, body as small as a child’s. “I can’t swim!”

“It was your idea, captain,” Evvie says, so low Bonney has to strain to hear her. “And you are essential to this plan, as you always are with your plans.”

Bonney harrumphs, crossing her arms. Her hands are clenched into fists. She’s nervous - just a little.

“You sure the hunk of metal’s on this ship? There’s a lot of marines.” Ida growls.

“Mm,” Evvie hums, which is as much assent as they’re getting, it seems.

Bonney shivers, demands. “Are we close enough yet? Can we get out of the cold water yet?”

Evvie ponders for a slow moment, or as slow as any moment is with her. “Yes.” Almost an afterthought, she tacks on, “Also, Captain Bonney - if you find any intriguing maps onboard, I’d like it if you could steal some for me.”

“Sure, Evs,” she says, and fishes the matchbox out of her backpack, fumbles with the latch for the lantern.

She hears Ida complaining, saying, “It’s not fair, why do you always get shit from raids? Sure, cannons are heavy, but we haven’t even tried to steal one.” Bonney smirks to herself.

The sound of the match against the matchbox is rough to her ears, but the pale, flickering flame is a comfort to watch and to hold. The lantern lights, and she blows the match out before chucking it into the ocean. She clicks the little lantern door back in its place, then sits there confounded. Nobody had really taught her to be a pirate, is the thing.

“I forgot how to say SOS,” she says, and if she’s a little petulant, well, she’s technically a ten-year old child right now, so she gets to be petulant.

Ida laughs, so Bonney kicks her in the shins.

“As if you remember,” she whines.

“Hey, I’m not supposed to be captain,” Ida protests, scowling as she rubs her legs.

Large calloused hands pluck the lantern from between the both of them and start to shutter it open and closed deftly. Killjoy sailor’s daughter.

Bonney jumps up, rocking the boat slightly, cups her hands around her mouth, and starts yelling, “Hey! Help! Please!” The light shines continuously, piercing through the fog that surrounds them, blinkblinkblink blink blink blink blinkblinkblink, from Evvie’s hands.

Her voice is starting to get hoarse, and she’s just about ready to give up for the moment and take a cold, unsatisfying nap when Ida says, “Hey, I think they’ve noticed us.”

Bonney squints. There does seem to be movement on deck. She jumps back up and screams even louder.

A light from the marine ship, much brighter than their own little lantern, blinks at them, and in the distance, something is lowered into the water.

“Oho,” Bonney says, and claps her hands together gleefully. “What’re they saying?”

“Stay put. Help is on its way.” Evvie sounds deeply amused.

-

Step one. Get onto the marine ship. Pretend to be an adventurous, curious, innocent-definitely-not-a-pirate-in-disguise child and two ladies. Find out where the crown is.

Step two. Take it, give it to Evvie, who, with her endless stamina, will steal a boat and row back to their ship, hidden just out of sight in the thick fog of the current marine layer. Once Evvie arrives, she’ll contact Bonney and Ida with their mini transponder snails.

Step three. Stall as long as possible while placing bombs around the ship.

Step four. When stalling is no longer possible, wreak havoc until Evvie brings their beloved ship around.

Step five. Boom.

-

Being a pirate sucks. Being a pirate definitely, definitely sucks. Bonney doesn’t know how the hell Straw Hat stopped a Warlord of the Sea’s coup-d’état when just robbing regular, old marines is this difficult.

She lets herself fall face-first into the mattress of the bottom bunk and says, voice muffled by rough, scratchy sheets, “I’m hungry. I want food - I want good food, Juno food - no, wait. I want horrible-man-good-cook Sanji food.” She removes her face from the sheets and slithers down onto the floor so that she can breathe.

“You’re gonna make Juno sad if you keep saying stuff like that,” Ida says. She picks some dirt out from underneath her nails and flicks it to the ground. “You got the crown?”

Bonney heaves a sigh before shrugging her backpack off. It thunks softly when it hits the ground, definitely no longer filled with just scarves and shirts. Evvie peers down at them from her position in the top bunk, mattress sagging dangerously in the middle with her weight.

“You’re going to have to hurry,” Bonney says, rummaging in the front pocket of the backpack for anything to eat. Triumphant, she pulls out a stick of gum. “There’s a couple of child marines gagged and tied up in a closet somewhere.”

“You’re fucking brutal, Captain,” Ida says, shaking her head with respect. The bed frame creaks as Evvie clambers down the rickety ladder, and the sound of chewing fills up Bonney’s own head. The gum is strawberry, and old.  

She blows a bubble in Ida’s direction, translucent pink inflating with thin air before popping. Bonney uses one hand to pick the gum off her face and the other to half-heartedly push the heavy, blue backpack towards Evvie. “Hey,” she says defensively, fingers sticking to her skin. “I knocked them unconscious before I turned ‘em into kids, and it was necessary.”

“Got the transponder snails?” Evvie asks, voice low, slinging a second bag - the one with the handmade bombs - around her shoulders.

Bonney pats her right-hand pants pocket, and Ida points at her hip belt.

Before they leave the room, Bonney sticks the nasty wad of gum on the doorknob. As a surprise.

-

The snail in her pocket starts chirping obnoxiously.

“Shit,” Bonney swears. “Fuck.” She narrowly dodges a bullet by careening wildly sideways.

While everyone who had caught sight of Evvie rowing off had been neutralized (read: turned into a kid, tied up, and shoved into a closet), some smartass had linked the recent drop in staff with the recent rescue of three, suspicious souls, and now all hell was breaking loose on deck.

Bonney roars, back to her regular age, size, strength. “Ida! I have to take this-”

Ida full on body slams the three marines in front of Bonney, then picks one up to use him as a shield. “Go,” she grunts, trying to crush one guy under the heel of her boot.

Reliable Ida.

Bonney ducks behind a pile of crates, eyes trained carefully to the side her first mate is not on, a gun aimed at around head level. Her free hand fishes out the den den mushi.

“Hurry up,” she says.

“We’re almost there,” replies the snail, and it’s freaky every time, hearing Evvie’s deep, fluid voice come out of a slug-lookin’ thing. “We also have surprise visitor.”

Bonney’s eyebrows shoot up her face. “What.”

“Don’t worry. It won’t kill you.” Then there’s a click, and the snail’s eyes droop closed, sleeping once more.

“Aurgghhhh!” She wants to tear her hair out. She hates waiting - for a surprise, no less. She didn’t become a pirate captain on the Grand Line to do anymore waiting.

Someone pokes their head around the farthest crate, and Bonney is on him before he even realizes who he’s looking at. They do realize once they’re three feet shorter and drowning in their own sweaty uniform though. The gun falls out of their hands in shock - bad reaction for a marine, what are they teaching them these days?

She takes a moment to decide whether or not to shoot the poor sap, but killing a kid is always in bad taste, even if the kid isn’t technically a kid. Whatever. She looks them dead in the eyes, says, “Sleep tight,” and knocks them out with the butt of her gun.

“Captain!” Ida calls, strain tightening the edges of her voice.

“Yeah, yeah,” she calls back. Her foot smashes into the crates as she grinds her teeth, and the unexpected barrage catches a few marines unaware. Time slow downs for her as she weaves around bodies and splintering wood, taking shots where she sees them. Some blood splatters her cheek when someone gets particularly close to her and they get a bullet straight in the head for their bravery.

This is what she does to feel full, even though it just makes her hungrier and hungrier inside. She wants to eat, she wants to win, she wants to feel like this forever.

She wants to tear something apart.

Time passes - she’s not sure how much, it feels so fluid around her. There’s just her heartbeat pounding in her ears and an almost foolhardy trust that Ida will guard her back while she shoots at the ones in front. She runs out of ammo at some point, meaning she has to tackle the closest marine to the ground, drive her elbow into his nose, and take his rifle.

“Captain,” Ida screams, practically a rowdy laugh. “How much longer?”

Bonney dives to her fucking right as someone aims for her knees. She rolls up, only a little disoriented, before shooting to her left.

She’s bleeding a little bit from her left side, where somebody’s bullet grazed her, and her arms are probably bruised from blocking hits, and she’s hungry.

“Bonney, I need an answer!”

She whirls around, impatient. “I don’t -”

She sees a ship approaching through the mist.

“Ha!” she shouts. “They’re here.”

She sees a second ship behind her own, its shape vaguely familiar in the back of her mind.

A surprise that won’t kill her, huh? Sure, she thinks, and makes a mad dash to the ship’s portside, trusting that with the marines’ lousy track record so far, all their shots will miss.

Ida follows, and the two of them crash into the wooden wall of the main deck and use their momentum to swivel around, respective firearms trained in different directions. Tactically, this should be a bad decision, but, throwing a quick look over her shoulder, her ship is less than minutes away.

A bullet whizzes past her head, probably shot by some shaky, low-ranking recruit, so she doesn’t spare the time necessary to look at the ship behind hers, and instead lunges forward, growling with hands outstretched.

The marines practically trip over themselves to try and avoid her feint.

“I could age you so much that you would crumble into dust,” she says, laughing. “I could take you back so that you were never born. I could eat you all.” Most of this is a lie, of course, but the marines don’t have to know that, especially when they only barely know who she is.

One of them steps up, smarter or dumber than the rest - it’s a toss-up, really. “What do you want?” they ask.

Bonney shrugs, making sure that her rifle still points at the marine, obviously a higher-ranking officer of some sort judging by all the ornamentation and frills on their uniform. “Let me and my friend here back on my ship, and we won’t kill everyone onboard.” She tries to look feral. That usually gets her better results.

“Do you have the crown?” They ask, and they’re not holding any kind of weapon in their hands, which means Bonney is desperately hoping that she did not choose to get onboard a ship with a logia user.

“Well,” Bonney says. “No. But my crew can blow this ship up whenever they want. We hid a couple of really nice bombs onboard while you gave us the grand tour.” She smiles, hopes nobody sees through her bluff. Like, yes, the bombs are onboard, but she would rather not go down with the ship, what with her sinking like a hammer in water and all.

The marine officer takes a moment to think. “You wouldn’t sacrifice yourself for pride. We will fight for justice!”

Ugh, Bonney thinks. Marines.

“Any last words?”

Bonney gives the best close-lipped smile she can manage, before muttering, “Escape plan,” to Ida and grabbing her hand.

It’s so weird, every time, to feel her body shrink - skin tightening, bones shortening, mass disappearing into lost energy - and it’s even worse when it’s such a drastic change, like years of hurt being forced back into being. She’s forcing it real fast, too, jumping from adult to toddler in three seconds, if that. At least - at least she’s not a child again. At least she won’t have to look at herself again and wonder where her ribcage is.

Ida hoists her up with ease, and in the marines’ confusion, pitches with all her strength across the gap between the ships. The second Bonney leaves her hand, she dives straight into the ocean, where bullets are less likely to hit.

There’s yelling, lots of it, but Bonney ignores it, focuses on waiting until she sees she’s past the edge of her own ship to age herself back, just a little, just enough, childish limbs meeting the wooden deck and pitching her forward with her momentum to roll jutteringly^[f], forcefully, across the floor.

She doesn’t wait for the spinning in her head to fade, the painful jolt travelling through her legs to disappear, just screams, “GET IDA, GET HER AND GO!”

It’s always a bad idea to eat right before pulling something like this, but, hey, she got a little nervous, and when she’s nervous or paranoid or scared even, she eats. You never know when your next meal will be, and this remains the same whether you’re on land or sea.

All this to say that now she’s clutching her stomach, puking up more vomit than a child’s body should be able to hold. More than Bonney’s childhood body would have been able to hold, for sure. She slams her fist against the deck floor, desperate to get moving, hearing a cannon go off too close for comfort, but all she can do is lurch forward and feel burning all along her throat. There’s a scream, and Bonney’s eyes are watering, scrunched closed.

She stops puking, eventually. There’s noise all around her, but she hasn’t seen any limbs fly by, which is a good sign - better than that one fiasco a year ago. So she wipes the spittle and bile on her face off onto her arm, and pushes herself into a half-hearted standing position on shaky legs.

There is a boy on the edge of her ship, being riddled with bullets that just bounce back, and he is laughing like there is nowhere else he would rather be. One hand’s holding a straw hat firmly to his head, and Bonney is going to throttle Evvie later for this little surprise.

“Captain?”

Bonney carefully turns around. She clears her throat with a hacking sound and says, “Yes?” Her mouth tastes sour, and she avoids looking at the ground.

Jel is standing straight-backed before her, crooked expression tinged with anxiety. “Ereda wants to see you right away! Ida is with her, too.”

Bonney wants to protest, wants to go shoot a cannon, or taunt the marine ship that’s quickly slipping farther and farther away, or something, but her head is spinning and her whole body aches. She grimaces, spits out roughly, “Fine. But send Evvie to me with a full report as soon as possible.”

On her way to the stairs down, she sees Straw Hat sling his arms out an impossible length to soar back to his own ship. Maybe Sanji will cook for her again. Oh, maybe she should stop thinking about food.

-

Bonney, Evvie, and Straw Hat are all seated on the floor of the infirmary, while Ereda snarks at Ida in the background.

Scratch that - here she is now.

“In what preposterous world is it a good idea to turn yourself into an infant and have Ida throw you onto our ship,” she hisses.

Straw Hat lights up at that, asks, “Hey, can you turn yourself into a baby?” Evvie sighs and looks heavenward. Bonney shoves another fistful of chips into her mouth and chews pointedly loudly.

Ereda seems to be so mad that she has nothing left to say. She huffs, turns around, and then turns back again, as if trying to think of something mean enough. It’s really sort of ridiculous, seeing as she was the one who signed up to be a pirate crew’s doctor.

“So,” Bonney says, swallowing. The chip crumbs scrape her throat on the way down. She imagines she can still taste some bile in her mouth. “Did you blow them up?”

Evvie nods solemnly, pulling out a detonator from her back pocket.

“That sure was a big explosion,” Luffy says to Evvie, sounding impressed. He swivels his head around to face Bonney again. “You can turn yourself into a baby?”

She moans. “If I do it anymore I’ll puke up my guts, but yeah, kid. An old lady, too.” Her fingers taste of grease and oil and salt in her mouth, and she wipes the saliva off onto Evvie, who heaves another sigh. “Oh, right, Evvie, set up an appointment with those black market guys for the next big island we reach. And, uh, tell Jel to take inventory again. We’re gonna need to patch up the ship too.”

“Since we helped you out, wanna join our crew?” Straw Hat asks, suddenly about an inch away from her face, eyes wide and cheerful and staring.

“Holy-” Bonney lurches backwards and kicks straight up. She gets Straw Hat in the chin, and his head shoots up, neck elongating a freakish amount before snapping back into place. The momentum carries him smashing down into the floor with a painful sounding thwack and a wayward limb almost catches Evvie in the face.

“Owwww,” he says, wincing, his chin a bright red. Bonney’s slid back about two feet in her surprise, and once again she wonders how Straw Hat’s survived this long.

She barks out, “Kid, don’t surprise me like that! Shit, and no way!” She admires his persistence though, feels oddly flattered that this tiny, rubber monster likes her in his own weird way.

“Then,” Straw Hat says, springing back up right away. “Can you turn into a baby for me?”

Bonney smiles, somewhat lopsided, more than enough tired. It’s nice though, to see such simple want reflected back at her. So -

“Sure,” she says. “But your cook’s gotta feed me in return.”

-

Right before the bottom edge of the sun touches the horizon, Straw Hat clambers onto the Jewelry Pirates’ ship’s mast and launches himself back to his own ship. Much more efficient traveling method than turning into a baby and having someone pitch you like a softball, actually. Maybe she ate the wrong Devil’s Fruit.  

“I’m sort of rooting for him, y’know?” Bonney says to Ida as they watch him leave, a little woozy from all the aging she’d done to both herself and Straw Hat. Her stomach hurts from laughing herself silly.  

“Okay,” Ida says with a scowl - she’s always angry when she’s been injured, and there are plenty of bandages wrapped brutally tight around her abdomen now. “I have to root for you though. I’ve already taken a bullet - several bullets - for your ass.”

“And that’s why you’re first mate,” Bonney laughs, slapping Ida just a little too hard on the back. “Oh, now that I know that Sanji’s going to cook for me, I can’t wait.” She gives her stomach fat a friendly pat as she heads towards the kitchen.

“Juno’s going to kill you at this rate,” Ida calls out, lagging behind Bonney with her limp.

“Hey, the more jealous he is, the more food I get,” Bonney says. “It’s a win for me, and since I’m the captain, it’s a win for all of you.” She flashes Ida the biggest shit-eating grin in her repertoire.

-

“You, uh, really didn’t have to come with me,” Sanji says. He’s looking over Bonney’s shoulder instead of at her as he pulls a branch out of her way.

She pulls the branch out of his hand, and, when she lets it go with no warning, lowkey hopes it hits him right in the face. He dodges, unfortunately. Quick reflexes - good for both pirates and cooks.

“If we’re going to be split up into groups of two, then obviously I’m going to go with the cook. Besides, I want to see what you’re gonna cook for me,” she says matter-of-factly. She’s also got a little burning itch that’s telling her to dig her claws deep into Sanji and to not let go until she’s got him figured all out. There’s something of worth in there, underneath the slimy surface and bundle of issues.

“Oh.” He pauses, as if he’s going to say more, but the continuation never comes.

“Hm,” Bonney says, and keeps walking.

It’s hot on this island, and though Bonney’s ditched her knee-high boots and hat for something more sensible long before she even set foot past the shore, Sanji seems reluctant to remove even a single layer of his suit. There’s sweat slick on his temple, too, so he’s obviously feeling the heat. He keeps smoothing down his tie.

He breaks the silence suddenly, voice a little high. “Hey, I could use some of these fruits.”

Bonney eyes the tree he’s pointing at dubiously. “And how do you propose we reach them?” The trunk is slim, and branches are scarce until higher up.

A small smile breaks upon his face. He kicks out one long, long leg, a graceful arc of black, and the tree shudders upon meeting the heel of his shoe. Bonney swears she sees the trunk bend dangerously away for a moment, as if a single kick had the force necessary to snap it in two.

There’s an ominous rustling, and Bonney quickly grabs the burlap sack slung over her shoulder to catch the fruits falling like rain. They’re heavy and ripe, orange in color with smooth, tough skin that rips when they hit the ground. A thick, sweet scent fills the air as the juice leaks out onto the dirt.

“Damn,” Bonney says, disappointment kicking her hard in her gut right on the heels of her awe at Sanji’s strength. Then anger, a very intense flash, and she is about to berate him for wasting food like this, him, a cook, but -

He is scooping up the ones on the ground, putting them in a large container he’d hidden somewhere in his own bag. He’s careful of the dirt, and still there are sweet stains turning into mud, but, this is better.

She coughs, feeling slightly embarrassed for words she didn’t say. “That’s sort of gross.”

He shrugs. “It’s food. And as long as Luffy’s full, he doesn’t really care. He would probably eat this straight off the ground anyways, like he doesn’t even know what manners are.”

“I would have eaten it off the ground,” she says, the first thing that comes into her head, and she clicks her jaw shut very tightly. Her skin itches.

“Ah, that’s - I’m glad.” Sanji smiles at her, a little hopelessly. He reaches out with his hands, but seems to realize that they’re still sticky with the guts of the fallen fruits. He turns around quickly and wipes them off on a plant with large, swaying leaves.

The heat suddenly feels oppressive, blood rushing to her head. Bonney clears her throat, but her voice still comes out a little gravelly. “So, what are you going to make with these?”

They walk on.

-

The two of them end up on the shore, maybe a mile or so away from where their ships are anchored.

Bonney’s laying spread eagle in the sand, bag full of weird but supposedly edible fruits and leafy plants thrown aside next to the corpse of a boar-creature she had wrestled to the ground and whose head Sanji had kicked in. It’d been awesomely brutal, and she can’t stop salivating at the thought of all the dishes Sanji has promised her, hunger all the more intense for how close she is.  

Sanji himself is sitting by her side, head ducked down so that his bangs cast a shadow over his face. He’d rolled the sleeves of his suit up to his elbows after they took down the boar together, though he seems to be fiddling with the edges now. There are strange burn scars running up and down the lengths of his arms that Bonney is sure weren’t there a couple of months before. She files this thought away for later, though her fingers itch to touch, and settles for an easier conversation starter.

“Ah,” Bonney remarks sagely. “You’re the kinda person to burn to a crisp in the sun, aren’t you?”

Sanji sputters. His hands drop from his sleeves immediately. “What do you mean?” he asks, voice nonchalant and neutral.

Bonney laughs. What a stubborn ass.

As he watches her choke on some sand that got in her mouth, his eyes - or, the one that she can see - turns determined. “Miss Bonney,” he says, seriously, solemnly.

Bonney pushes herself up slowly, grains of sand coating the backs of her sweating arms.

The sun lights him up in that moment, and Bonney can see the beginnings of a sunburn creeping onto his nose. She almost wants to kiss him, but for the discomfort strong enough to pull back the insatiable itch underneath her skin. It’s almost unfortunate.

“Miss Bonney,” he repeats, like her name is all he can say.

“‘m listening,” she says, trying to gentle her voice.

He breathes deep, trying to center himself perhaps, and she can almost see the realness of him now, the shell around him cracked all the way through.

“Bonney, I like you. So much so that I think I could fall in love with you.”

The world stands still for a moment, and Bonney feels not unexpected regret settle into her stomach like a heavy meal gone wrong. She lets herself smile at Sanji and say, “Sorry, cook, you could be lovely, but I don’t like men.”

“Oh,” he says. Then, as the implications of her statement set in, “O-oh. Oh.” He flushes, then flinches back from her as if scared.

Irritation is beginning to buzz in her head as the silence drags on, and she’s getting ready to pummel his ass into the sand when Sanji turns uncharacteristically nervous. His hands shake as he fumbles a cigarette out of his jacket’s right pocket, and he just can’t get the lighter to light.

“If you have anything worthwhile to say, spit it out, or I’m going to pummel your ass into the sand,” Bonney says gruffly. Violence is almost always the answer when it comes to pirates, and her thoughts are too jumbled to think of a diplomatic way out of this situation. She likes Sanji, more and more and dangerously more, but intimacy with a man brings a sick, strange feeling to her gut, but -

“I-” The lighter falls out of his hands, and he sighs in frustration and disgust.

Taking pity, Bonney scooches over until she can pluck the lighter out of the sand. The flame comes to life under her steady hands, and she holds it out for Sanji, though impatience still thrums through her.

“Thank you, Miss Bonney,” he whispers, voice hoarse, before taking a drag like a man dying of thirst.

She waits, willing to breathe in the smoke like comfort.

Sanji doesn’t make eye contact, and his voice cracks when he speaks.

“Miss Bonney, would you believe me if I told you that I - that I want to be a woman? That I have wanted for a very long time now.” Sanji’s face is carefully blank, slipping farther out of Bonney’s reach, but Bonney thinks about it, lets the pieces and crawling itches slip into place, sees Sanji’s desperation bleeding through, and the air is thick around them like it could shatter at any moment.

Things are starting to feel right.

“Yeah,” Bonney says, barely more than a breath, and her words are the kindest and quietest she’s ever heard fall from her mouth, “I – uh, yeah. You’d be lovely. You are. Lovely.”

“Could I be, though? Someone like me?” And Sanji hunches over, face hidden behind blond bangs and swirling smoke.

Bonney chances a touch, placing her hand, an anchoring weight, on Sanji’s arm. “Well, why not?” she huffs, unused to gravitas or solemnity or… whatever. “Just… be, I guess. You’re stubborn, you’ll figure it out.”

Sanji snorts, and it sounds wet, as if there’s snot dripping from h-her nose and she’s trying to pretend there isn’t. Bonney lets her keep her privacy, her thumb rubbing circles into Sanji’s forearms in what she hopes is a comforting manner. The importance of the moment is just starting to hit her, but instead of setting her world off-kilter, it just feels… natural. It makes sense, is what it does, and the changes in her mind settle in easy.

A small eternity passes where the waves keep lapping at the shore and the sun beats down on them, rather cruelly, in Bonney’s opinion. Her skin feels like it’s heating up real slow, but she keeps her mouth shut and just eyes the nape of Sanji’s neck critically, certain that it’s going to burn something awful.

Bonney pushes air out through her teeth with a soft, whistling noise. Everything feels easier, and she tries on a smile.

“Hey, miss cook,” she says in the obnoxious voice she uses to wheedle food out of Juno and harangued waitstaff, or kisses from fond women in bars. “I’m gonna starve to death if we don’t get back to our ships soon.”

Sanji stills, and Bonney is sure that neither of them are breathing. The moment passes, then Bonney slings an awkward arm around Sanji’s shoulders and presses a nervous kiss to the cook’s temple, impulsively.

Jumbled words slip out of Sanji’s mouth like she can’t speak fast enough. “Yes, of course, miss Bonney, anything for someone as lovely as you, I’m sure that I’ll be able to dazzle you, I-”

Bonney laughs a little hopelessly as Sanji babbles on, even as she feels her own face flush. It’s just the heat, after all.

-

A sort of secretive energy bubbles up inside Bonney the entire night. She may go a little overboard with it, too, but that’s fine. Her crew is used to her antics, and Straw Hat’s crew is definitely used to his, so when they challenge each other to an arm wrestling contest over an especially big piece of roasted boar, everything stays decidedly in control, even when crew members start placing bets. She notices that Sanji sends her a smug grin as she bets on her own captain, and Bonney laughs ferociously, flexing her arm.

Bonney beats Straw Hat, fair and square - there’s muscle under all that fat, and she’s damn proud of it - but his arm stretches like a rubbery noodle, bounces off the flat surface of the rock, and ricochets straight into her face. Before she can launch a punch back at him, he bursts into laughter, and she joins in, even as her cheek stings with the strain. They call a tie in the end, maybe begrudgingly, and split the meat, while Nami reluctantly hands everyone their beli back.

Her hair is clumping obnoxiously against her skin, and, not for the first time, she considers hacking it all off, strands of pink just falling away - she’d probably be able to find, like, some crumbs of the cookie she lost last month. But she’s painfully vain, likes her jewelry and her long hair, and even when she generates enough heat to drench herself in sweat, she deals.

She’s sizing up the beefy Straw Hat swordsman, sweat slick on his arms as he pumps weights he got from god-knows-where, wondering whether she could take him in a wrestling match, when Sanji appears in front of her, bearing a tray of drinks.

“Hey,” Bonney giggles, feeling something like fondness rush through her. “Now isn’t this familiar.”

Sanji makes a sound that might be a snort, but it gets caught in her throat. She sets the tray carefully down in the sand anyways, without a single flourish.

They sit quietly, side by side, arms almost brushing but not quite. Bonney takes the chance to breathe, letting all the smells overwhelm her. Smoke from the bonfire, the booze by her hand, the lingering smell of well-cooked boar with hints of fig and black pepper. She thinks this could be one of the few times in her life she’s reached a state of restful contentment.

“That was a good meal,” Bonney says, an offhand remark that belies all too clearly how enamored she is. She tacks on, very quickly, “A bit gamey though.”

Sanji makes this little offended noise, sort of nasally, but her expression is good-natured. “If I had another three days and several more pounds of ice, then we wouldn’t have that problem. But I guess pirate cooks with greedy customers have to make do.”

For just a second, their arms make contact. Bonney grins with too many teeth. “Do I get a special pirate discount?”

“When was the last time you even paid for food?” Sanji teases, hands relaxed and stilled by her sides.

Bonney pretends to think for a moment before huffing out a laugh and punching Sanji in the shoulder. Still a little too hard, probably, but definitely more playful than how she would have punched him months ago in a similar situation, which would have been: in the face, hard enough to knock any normal man out.

“Hey,” she says suddenly, a little seriously. “I think I like you a lot more now. You’re a lot less of a dickhole.”

Sanji’s fingers clench up briefly in the sand, but her voice is as smooth as always. “I’m glad you think so highly of me, Miss Bonney. I - well, you-”

Before Sanji can start on another tangent of vaguely self-deprecating flattery, Bonney asks, very quickly, “Did it - did it really change so much?” Stupid question, she thinks once it’s escaped her traitor mouth. She herself knows how much feelings and revelations and sappy bullshit like that can change everything. She’d dreamt of being a full-bellied pirate when she was young, her own crew had come to her with admissions like relief spilling from their tongues.

“I -” Sanji stops, then smiles in a way that reeks of self-directed disgust, a kind that Bonney isn’t sure she will ever know exactly. “I’m not going to say what I was going to say. Well. Do I really have to answer that question, Miss Bonney?” Her hands drift to her legs, unsteadily brushing grains of sand off of skin. When her hands are apparently deemed clean enough, she twists her fingers together like she can squeeze the uncertainty out of them.

“Shit,” Bonney says, quiet, and backtracks, unused to this every time. “Nah, it wasn’t my place to ask.”

Sanji quirks another smile, and Bonney is fast realizing how many different ones she has. Crooked girl Jel has her crooked smiles, Ida’s split her face wide open like it hurts, Juno’s are small and drop light like rain, everyone can smile, but - Sanji’s are different. She holds back, is what Bonney thinks, and she hates it when people hold back around her.

“I won’t ask again,” Bonney blurts out, because apparently she doesn’t have any tact whatsoever. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable with - with any of this.”

A breeze blows by right then, and lifts up Sanji’s bangs just enough that Bonney can see another blue eye, scrunched up a little in silent laughter. It’s sort of disarming.

Trying to pretend she’s any bit angry at all, she demands, “Wait, hey, are you laughing at me? After I try to be nice?”

Sanji tries to stare at her, deadpan, then gives up and laughs some more. “I don’t know if nice people blow up marine ships and brag about it. Juno told me you shot a couple of marines, too.”

“Well, you overthrew a government!” A corner of her brain wonders if Sanji could teach Juno some more about cooking.  

They both pause to look at each other.

“You did,” Bonney says, stubbornly.

“I did. I really, actually did.” A note of disbelief tinges her voice. A little dreamily, she says, “Sometimes I forget, you know? None of it seems real. I don’t seem real.”

Bonney hums noncommittally and decides to take a chance with this tenuous… thing they have between them. “I feel real all the time,” she says, letting her fingers drift to the stem of a martini glass, but not drinking, not yet. “You gotta be here, one hundred percent, if you don’t want to die. Gotta feel everything you can before someone shoots you with some seastone and you drown or something - though I don’t plan on going out that easy.”

She points at the scar right above her anti-eyebrow piercing, a thick, raised, white line still bruised-looking around the edges. Her voice is completely self-satisfied when she says, “This was the closest anyone’s gotten in a long time.”

Sanji’s sleeves are rolled up, probably from when she was cooking earlier tonight, and Bonney’s eyes fall on the jagged scars again.

In the most forced, fake-casual tone Bonney has ever heard, Sanji says, “Oh, these are new. Lightning scars. I probably should have died when I got them. Don’t know if I would call that the closest anyone’s come though.”

Bonney’s leaning forward, fingers outstretched to touch as if she can’t resist any longer, before she even realizes that this might be an asshole move. “Ah,” she mumbles. “Sorry? Not used to being… nice.”

Next morning, she’ll blame the alcohol she’d drank with dinner and the heavy, hanging heat for her weird truthfulness, kindness. For now, she fumbles the martini glass into her hands and downs it in one gulp, trying to look trustworthy.

“They’re ugly,” Sanji mutters, not meeting Bonney’s eyes. She extends her forearm out to her anyways, and Bonney, for once, would trust this woman in battle – not an overbearing ass of a man, but this woman who cooks like it brings her peace and who lets pirates be kind - is kind in return.

Bonney traces light fingers over Sanji’s bared skin, fascinated with how it feels, how Sanji shivers very lightly underneath her touch. “If these are ugly, my face is ugly,” she says and ugly-snorts at her own joke.

“I – gh –“ Sanji grumbles.

Drawing away, already missing the texture and pattern of Sanji’s skin, Bonney notes that the sounds of their crews are dying down. She doesn’t want to leave this little space they’ve carved out on the shore, but her head is spinning slowly, and people aren’t dreams. You can’t dig out their insides just because you want to so very much.

“Well, Miss Sanji,” Bonney says in the most pompous voice she can muster up at the moment, half-bowing as well as she can still sitting down, “It looks like we should be retiring for the night.”

The cook rises up in one long, fluid motion, a surge of black fabric against the lighter shade of the night sky. She extends a hand to Bonney, bowing in return.

“Chivalry isn’t dead, I see,” Bonney laugh-sighs, and grabs the offered hand in a tight grip, pushing herself up.

Sanji’s thumb brushes against the back of her hand in a nervous gesture, and Bonney holds very still when she doesn’t let go.

“Don’t tell anyone?” Sanji’s voice goes up at the end, higher and questioning, turning a simple command into a request. Bonney doesn’t know how she lives, straddling the line between certainty and doubt so closely.

“Yeah,” Bonney says. Then, realizing that her response might sound like the opposite of what she intended, “No. I mean, yeah, I won’t tell, swear on you never cooking for me again. It’s your business, and I’m uh – I’m glad to know.”

Sanji seems to deflate a little in relief and mumbles a weak, “Thanks.”

She lets go of Bonney’s hand to pick up the tray of half-empty glasses from the sand and turns to walk away, back to the campfire, where dishes and crew and leftovers are waiting to be sorted through.

Unwilling to let this moment go on an ending as lukewarm as this, Bonney says, loud enough to sound awkward, “Thanks! For… for trusting me. I’d really like it if you would cook for me when we meet again.” She spreads her stance wider, trying to look confident instead of absurd.

Sanji shoots her an unguarded grin, eyes lit up like she’s found the sea she’s been looking for all her life. “How could I refuse one of my favorite customers?”