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“I’m leaving.”
It is two years and thirteen days since the beginning of a new era, and the sky is spilled over with blinking stars.
The new era began with Luffy laughing loudly and brightly against the backdrop of dawn, his breath expelling from his throat in the crisp morning air with a rush of unadulterated exhilaration. The dirt crusted on his cheeks had done nothing to deter the grin stretched across his face. His cracked bones and bruised fists, dripping with sweat and blood and an impossible victory, had only made him look more wild and free than ever.
“Shit…” The word had tumbled out without a thought, and Sanji had collapsed in exhaustion and relief, heedless of the soot spiraling across the bedrock, his feet the epicenter of a black star emblazoned on the stones. Another curse and a cigarette were lit under his breath, his lips curling into a smile around an accomplishment of a lifetime and the bitter taste of smoke. His legs were still burning with the remnants of crackling flames, but the pain was nothing in comparison to the almost blinding radiance of Luffy’s grin.
Sanji had looked at his captain whose limbs were flung every which way in a simple expression of absolute freedom, and had felt an ache so fierce his eyes had started to sting. The new era began with a watery smile and blurred vision, and Sanji couldn’t remember being as happy as he was in that moment, surrounded by debris and sweat and Luffy’s shadow eclipsing the ground at his feet.
But two years and thirteen days are enough for a lifetime to come and pass, and Sanji knows he has lingered long enough. Like his friends before him, he knows it is time to move on.
Luffy sits up from his prone position on the deck and tilts his head, staring at him silently in the wake of his declaration. His trademark straw hat rests lightly against his back, fluttering with the wind, and all Sanji can do is inhale the smoke from his cigarette and wait for Luffy to accept his decision. The rim of the straw hat is frayed and threatens to unravel, and Sanji swallows roughly when he remembers who used to do the mending.
Even with a million pinpricks of starlight it’s hard to see Luffy’s expression, and Sanji uncrosses and crosses his legs to alleviate the numbness spreading across his thigh. He swallows dryly, throat bobbing with the effort to keep down his nerves clawing at the back of his neck. He doesn’t fear rejection or restraint, but he is nervous, nonetheless.
His fingers twitch against the remainder of his cigarette, and it’s like a repetition of the day he packed one simple bag, slung it over his shoulder, and left his first home. The waves slapping at the hull of the Thousand Sunny sound like the flat echo of his steps across the beloved, splintered deck of the Baratie, the weight of Zeff’s stare burned into the back of his neck. Waiting in the silence surrounding him and Luffy is like waiting for a voice and a simple sentence – don’t catch a cold – that means more than a single goodbye can express.
The night is warm, and even the ocean breeze is humid, carrying the scent of brine and a million living creatures of the deep sea. Summer is approaching the nearby island, and the air tastes almost stagnant with the promise of rain. An insect buzzes near his ear, and it makes Sanji’s palms sticky with sweat. He scowls and resists the urge to swat at it. A small pile of ash has piled onto his slacks, and Sanji brushes it away absentmindedly, resolutely avoiding looking directly in Luffy’s direction.
“You going to say anything?” Sanji asks, unable to resist. He feels like a child looking for approval despite his age, despite Luffy’s age, despite it being Luffy.
Luffy had never questioned why he stayed. Sanji wonders if he will question why he has decided to finally leave. He’s not sure he can really answer; it’s more of an impulse developed from watching dreams come and go, and realizing with a jolt that he’s become stagnant from the comfort of domesticity. He is meant for greater things than simply being a cook. Years ago, in the kitchens of his first home, he would have never allowed himself to think that there was anything more to him than this. But sitting under the comforting blanket of the night sky beside the one person he would ever call ‘captain’, he knows with a certainty born from reckless, idiotic faith that an ocean exists for him to find.
The silence stretches on for a heartbeat too long, then two, before Luffy suddenly grins at him, bright and impossibly wide, and it makes him want to ruffle his hair and kick him at the same time.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” says Luffy, and Sanji gives him a gentle smile before hiding behind the thin veil of cigarette smoke as he exhales. Luffy turns away, lying back on the deck beside him to look at the stars.
“Yeah,” he says, because there really is nothing else to say. He has never been good with goodbyes. “When you see the others, tell them I’ll be back with the best meal they’ll ever have.”
Luffy’s answer is to cackle with delight, as assured in the reality of Sanji’s fanciful dream as always. And, really, throughout these endless years and lifetimes spent with heroes and monsters and simple men, “fantasy” and “reality” differ only in the number of syllables and their arrangement of letters. Sanji’s reality is just a little harder to create, and he always did like a challenge.
“Don’t keep me waiting too long, nah, Sanji.”
“You’re an impatient little shit, you know that?”
Luffy cackles louder at that before looking up at him from his sprawl on the floor. “I can’t help it! I’ll get hungry without you!” he says, a whining lilt to his voice, and Sanji’s throat tightens. He slaps a hand over Luffy’s eyes before pushing his face away.
“Is that all I am to you? Why do I even put up with your shit,” says Sanji, and he doesn’t notice the affectionate tone that has leaked into his voice. Luffy’s eyelashes brush against his palm before a hand grasps his wrist firmly to lift it away. Looking at Luffy’s suddenly serious expression, Sanji feels his stomach lurch as he holds his breath. He distantly notes the slight prick at the base of his neck where that shitty insect has probably bitten him, but he can’t bring himself to really care. Luffy turns his attention to Sanji’s fingers and holds it above him with both hands. They’re warm and slightly sticky from dinner because Luffy is a slob and probably didn’t wash up.
“I’m gonna miss you,” Luffy says, tracing the scars on Sanji’s right thumb. Despite all the goodbyes over the last year, Sanji doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready whenever these moments arrive.
“Yeah,” he says again, and doesn’t say ‘I’ll miss you, too’ because Sanji knows Luffy will understand what he means without him needing to say it. Luffy pinches the skin between his knuckles as if testing its resilience before twining their fingers together. Sanji can feel the scars on Luffy’s palm, rough from battle and from fooling around, sometimes both at the same time. His own hands have a different sort of roughness, dexterous and pale enough to see the crisscross of blue veins underneath the skin, but just as calloused and prone to splinters, and Sanji is once again reminded of the Baratie and the moment Luffy gave him invincibility, convinced him there was nothing they couldn’t accomplish. Throughout the years, it has become an instinct hard-won through battles and sacrifices and blood that make his limbs throb in time with his pulse. It is an instinct that defies logic and strategy, and it is exhilarating because it feels like touching the edges of a faded dream and finding it tangible.
It feels like freedom. And for that, there is only one thing to say.
“Captain, I never got the chance to properly thank y-”
Sanji doesn’t manage to finish the sentence in all its sentimental glory before Luffy interrupts him with a loud: “You were telling me about Andrew’s meat, right?” and jabbing his finger at the sky.
Sanji snorts. "It’s Androméda, dumbass.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. The story of the ant’s drawing.”
Sanji resists the urge to shove his foot into Luffy’s ribs.
“Androméda,” he enunciates even though he already knows it’s useless, “is one of the largest constellations found in the northern hemisphere. She was put up there with Perseus by the gods after their death.”
“Per-sea-moose?”
“…yeah. He’s the hero that saved her from being sacrificed to a sea monster. He was returning home after beheading the gorgon, Medu–… this other monster.”
“What’d the monster ever do to him?”
“Ah… nothing, I guess. It was a challenge from the king more than anything else.”
“Why didn’t he just beat up the king?” Luffy asks, frown marring the space between his eyebrows. The scar under his eye tugs at the delicate skin, making one eye appear bigger than the other and creating an image of exaggerated confusion.
“People normally wouldn’t go around punching kings.”
“Eh… but that’s the easiest way to get things done. People punch me all the time. You kicked me out of the kitchen just yesterday!” Luffy emphasizes his point with a jab of the finger. Sanji swats him away and is rewarded with an overly wounded look instead. Sanji rolls his eyes and shrugs.
“Maybe he was just a shitty hero.”
Luffy wrinkles his nose. "He sounds more like a pirate than a hero,” he says, “doing whatever he likes and killing innocent monsters instead of fighting the king directly, what a jerk!”
Sanji quirks an eyebrow. “I thought you liked pirates more than heroes.”
“Yeah, but people need heroes, too. If everyone was a pirate no one would share their meat.” Luffy pauses. “Heroes aren’t supposed to be selfish like Poopmoose.”
“It’s Perseus.”
“That’s what I said!” Luffy waves both his arms in exasperation, still clutching onto Sanji’s right hand. He sighs emphatically. “Heroes are supposed to be like… they’re supposed to be like you.”
Sanji blinks. But Luffy just nods determinedly as if he has just realized a long sought-after truth.
“You always give me food when I’m hungry even though you complain and lock me out of the galley. You gave Gin that plate of food even though you could have gotten in trouble with your dad.”
“He’s not my dad,” Sanji mumbles, the retort as automatic as it is untrue. Luffy ignores him.
“You stay up late at night to make sure we’ll have enough food when traveling. You go on long shopping trips to restock our inventory even though you could go on adventures instead. You make feasts-”
“You really can’t stop thinking of food, can you?”
Luffy pauses and slowly blinks at him as if seeing him in a different light. His eyes seem to almost glitter in the night, and Sanji is abruptly uncomfortable, as if he is suddenly naked in Luffy’s gaze.
“You make feasts,” Luffy says, slowly and deliberately, so unlike the usual torrent of unchecked words, “but you don’t eat until everyone else has had food. You once skipped lunch because I ate too much and we were delayed by that storm and you didn’t want to cut down my portions.”
Sanji’s stomach gives a hard lurch. “Wait, you knew about tha-”
But Luffy isn’t listening to him, isn’t even looking at him anymore. He’s looking at the stars overhead, his straw hat crumpled beneath his head, and pauses, as if perplexed.
“I think you’re my favourite hero.”
Sanji’s cigarette falls from his mouth, the ashes burning in a brief, incandescent moment before being smothered by the wet air. He can’t fight the rising heat that crawls up the back of his neck; his skin flushes red, and despite the darkness of the night Sanji has the sudden urge to lean forward to let his hair cover his face. He clears his throat roughly, hyper aware of the slickness of his palm still in Luffy’s grasp, but he doesn’t pull away.
“I don’t really do anything special though,” says Sanji, almost defensively. And to Sanji, the hunger of his crew, in whatever capacity, is a responsibility he has soaked into his skin under the burning sun of endless, empty days; it is a debt that has never been repaid and drags Sanji’s spine down into a slouch, an obligation that warrants neither praise nor attention.
“You’re special anyway,” says Luffy. Sanji wants to protest, wants to say ‘I’m not the one who is special’; wants to say ‘what you’ve given me is what makes me special’; wants to clutch Luffy’s hand and rest it on his chest, heart beating out a ‘thank you, thank you, thank you.’ But Sanji doesn’t say any of that. He clenches his teeth instead and stares straight ahead at the night-dyed sea speckled with tremulous stars, holding back the words of gratitude because it sounds too much like a final goodbye. His grip tightens on Luffy’s hand, but Luffy doesn’t seem to notice or care as he continues speaking with barely a pause. “But we’re pirates so you’ll have to be a hero-pirate. I’m not giving you over to anyone.”
The declaration makes Sanji feel absurdly honoured, as if this nonsensical title is the king’s treasure given freely out of love. Maybe that isn’t so inaccurate, after all. The thought makes his heart lighter and his grip on Luffy’s hand relaxes, reassured that he will always have a place with Luffy. Sanji huffs out a little laugh, inaudible save for the slight rush of air, and slips another cigarette from his breast pocket.
“I think I prefer to be a pirate,” he says, and lights the cigarette with a small flourish to hide his spreading grin.
The single flame from the lighter briefly illuminates Luffy’s face, and Sanji can see him nod in mock seriousness before bursting into laughter. “Me too,” he says, grinning hard enough to bare all his teeth.
And really, he would be the first person to understand: open spaces and an encompassing blue, the soft blanket of the sky resting lightly on the surface of the sea; endless horizons, the burst of sea foam against the hull of a ship and the spray of salt in the air; rolling clouds and starlit nights, the exhalations of legends.
Freedom defined.
Above, the stars continue to decorate the night, a stretch of silver across the black sky. The sea is mostly silent save for the faint susurration of waves against the distant shore. Luffy is humming a discordant tune under his breath, probably something he made up while lost in the conifer forest of the last island, and his eyes are closed to the near-summer breeze. Their hands are still intertwined, and Sanji would be bothered by the increasingly sticky sensation if not for the knowledge that this might be the last time he can be so close to his captain. But Sanji doesn’t let himself doubt. Instead, he puts out his cigarette and rearranges his position so he can lie down beside Luffy under the canopy of stars, fingers tangled together in faith and a wordless promise. Eventually, sleep overtakes them; Luffy’s head ends up pillowed on Sanji’s stomach, a pool of drool soaking into his garishly coloured shirt, and Sanji, oblivious to the growing stain, dreams of his family first, and All Blue second.