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Before he knew what wishing was supposed to mean, Sanji believed in superstition the way most children do—silently, earnestly, with his entire chest.
Looking back, it seemed silly placing his childish hopes in ephemeral things. Dandelion seeds carried off by the wind, candle flames snuffed out by careful breaths, shooting stars that he used to track with wide and hopeful and unblinking eyes.
Little Sanji wished on moments that didn’t last because nothing else in his life ever seemed to. He began wishing when he figured out that his imagination was much more trustworthy than anything and anyone else.
And the earliest memory he can trace it back to is when he’s six years old, sitting on a cliffside blanketed in dandelions that nearly tower over his tiny body. Where it’s quiet.
Not the empty, dreadful kind of quiet that lingers in the training hall after Judge has dismissed them. This type of quiet is one he rarely hears while living on a seafaring warship.
The birdsong is so close and so constant that he can practically feel it, the humming, chirping, accompanied by the soft crash of water from the river below. The cliff is high, too—high enough that he should feel fear to fall.
But instead, he sits in the grass with his knees pulled to his chest and peers down with fearless blue eyes. The view is beautiful, absolutely massive in the eyes of a six year old child.
And yet he’s not supposed to be seeing it.
The grass is warm where the sun has been shining all morning, prickling against his palms when he leans back on his hands. He knows that he’s not supposed to be here. Not supposed to be this far from the capital.
He hasn’t been assigned any training drills today. Their ship, Germa’s ship, is currently docked in this neighboring kingdom’s port. Last night he had heard vague details, eavesdropping about some sort of important political meeting Judge went off to attend at dawn. The only orders he received were to stay within the boundaries of this foreign kingdom’s capital with his brothers.
While that should have been satisfactory enough... Well, Sanji had slipped away anyway. In the way most kids do when curiosity outweighs instruction.
He plucks at the stem of a dandelion beside him, rolling it between his fingers absentmindedly. It’s almost startling how it comes free so easily, with no resistance whatsoever. It’s unfamiliar to him. These don’t grow on the manufactured soil within Germa.
So he decides to study it, mesmerized by how perfect and delicate the little white globe is. Like if he blew on it with one good breath, the whole thing would be gone, scattered into nothing. He doesn’t like how that thought almost scares him.
“Sanji?” A voice calls for him.
Sanji startles and jerks around so fast that the dandelion nearly slips from his grip. Blonde strands fall into his vision with the movement, before he tucks the hair behind his ear and stares up at his sister standing a few feet away. Reiju’s expression is a combination of relief and amusement.
“There you are,” She sighs. She’s changed out of the clothes she’s always forced into within castle grounds. Today, in the freedom of their leisure, a light pink sweater sits loose on her frame. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been looking for you?”
“I-I’m sorry,” Sanji blurts out immediately, scrambling to his feet. A few of the dandelion seeds drift off in the wind as he almost trips over the uneven soil at his boots. “I didn’t mean to, I know Dad said not to leave—”
Reiju suppresses a small giggle behind her hand. “Relax. He’s busy playing king somewhere else right now. I won’t tell.”
Sanji freezes as she steps past him, closer to the edge of the cliff. Her eyes rove over the landscape, the river winding through the land below, the flowers swaying in the wind. “..Huh,” She murmurs. “You picked a good place to run off to. It’s pretty.”
Sanji watches her carefully, waiting for the kicker to come. But it doesn’t. She simply crouches down beside him and folds her arms over her knees like she’s here only to keep him company. Not to tease or antagonize him.
Sensing safety, Sanji gives a small nod and plops himself back down into the grass. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Reiju glances over, the wind catching the ends of her colored hair. She glances down at what he’s holding, and then grins. “You know what those are for, right?”
Sanji blinks. “Flowers?”
Reiju shakes her head. She reaches out, plucks one of her own from the ground, and holds it up between them. Hers is full, while his lacks a fourth of its structure from when the wind stole the seeds. “You blow on it. And then you make a wish.”
Sanji frowns, feeling instinctively suspicious. “A wish?”
“Mmmhm,” Reiju confirms, twirling the dandelion between her fingers. “Whatever you wish for, it’s supposed to come true.”
“That sounds stupid.”
“Most good things are,” She says lightly, before lifting the flower to her lips and blowing. It barely takes any effort, the seeds scattering instantly—lifting into the air and catching the sunlight as they float away.
Sanji watches, transfixed despite himself as they vanish over the cliffside. “..What did you wish for?”
Reiju flicks the stem over the rocky edge, smiling. “If I told you then it wouldn’t count.”
Sanji doesn’t believe that for some reason. To him, it seems wasteful to ruin something so pretty for his own selfish gain. But when Reiju nudges his shoulder with hers, his fingers tighten around the stem. “Go on,” She coaxes, “Try.”
Sanji hesitates. He thinks of the ship before he can stop himself, of his father, of his brothers’ laughter echoing down steel hallways within the castle. He thinks of the way no one ever looks at him unless it’s to correct his form or sneer at him or survey. No one ever looks at him lovingly, or like they truly want him around.
It’s embarrassing, and he doesn’t know why the thought of that conjures in his mind. He doesn’t have much to wish for. But maybe.. If he were to wish for one, selfish little thing…
He raises the dandelion to his mouth, shuts his eyes, and blows carefully.
The seeds scatter in a soft rush, and his nose scrunches up a little as one brushes past his eyelash in the direction of the wind. Immediately, he doesn’t notice a change. Doesn’t notice anything unusual except for a weird, warm foreign feeling stirring within his heart.
When he opens his eyes, it’s too late to see where the seeds have landed. They’ve vanished, and the stem in his hand is now bare and useless.
His chest tightens with something he’s too young to understand, something akin to disappointment. Or maybe the realization that wishing might always be like this. Putting something precious into the wind, and then quietly hoping it hasn’t vanished for nothing.
Beside him, Reiju is silent. She doesn’t ask what he wished for. And even though nothing has happened as to how Sanji might have imagined it, she tells him, “It worked.”
Sanji glances over at her with eyes full of doubt. “But.. nothing happened.”
Reiju’s expression softens a little. “It doesn’t happen immediately, dummy. You have to wait.”
Oh. Maybe that makes a little more sense.
He keeps the hope close to his heart, even though he never admits out loud what he wished for. Not even to himself. But he keeps it there, lets the hope settle, and guards it where no one can steal it from him or tear it apart. Even if he doesn’t quite understand what wishing is supposed to mean at the ripe age of six.
Over time, wishes come and go like many other things tend to do. They become reshaped by new superstitions he discovers and keeps with him no matter how silly they may seem.
Plucking petals from flowers while whispering alternating phrases beneath his breath, waiting for the outcome—then crossing his fingers tight enough to ache. He entrusts his silent hopes into these little things because as he grows, he learns what wishing is supposed to mean. And he begins to cherish the happiness it supplies.
Wishing upon a candle flame is something he thinks he should have learned sooner. Around the age he learned how to handle a dandelion.
But at six years old, and for all the ages before that, he never had a birthday.
Well, not one he recognizes as such. In the kingdom there were no cakes, no candles meant to be blown out. Only the curling flames that he knew belonged to the wall sconces lining castle corridors. And those were never celebratory.
So when he runs away and the world finally becomes vast—when the sea becomes his home and he sails past cliffsides daily—he doesn’t expect anything different. Not on the second of March when he’s finally turning eleven and should definitely, by the double-digits, know how to celebrate his own goddamn birthday.
That’s why it catches him completely off guard.
The Baratie is loud that night, after a fresh dinner rush because the restaurant is still new and huge in the east. Travelers have been showing up from all the blues lately, and the whole place is still thick with smoke and filled with the clattering noises of dishes.
He’s been distracted since lunch. Hands kept busy from prepping and plating, the muscle memory he’s gained from the past year working overtime. He’s been so distracted that he almost doesn’t notice Zeff hovering.
It isn’t unusual, exactly. Zeff has a habit of lingering near the line during closing, arms crossed over his chest, watching the cooks clean and send out the last of the entrees like a hawk, like he’s daring someone to mess up. But tonight there’s something different about it that Sanji can’t place.
He tries to ignore it anyway, wiping his hands on his apron and attempting not to fidget.
His brain is scrambled with the task at hand, the stress from rush, and the fact that he’s still acknowledging that today is his birthday. It’s a useless piece of information that his brain has insisted on cataloguing even though he doesn’t particularly care about it. And the fact that Zeff’s eyes are still blatantly boring into his back isn’t helping his ordeal at all.
By the time his last plate is ushered into the dining room—by the time the doors are locked for the night and the last of the customers trickle out, Sanji’s shoulders ache and his feet are killing him. He feels a headache coming on too, from the remaining swarm of thoughts. All he wants to do is go up to his bedroom and collapse into the sheets.
He’s about halfway there before the lights in the main dining area flicker.
And then go out.
Sanji freezes, instinctively turning towards the sudden void of darkness. “..What the hell?”
There’s a beat of silence, before the lights come back on all at once. They’re brighter than before, and someone loudly shouts, “Surprise!!”
Sanji flinches hard enough to almost collide with the wall behind him, a hand coming up automatically to shield his eyes from the sudden flare.
The dining hall is.. different. Distinctly different from how he’d seen it at rush.
Tables have been cleared, a few of the smaller, rectangular ones pushed together haphazardly in the middle of the room. A few of the Baratie’s staff are grinning at him, gathered around the squished tables with awkward and amused smiles alike. Patty and Carne are front and center, both wearing expressions far too smug to be trustworthy.
And there, in the middle of the table, sits a cake.
It’s not perfect, in the way most desserts at the Baratie are. The frosting is uneven at the ridges, writing a little crooked. But there are candles. Lit candles, clustered together in the center. Flames flicker softly and cast their faces in a warm light.
Sanji stares like a deer caught in headlights.
“What... what is this?” He questions, voice smaller than he intends.
Zeff appears beside him, placing a rough hand down on his shoulder. Sanji looks up through blonde bangs with wide and uncertain eyes. “It’s your birthday, ain’t it?” Zeff asks.
The words land.. strangely. No one has ever remembered his birthday. He doesn’t recall ever telling anyone here the date.
“I—” Sanji swallows around the knot twisting dangerously in his throat. “I never said—”
“You didn’t have to,” Zeff cuts in roughly. “I pay more attention than you think.”
Patty snorts, surely at the dumbfounded expression plastered on his face. “Well? You just gonna stand there or what?”
Carne crosses his arms, grin twitching wider. “Don’t let the candles burn down, idiot. That’s the point.”
Sanji looks at the flames dancing in the middle of the cake. Exactly eleven of those little waxy things. He traitorously thinks of castle corridors lined with sconces holding ones identical to those in front of him. “The point of what?” Sanji asks faintly.
Zeff snorts, patting his shoulder with enough force to jostle his tiny body. Normally he’d bite the damned geezer’s head off for that. But right now he’s too astonished. “The point of your birthday. Thought you’d know.”
Birthday. Birthday.
He steps closer without realizing he’s even moving. The candles flicker, wax dripping as they reflect in his eyes. While they might be identical to the flames in those halls, he somehow thinks they’re nothing like them. Not at all.
Zeff steps forward with him, and then adds quieter, “You’re supposed to make a wish.”
Sanji stares. He swallows again. He feels dizzy and chalks it down to the headache he was developing earlier.
But for just one second, he’s six again, sitting in a field of dandelions with the wind ruffling his hair and carrying off those seeds. Something fragile, warm, blooms in his chest as he remembers how Reiju had smiled and told him that his wish worked.
This is stupid, he wants to say. He thinks it distantly, because he’s not there anymore. He’s not six. He’s eleven now. And he should know better at this age, he shouldn’t be so childish.
But superstition has always been kinder to him than reality ever has. And he’s learned to love wishing.
He leans down, closes his eyes. The heat from the candles brush his face. And just as carefully constructed thoughts stir in his head, he blows the candles out lightly.
He wishes the same wish he’s been making since he was six years old.
The wish to be loved.
The flames gutter and vanish in one breath, and then instantly—the room erupts into a cacophony of cheers, claps, and whistles. Patty whoops loud enough at his left to make Sanji’s ears ring. Zeff just grunts approvingly while Sanji blinks slowly.
He’s disoriented with the afterimage of candles burning into the backs of his eyelids. He barely registers when Carne shoves a plate into his hands and he’s forced to look back at the cake. “You guys really didn’t have to do this.” Sanji starts, and then clears his throat hard when his voice cracks embarrassingly.
“Yes we did, kid.” Zeff retorts, cutting him a slice of cake without being asked. Sanji laughs despite himself, weakly, and lets some of the tension loosen in his shoulders.
When the cake hits his tongue, it’s addictively sweet. The kind of sweet that coats his tongue and lingers, becoming a taste that he’s positive he will never be able to forget or recreate in the future. He savors it reverently, the sugar and frosting that he definitely shouldn’t be having at this time of night. But he’s afraid that if he doesn’t cherish it now, it might disappear.
And as he eats, that wish remains close to his heart.
Nothing miraculous happens, of course. It’s just like last time with Reiju at the cliffside. The wish isn’t granted immediately. But as he’s growing, learning, he knows that as long as he never says that wish out loud it will still have a slim chance of coming true.
Except when it does come true, he doesn’t realize it.
Sanji has no frame of reference for what love is supposed to look like. Not the real kind. The kind where someone loves you unconditionally and devotes themselves to you because they care for you. No, Sanji has no idea what the hell that’s supposed to equate to.
So he assumes that love must announce itself verbally. Through words.
And when the Strawhats crash into his life, they use about anything but words.
The first thing Luffy does is damage half of the Baratie’s roof with a goddamn cannonball, for fucks sake. He splinters the wood and gets Zeff into a frenzy and then immediately is demanded to pay reparations as a chore boy because, frankly, the Strawhats are flat out broke. As most rookie crews tend to be during their debuts.
Then there’s the sharp-eyed thief who sizes him up in seconds. Without even sharing a singular conversation with him. A coward, who’s scared of his own shadow and won’t even talk to Sanji for the first few days because he’s scared of his kickstyle. And of course—
The swordsman who bleeds all over the restaurant’s deck and looks vaguely annoyed by the concept of death and failure.
So when he steps onto the Going Merry at nineteen years old and joins this ragtag crew of idiots, it doesn’t feel like a dream coming true. Not a wish finally being fulfilled. It just feels.. practical.
When they do use words, it’s simply to bicker and laugh over absolutely nothing. He becomes the cook on their ship because he’s good at being useful. Good at feeding people and anticipating their hunger before it’s voiced. The crew accepts him without question, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. They accept him and never ask him to earn his place beyond showing up.
It doesn’t register as love. Even though they fight like hell for one another without ever explaining why. Sanji just assumes this is how pirates are, and doesn’t categorize it into his definition of love.
Maybe it’s simply the hopeless romantic within him. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t realize, in a way, his wish has come true. Because he still thinks love is something you’re supposed to be told. And no one has said it out loud to him explicitly, even if they’ve already provided many, many actions.
Zoro isn’t a man of many words.
Sanji learns the crew’s rhythms as they band fast, one by one as they arrive, and he adjusts with each addition easily. He learns Luffy the quickest. The captain is an easy man to understand, although a bit of an airhead. Usopp is the same in Sanji’s eyes. The members who were here before him, he becomes accustomed to quickly. The same goes for when the furry little reindeer and the frighteningly gorgeous archaeologist board the ship.
But Zoro is the one he learns the slowest, in pieces. Even though he’s a constant presence.
Zoro isn’t intrusive in the way Luffy is—who barges into Sanji’s domain whenever hunger or simple boredom strikes. Zoro just becomes a constant presence in Sanji’s space without ever announcing himself. A nagging thing that Sanji doesn’t understand.
At first, he thought that Zoro was just like that. Sanji’s aware that he’s protective of the others. Always watchful and silent and attentive in the crew’s space. But he seems to like Sanji’s space just a little bit too much.
He’s always at the galley table when he isn’t outside napping, using a folded-up sail as an improvised pillow. He’ll linger, nurse a stolen drink or complain about Sanji’s kitchen knives being too dull, bicker with him until Sanji gets fed up and tells him to come back during supper.
In a way, it felt normal. Until Nami told Sanji one night that Zoro never used to be like that.
She informed him that Zoro never used to stay in the galley before he joined. Always used to complain about the pantry smelling too fishy, or how he didn’t want to be stuck on dish duty. But apparently ever since Sanji stepped onto this ship with his ‘pretty little loafers and perfectly styled hair’, Zoro refuses to leave the damn space unattended.
Sanji still doesn’t understand why Nami phrased it like that.
He continues to let it happen, despite everything. Because at some point.. he finds that he doesn’t actually want Zoro to stop.
One afternoon, the sea is calm enough that the ship barely rocks as they sail onward. Nami is sprawled at the galley table with a drink in hand, a welcome visitor. Sanji sits beside her, readers perched low on his nose as he angles the News Coo to where he can read it. The table is a mess of papers that Nami had spread onto the table and is now sorting efficiently.
Zoro, of course, is here too. He’s leaned back in a chair across from them, not focused on anything special apart from the small plate of riceballs he badgered Sanji into preparing him ten minutes ago. Why did he insist on having those for breakfast? Who knows.
Nami makes a noise of frustration, swirling the liquid in her glass as she focuses her attention on a letter printed with neat, swoopy handwriting. “Ugh. Vivi wrote again.”
Sanji looks up, blinking behind the frames of his glasses. “Something wrong, Nami-san?”
She sighs, long and exaggerated before setting the letter back on the table. “No. I just—” She cuts herself off, then smiles faintly. “..I miss her.”
Sanji watches her expression soften, eyes going distant. Alabasta wasn’t that long ago. Maybe a month or so now. But it still feels like an eternity since they’ve had Vivi on the ship—in their hearts, she was already a full-fledged crewmate before they had to return her to her kingdom.
“She says that the desert’s unbearable this time of year. That it got hotter after we left.” Nami continues, a little quieter. “And she still hasn’t figured out how to sleep without the ocean noise. Can you believe that?”
Sanji gives her a fond smile. “The ocean noise is a nice lullaby.”
“Mm,” Nami hums in agreement, staring at the ink like it might speak back if she looks long enough. “She keeps apologizing for writing so much. Saying she doesn’t want to be a bother.”
She pauses, pressing her lips together. “I think she worries too much, about everything.. About me. About whether or not she made the right choice staying there. And I think she worries that the distance will make me love her less.”
Sanji’s fingers still on the edge of the newspaper, the words in Nami’s ramble suddenly engulfed by the singular word strewn in there. Love. A word so complex that Sanji still barely knows what it means, yet the same one that he’s spent half of his life wishing to understand.
It doesn’t seem to startle the others as much as it startles him. He knows Nami and Vivi had something going on between them during those weeks they were sailing. He knows because he saw them share kisses behind the dunes, saw the adoration and affection so clear in Nami’s eyes those nights.
He remembers the envy stirring in his gut when Ace would constantly tease them, ‘lovebirds this, lesbians that’. It was obvious that they were in love, obvious at departure when Nami could barely endure leaving Vivi abandoned at that shore. Sanji knows they were in love. That they still are. But it still rattles him hearing Nami say it out loud so casually.
Zoro snorts around a mouthful of rice, from where he’s been idly tuned into the details. “You’re overthinking it.”
Nami shoots him a look. “Excuse you?”
“She misses you, and you miss her. That’s it.” He shrugs, like it’s the simplest equation to solve. “Doesn’t need dissecting.”
Nami retaliates with a scoff. “Right. And that’s spoken from a man who barely knows what love is.”
Zoro doesn’t rise to the bait the way Sanji expects. But he does still, for an almost imperceptible beat. He looks back at Nami and reaches for another riceball, stating confidently, “I know what love is plenty.”
Sanji’s head snaps towards him before he can stop himself. Not entirely because of the word, but because of how he says it.
Nami blinks, lips twitching faintly. It takes a second before she waves her hand dismissively, leaning back in her chair and setting her glass on the table with a clink. “Sure you do, mosshead.”
Zoro’s jaw tightens like he’s going to respond with something witty, but instead his eyes flick briefly toward Sanji. His gaze stays there for a second before he catches himself, and then his eyes snap back to Nami. His expression is unreadable.
There’s an unspoken warning in his glare that Sanji doesn’t have the background knowledge to grasp. But Nami catches it instantly. Her smile grows wider.
“Well,” She says breezily, grabbing the letter again in order to fold it up carefully and shove it into her pocket. “Either way, Vivi’s fine. Loves me. Misses me. I give it another month and then she’ll learn that she doesn’t need to worry so much.” She rises to her feet, gathering the rest of the papers. “I’ll write back tonight.”
Sanji gives her a small nod, somehow feeling uncomfortably lost even though he doesn’t know why. Zoro’s gaze redirects to the grooves in the table wood as Nami pauses, glancing between the two of them like she’s mentally cataloguing something for later. “Try not to kill each other while I’m gone, yeah?”
With that, she sweeps out of the galley, leaving behind the strong smell of parchment and perfume, as well as a silence that makes Sanji suddenly hyperaware of every shift in the room. Of Zoro, still sitting there, present as always, clicking his tongue in mild annoyance once Nami’s completely gone.
Sanji tries his best to focus back on the News Coo. He only looks over again when he hears Zoro push his chair back to stand.
“You want this in the sink?” He asks, lifting his cleared plate from the table and arching one eyebrow. Sanji looks up just in time to meet Zoro’s eyes, then glances over to the sink.
He nods a bit too delayed. “Yeah. Just—leave it there. I’ll wash it later.”
Zoro does as he’s told. For a moment, Sanji thinks he may stay. Hover in the background like always while Sanji tries to read in peace. Instead, he looks back once, studying him, before promptly pushing off the counter and leaving without another word.
Sanji exhales slowly the moment he’s gone.
Nami’s words replay unhelpfully in his head—loves me, misses me. And he tries not to resent her for it. He doesn’t.. not really.
But the envy is there anyway, thrumming beneath his skin and getting into his head enough that the article in front of him becomes a blur of illegible lines. The fact that Nami found love in the vastness of this world, one so strong that even across oceans and kingdoms—distance is unable to erode it. That sticks.
And it does feel irrational to feel this way, but the jealousy is there all the same. He’s been wishing and yearning for love as long as he can remember, yet it still feels like the chase will never end.
He’s still too naive to know what love truly is. Too inexperienced because for most of his life, he has never been deemed worthy of being loved. And to that, he feels the envy dissipate into something merely disappointed.
Even if it’s right in front of him.. if someone were to be falling in love with him right before his eyes… he’d never know.
Hopeless romantic that he is, Sanji still believes that love needs to be spoken aloud to be real.
He forgets about it as time passes through islands, fights, and new scars that get carved into his flesh. Nami continues to write to Vivi regularly. And each letter, Sanji notices, leaves her a little steadier.
Alabasta is long behind them now. They’ve reached rougher tides, rougher lands that catch glimpses of their wanted posters and decide that they should be dead. And as time passes, the bonds that Sanji has built with his crewmates grow stronger. His bond with Zoro seems to develop the most. But he’ll never admit that out loud.
When they reach Thriller Bark, Sanji clocks instantly that this is not a place inspiring of faith.
The air is thick and damp, the ground littered with broken stones and literal bones. The sky is perpetually dark, clouded with fog, shadows, and ghosts—as Usopp is convinced. Sanji hates the place instantly. It sets his nerves on edge in a way he can’t explain.
Luffy is naturally delighted by all of it.
“Ooh! Look, look, bones!!” He shouts, way ahead of the group and already crouching to scoop up a pile with his bare hands. Zero hesitation whatsoever.
Usopp gags immediately from where he’s been hiding behind Franky’s massive cyborg build. “Luffy! Don’t touch those! That’s disgusting, and you don’t even know if they’re cursed!”
Luffy blinks, before laughing and rattling them. “They’re just bones,” He says cheerfully.
Robin pauses beside them. In fact, their entire group comes to a halt. She peers at them thoughtfully. “Judging by the size and structure.. they all appear to be of avian origin.”
Even Zoro grimaces a little. “Still gross. How do you even know that.”
Sanji doesn’t comment on it. They’ve been walking through abandoned graveyards and eerie patches of fog for so long that he’s already spotted three different piles of bones. Not including Luffy’s. And since their arrival at this island, this destination, Zoro’s been walking beside him. Always an immutable presence. That’s something that hasn’t changed with the time.
Sanji’s never made a big deal of it though. When his eyes roam over to the swordsman, Zoro turns like he can feel the eyes on his back, and Sanji snorts lightly when he sees the faint disgust still etched into his expression. Zoro raises one eyebrow in response.
They’ve been behaving like that recently. Finding each other through crowds, flashing private, abashed smiles for nobody but them. Several times, Zoro has caught his eye and mouthed little jests. The kind that never fail to make Sanji tuck his head into his collar, laughing silently and hiding a flush while simultaneously avoiding the questioning gazes from the crew.
They’ve fallen into some sort of rhythm that Sanji finds strange, that he can’t exactly describe. But that doesn’t mean he dislikes it.
He’s about to shrug back—a silent conversation between the two of them, but pauses when his gaze lands on Luffy’s little collection again. His attention has snagged onto something else. Thin, pale, forked in a perfect V shape.
A wishbone.
He watches as Luffy discards a different bone, unbothered to pick it back up because he’s fiddling with the same one Sanji has his eyes on. He tosses it up into the air, catching it easily, and then beams when he notices Sanji staring.
“Oh! Sanji, isn’t it cool?” Luffy exclaims, already holding it out for Sanji to examine.
He blinks down at it, the word cool feeling woefully insufficient for what he’s looking at. His throat tightens, heart giving a strange, thumping kick. “Uh, y-yeah,” He agrees, distracted by the sensation in his chest. “I guess it is.”
Luffy grins wider. “Here! You can have it.”
He shoves it into Sanji’s palm without ceremony and bounds back towards Usopp, already chasing into the next interesting thing that catches his eye. Sanji blinks as his brain tries to instinctually reboot. Under any other circumstance, Sanji would recoil like any other person after getting a bird bone shoved into his hand. But this isn’t just any bone.
He stares down at the wishbone resting in his palm, fingers curling protectively. It’s just as light as he expects, a tiny thing. Something that once belonged to a living creature and has been reduced to superstition and chance over time.
Everyone else is occupied with keeping Luffy in sight as he becomes fixated on a mausoleum in the distance. The only person who notices Sanji is Zoro.
“You collectin’ trash now, curly?” He questions, stepping closer and glancing down at the bone.
Sanji huffs and feels his cheeks heat even though he has nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s just a bone. “Luffy’s trash, you mean. Not mine.”
Zoro snorts. “Pretty sure he just gave it to you. Meaning it is yours.”
Sanji shoots him a sideways glare, slipping the wishbone into his pocket and attempting to be discreet. He ignores the faint, familiar warmth that settles inside of his chest just from having it on him. “Just keep walking, idiot.”
They fall back in step together, back towards the group with withered plants and dried-out flowers crunching beneath their feet. The night deepens until the moon hangs high and pallid above them, marking midnight but barely supplying any light with it’s brightness. The fog has swallowed everything.
The mausoleum Luffy dragged all of them towards is unsettling in the way that made half of the crew frightened to follow. Nami and Usopp refuse to enter, clutching a shared crucifix and declaring that they’re going to head back to the Sunny. They vanish after that, back in the direction of the ship. And naturally, Luffy peels off soon after, in the way he always does in unfamiliar territory.
Sanji doesn’t remember the exact point in time when they all truly lost sight of each other—only that at some point after getting away from that grave, a bat bursts from a tree with a shrill screech, wings snapping way too close to his face.
He curses and spins around instinctively, heart leaping into his throat as he dreadfully realizes that the bright flash of Franky’s blue hair and the red of Chopper’s hat has vanished. Panic claws at him immediately.
It should be impossible to lose people that easily when you were just walking so close. But the fogs too thick, the island’s utterly lightless, and their voices are gone—
Sanji gasps, a startled noise that quickly fades into a relieved sigh as he realizes one crewmate is still very much behind him. Zoro.
“..You done?” He asks faintly.
“Fuck, marimo, don’t do that,” He snaps, breath still uneven. He drags a hand through his hair and huffs. “First the bat and then you’re trying to give me a heart attack! What the hell?!”
Zoro squints at him in the darkness. “You’re jumpier than usual tonight.”
“Yeah, well—” Sanji cuts himself off, scanning the landscape again. He listens for any familiar voices nearby, but all that responds is the howl of wind. It’s just the two of them now, separated from the rest. “Please tell me you saw where they went.”
“You think I was keeping an eye on them when you were freaking out over a bat, right beside me?” Zoro scowls back.
Sanji opens his mouth to argue something smart, then deflates with a sharp groan. He scrubs a hand down his face and stalks a few steps away before dropping onto the nearest elevated surface.
And then he hears stone scrape beneath him. Coldness seeps through his pants instantly. “...Shit,” He mutters, looking down.
It’s a stone casket, the cracked, engraved slab halfway ajar from where he just nudged it open by sitting down. He forces himself not to bolt upright. “Of course. Of course I’m sitting on a fucking casket.”
Zoro doesn’t say anything, lips twitching upwards where Sanji can’t see. He seems much less disturbed by this entire ordeal, being surrounded by buried corpses and all—and plops down beside Sanji thoughtlessly. The blonde doesn’t comment. He’s too busy retrieving the wishbone back out of his pocket, rolling it between his fingers absently.
He barely realizes he’s even doing it, until Zoro nudges his shoulder with his own. “You’ve still got that thing Luffy gave you?”
Sanji looks up, feigning nonchalance with a subtle shrug. “I didn’t see a reason to toss it out.”
Zoro looks at him like he’s considering something. “Didn’t think you were the type.”
“The type for what?” Sanji responds, even if he already knows what Zoro’s implying. He’s known for a long time that still cherishing wishes, believing in them, is a childish thing. Something only kids do. Not nineteen year olds.
“For wishing.”
Sanji stiffens, even though he knew that was coming. “..It’s stupid,”
Zoro continues to study him, shifting slightly on the casket. “I didn’t say that.”
Sanji exhales, and he doesn’t know why he feels compelled to keep going, keep rambling. But he turns the wishbone over again. It’s pale against his skin, smooth around the ridges. “You’re supposed to break it in half. With someone else.”
Zoro hums, still not moving to tease him in the way Sanji expects. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Sanji hesitates. “That’s when you make the wish. You’re supposed to do it together and.. and not tell each other what you’re wishing for.”
Silence stretches between them. For a second, he thinks that Zoro just doesn’t care anymore. That he’s gotten bored with Sanji’s childlike delusion of wishing. Except when he risks a glance up, he finds Zoro still watching him with something soft and intent in his expression that makes Sanji’s breath catch.
“..Do you wanna?” He finds himself asking, suddenly shy and timid with the idea. “I mean, only if you want to. I know that it’s dumb—”
Zoro reaches out before Sanji can freak himself out any further. “C’mere,” He coaxes, “No one said it was dumb. Or stupid. So stop saying that.”
Sanji blinks up at him, heart thrumming traitorously within his ribcage. But Zoro’s already holding the other end of the wishbone, fingers brushing Sanji’s for a second longer than necessary. They’re closer now, thighs touching where they sit atop stone.
“Don’t tell.” Zoro says quietly.
Sanji nods, not trusting himself to speak. His eyes flutter shut automatically.
For a heartbeat, he feels six again. The way he always feels whenever he’s wishing upon something fragile and delicate. He can hear the river again, almost see the dandelions swaying in the sunlight instead of the dead plants crunched underfoot.
They both pull in perfect sync, and the bone breaks with a clean snap.
The wish is customary by now. He wishes to be loved. To have something selfish for himself, wholly and without condition. The kind of love that Nami and Vivi have already found—that he’s craved for the entirety of his life. That he wants to be told.
He’s nineteen now. Lost on a haunted island full of bats and tombstones, sitting on a stone casket and snapping a bird’s bone. Teaching Zoro one of the many ways to wish just as he was taught in his childhood.
And somehow he feels closer to fulfillment than ever.
The fulfillment doesn’t manifest immediately. But somewhere deep down, Sanji realizes that something does change that night on Thriller Bark.
It lingers like the afterimage of candlelight behind his eyelids. And for the rest of the island, he feels it in the way he continues to notice Zoro. In the little things. Like how once they located the others again, Zoro still remained beside him, close in proximity, cognizant of the fact that this island carries dark things and something could go wrong at any given moment.
And god, do things go horribly wrong.
They get inevitably separated, because a warlord’s out for them, and another one shows up out of nowhere as the real cherry on top. Sanji tries not to think about it. He tells himself the same thing Zoro told him that night—that nothing happened. That despite the blood coating Zoro’s body, the pain inflicted on him from head to toe attributable to Kuma.. nothing happened.
The feeling sits with him through the ache of Zoro’s recovery. Through how he constantly thinks about Zoro and that wish they shared before all the fighting. He doesn’t understand how his wish feels closer to coming true when everything goes downhill from there.
The Strawhats separate. Sabaody tears them apart for two years straight, and two years is an unbearably long time to sit with a feeling you barely know how to carry.
Yet he carries it anyway. He carries it through Kammabakka, a kingdom it survives even through the isolation and reinvention.
And maybe he should have taken a goddamn hint once he thought back to Thriller Bark one too many times after training, to the wishbone, to the way Zoro hadn’t made fun of his childish habit, to how Zoro had looked at him. But he never does.
He wishes less during those two years. Or maybe he unconsciously wishes the same amount—just without the familiar rituals.
There’s no bones to split on this island. No candles to blow out because the first year, he refuses to tell Ivankov the date of his birthday. The second year.. well, he does get a cake and candles then. That’s only because the queens pestered him enough to knock the information out of him.
But there are no dandelions to wish upon here. And the part of him that carries that odd feeling, makes him believe he doesn’t need to wish as much anymore. Because that close fulfillment he felt on Thriller Bark is still there and still imminent.
The first night back on the Sunny is when it resurfaces in full.
The ship is too quiet for a crew that just spent the entire day exchanging stories and reuniting at their home base. Sanji figures it’s because everyone's exhausted. From travelling back to the archipelago, then the overwhelm of emotions that surfaced from seeing each other again.
Snores drift from below deck. The sky tonight is laden with stars so bright and so beautiful that he couldn’t have passed up the opportunity to gaze upon them. He can’t fall asleep anyways. He tried earlier and ended up tossing and turning endlessly, even in the nostalgic comfort of his bunk.
So now he’s lying on the artificial grass near the bow, jacket discarded at his side with his arms propped beneath his head. He’s still internally thrumming with excitement from the reunion, still taking it all in. He never realized how much he missed home until he returned.
When he hears the scrape of heavy boots against the deck, carelessly loud despite the hour—he already knows who it is. He doesn’t need to look even after two long years.
Zoro stops a few feet away from where he’s lying. Sanji keeps his eyes on the sky.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Zoro asks eventually, like he already knows.
A smile quirks at Sanji’s lips, he hums easily. “You know me well.”
Zoro snorts, muttering something under his breath that Sanji doesn’t quite catch. The deckboards creak faintly as Zoro lowers himself down onto the grass, stretching out his back, one arm folded beneath his head and the other resting lax against his stomach.
Sanji feels a rush of something fond, glancing in his peripheral. Neither of them say anything for a minute—the soft ambiance of waves grazing the ship filling the meagre space between them. And as he turns his head, the noise of it fades out a little. Zoro looks different underneath the starlight. The lines of him, Sanji thinks, are softened by the silver of moonlight.
His chest tightens, that feeling he’s missed so much. “..Hey, Zo,” he murmurs.
Zoro’s gaze flicks over immediately, attentive as always. “Hey.”
His chest tightens more, taut until it aches. Sanji doesn’t know why he’s behaving like this. Soft. Maybe it’s just the stars out, or how gratifying it is to feel the Sunny beneath him again.
He cranes his head back towards the sky, tracking the stars above the mast and their arcs. “When do you think the last time you stargazed was?”
Zoro’s brow creases faintly. “Stargazed?”
Sanji huffs an amused little sound. He gestures upward with two fingers. “Stars. Gazing at them? It’s what we’re doing right now, you algae-brained idiot.”
Zoro follows the motion, eyes tracking the littered sky above them. “Can’t remember.” He admits. “But definitely more than two, say three years ago. Kuraigana was mostly fog. Trees everywhere, too. Half the time you couldn’t even tell what time it was.”
Sanji raises his eyebrows, surprised despite himself. “No stars at all?”
“Maybe if you got lucky.” Zoro admits.
“That’s a shame.” Sanji hums, tracking the constellations absently. Ones he half-remembers from books he read as a bored kid on a ship full of a bunch of old cooks. Ones Zeff would point out between drags of his cigarette when the Baratie drifted under open skies.
He knows the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper. Orion and Cassiopeia. He enjoys recognizing them, looking at them and recalling their stories. Right now that’s what he’s focused on, attentively surveying them in the black, until—
“Oh,” Sanji breathes, inhaling sharply.
A streak of golden light cuts clean across the sky. It’d be lost to the eye if you weren’t looking for it, sharp and fast and luminous in its track.
He bolts upright on one elbow so fast his chest constricts, hand outstretching without thinking as he points to the space where it just vanished. “Zoro, you saw that, didn’t you?!”
Zoro follows his gaze just in time to catch the tail end of it. “Yeah.”
But Sanji isn’t listening anymore. He acts on pure instinct, squeezing his eyes shut as his heart thunders hard against his ribs, hand lowering again and curling into the fabric of his shirt. The motion is reflexive, automatic so he can catch it in time. Seize the chance, perform the familiar ritual. To wish that same effortless wish worn from repetition.
Zoro watches him even though Sanji isn’t paying attention.
He notices it in the same way he initially noticed on Thriller Bark. The way Sanji goes completely still when he wishes, eyes jammed shut, face scrunched up with childlike determination that hasn’t faded even after twenty-one years.
When he opens his eyes again, there’s a faint flush across his cheeks. He’d got caught up in the moment, and now the embarrassment creeps in like it always does afterwards. He swallows thickly, eyes lingering on the sky before he meets Zoro’s again. “What?” He asks, suddenly self-conscious.
Zoro snorts softly, but he’s smiling. “You wished.”
Sanji scoffs, instantly trying to play it off. “Shut up.”
“What’d you wish for?” Zoro prods.
Sanji lowers himself back onto the deck abruptly, blonde hair bouncing and fanning out across the grass as he angles his head in Zoro’s direction. His hands fold loosely over his stomach before he’s glaring at him with something petulant. “You know I can’t tell.”
“Right.” Zoro grins, adjusting his position in the grass. A little closer. “Sorry, I forgot. Sacred law of superstition.”
“Exactly,” Sanji says solemnly. “It ruins the whole thing if I say it out loud. It won’t come true.”
“You’re really serious about it.”
“Of course I am.” He scoffs, staring up at the sky like it may hold him accountable if he were to enact such a sin. “I don’t mess with that kind of thing. Not when it’s a wish.”
Zoro doesn’t respond right away, but the grin is still present. Sanji’s eyes flick over his features, noticing once again the little trivialities he has no business noticing. He wonders, distantly, how many nights like this he’s imagined over the last two years without ever acknowledging that’s what he was doing. How often he’d envisioned returning to Zoro.
“You know,” Zoro resumes, breaking Sanji from his little trance. He looks at him through his lashes and notices that the smile has vanished from his lips. What replaces it is something conflicted. “Two years was.. a long time away from each other.”
Sanji nods slowly, swallowing the twining knot there. When Zoro shifts, he rolls onto his side so they can face each other properly. There’s hesitation in Zoro’s expression, and Sanji wonders what he could possibly be contemplating right now.
The emotions he’s feeling are hard to parse—but looking at him now, he feels that he wants to put that smile back on Zoro’s face. To know what worrisome thought erased it in the first place.
“I should have said this earlier,” Zoro mutters. “Back then. Before everything got fucked and before I spent two years missing you and regretting not having the balls.”
Sanji stares, blatant and confused. But hearing the confession of Zoro truly missing him takes all of his notice. Both astonishment and shock part his lips. “You missed me?”
He swears that he sees Zoro’s cheeks pink in the night. “I thought about you all the time.” He admits, then takes in a deep breath of preparation. Sanji blinks once more before sensing the undertone, and then doesn’t dare to move an inch. He’s suddenly terrified that if he does, this moment will disappear, just as a star burning out the second you notice it.
“Had too much free time. No stars to watch at night.” He reminisces, “And all I could think about was how much I loved you.”
A beat skips.
Then Sanji’s breath leaves him as he abruptly forgets how to suck oxygen into his lungs.
The stars are reflecting in Zoro’s eyes, pinpricks of gold, fixated on Sanji in a way that’s seeing. Like he’s looking straight into his mind, unveiling his wish despite the fact that Sanji has never told a soul. Not Reiju, not even Zeff, because he vowed to always keep it to himself in hopes that it would come true. And yet..
“You—” Sanji starts, but his voice catches uselessly. He presses his tongue to the back of his teeth, propping himself up slightly. “You what?”
“I love you.” Zoro repeats, “I have for a long time.”
Sanji stares at him. He’s positive that if Zoro can read his mind, read his wish to the point of granting it—then surely Zoro can hear how roaringly loud his heart is beating. The feeling of fulfillment resurfaces in full, that feeling that followed him across seas and islands and years aligning into something that he might just understand now.
The shooting star flashes in his mind as a reminder.
“Love? Me?” Sanji laughs, breathless and disbelieving. The admission replays and re-registers over and over before he sucks in another breath, leaning onto his elbow again. “Do you have any idea how long—”
“You don’t.. have to say it back,” Zoro mutters, cutting him off before he can finish. “I just wanted you to know.”
Sanji stops himself, chest tightening painfully. Zoro’s eyes pull away from him, settling back skyward like he’s already decided what the answer will be.
“No, I—” Sanji starts, realizing that Zoro has been bracing for rejection this whole time. Which is funny, because Sanji has never rejected anyone in his life. “Mossy, come on. Don’t do that.”
He reaches out before he can think the better of it, fingers brushing Zoro’s wrist. The contact is tentative at first, like he’s testing the reality of it. Zoro’s eyes flick down briefly to their palms, and his jaw works, something stunned flickering through his expression.
And then their fingers intertwine.
Sanji swallows, eyes locking onto the connection. The disbelief is still there when his voice comes out quieter, almost absent. “You know, when you asked me earlier what I wished for..”
Zoro takes a long moment to respond, voice rough and suspiciously shaky. “What about it.”
Sanji hesitates. For so long, he’s kept wishing close to him. As something selfish, secretive, boyish. But despite that, and despite that singular superstitious rule.. he still says, “Do you… still want to know?”
Zoro still hasn’t regained his composure. He tries, though, voice coming out slightly more stable. “..Yeah,” He repeats, thumb shifting and pressing lightly to the inside of Sanji’s wrist. It settles right over his thrumming pulse point almost unconsciously. “I do.”
Sanji doesn’t comment on the faint sheen visible in Zoro’s eyes, smearing the stars. He’s just as worked up himself. Eyes burning similarly, grip tightening in Zoro’s hand and mirroring the clenching of his own heart.
“You probably won’t believe me..” Sanji says quietly. “But I think—that I might’ve been wishing for you to say those exact words.”
For a brief pause, Zoro doesn’t react. And Sanji knows why, because it sounds ridiculous. Wishes don’t come true that quickly, after closing your eyes and chasing one shooting star. But for all the wishes that have come before, Sanji has wished for the same thing. And maybe that thing has been Zoro all along.
“That’s—” Zoro starts, and Sanji finishes for him. “Ridiculous,” Sanji laughs, incredulous at himself. “I know it sounds ridiculous.”
“You’ve wanted me to say that?” Zoro clarifies, “Curly, you know what you’re saying, right?”
“I know,” Sanji huffs, cheeks heating. He wants to pull back, aware of how exposed and open he sounds right now. But his fingers stay laced with Zoro’s anyway. “I know what I'm saying.”
Zoro sucks in a sharp breath, repressing a scoff, but his breath still trembles obviously. Sanji feels another pang knowing that he’s the one that has Zoro this shaken up. “You.. never said anything.”
Sanji shrugs with his best effort. “Neither did you.”
“I did, just now,” Zoro reminds, stripping him of his excuse. And as Sanji’s rendered defenseless, a small smile quirks at his lips. He’s still disbelieving, knowing that all of those years spent hoping he hadn’t wasted his wishes, have led to this very moment of being loved aloud. And it feels too good to be true.
Because the universe has fulfilled his desire. Now, he no longer has a reason to keep wishing.
Zoro doesn’t have to remind him again that it’s his turn to reciprocate. He knows what Zoro’s expecting, and glances back, helplessly fond.
“I love you too, idiot.” Sanji whispers, thinking to himself that the words sound overdue. “..And I think I have. For a long time.”