Archive of Our Own

The inn was the first place they had slept on land in almost three weeks. That alone made it feel suspicious.

Nami had become used to the Merry’s constant movement beneath her feet; the small creak of wood, the shifting pull of waves, the restless sound of rope and sail and sea. Even when she was exhausted, even when she complained about the cold or the damp or Luffy’s inability to understand the concept of indoor volume, the ship had started to feel familiar in a way that unsettled her if she thought about it for too long. 

The inn did not move. That was the first problem. She’d grown accustomed to swaying with the waves as they moved through the oceans, to the point that being on dry land always made it difficult for her to relax.

The second problem was that the mattresses were soft. She’d sat on the edge of the bed when abandoning her possessions to the room when they first arrived, and it was far more comfortable than she was used to on the ship. 

The third was that there were too many people. She was used to the quiet now. Of course, the people here weren’t presenting a threat. None of the locals were Marines or bounty hunters, at least as far as she could tell. None of them suspiciously held their hand close to where a weapon might sit out of sight, or fixed their eyes too closely on the Straw Hat captain currently attempting to eat an entire pie in three bites or less. 

They were just people, and there was no threat to them. Travellers like themselves had gathered to enjoy the food and atmosphere, dockhands and merchants were settled in to bring an end to a long day of work, and other locals had ducked in to shelter from the unexpected evening rain. The place had filled quickly after sunset and was bustling with conversation and laughter. Warmed by firelight and lanterns, the air was thick with stew, beer, wet wool and the heavier, pleasant smell of freshly baked bread. 

It should have been relaxing, but Nami did not relax easily.

She sat with Vivi at a table near the wall, one shoulder angled toward the room, one eye tracking entrances and exits because habit had teeth. Chopper was asleep against Vivi’s side, overwhelmed by warmth and food and the excitement of being called “little doctor” by the innkeeper’s wife. Usopp was deep in conversation with two fishermen who had either believed or politely pretended to believe his story about defeating a sea king with nothing but a spoon and a heroic amount of courage.

Zoro had vanished, which meant he was either asleep, drinking, lost inside the inn, or somehow all three.

Luffy was exactly where anyone would expect him to be: at the centre of the room, making friends with everyone who fed him.

And Sanji—

Nami looked toward the bar, then stopped when she found him.  She had expected him to be flirting, not because she wanted him to be - obviously not. It was simply what he did.

It was common knowledge that if you put Sanji in a room with strangers, within five minutes he would have complimented someone’s eyes, kissed someone’s hand, offered to cook for three different women, and somehow made himself both charming and ridiculous enough that Nami would be required to roll her eyes at least twice.

She had prepared for that. She had even told herself she would not be irritated by it. Not that there would be any reason to be irritated because Sanji could flirt with whoever he liked.

He was Sanji. That was what Sanji did.

Only he wasn’t doing it.

He was at the far end of the bar, half-turned away from the room, sitting on a stool that looked slightly too short for his long legs. His jacket was draped over the back of it, sleeves rolled to his elbows, one hand resting loose against the wood.

Beside him sat a girl of maybe seven or eight. The innkeeper’s daughter, Nami thought. She had seen the child earlier, darting in and out from behind the counter with an armful of folded napkins, her hair coming loose from its ribbon and her face bright with the kind of curiosity adults rarely survived.

She was watching Sanji with total concentration.

Sanji held up a coin. Nami could tell from across the room that it wasn’t a valuable one; copper, worn, and probably taken from his own pocket because even he would not be foolish enough to play tricks with her money.

The girl leaned closer. Sanji showed her both sides of the coin, then closed his fist around it. He tapped his knuckles once. Twice. Opened his hand.

The coin was gone.

The girl gasped so loudly that the nearest drinker laughed into his cup. Sanji widened his eyes in theatrical confusion, patting his sleeves, checking behind his own ear, then looking under the bar as though genuinely alarmed.

The girl clapped both hands over her mouth.

Nami found herself watching.

Sanji leaned closer and said something she could not hear. The girl shook her head solemnly. Sanji nodded as though she had confirmed a matter of great importance.

Then he reached forward and gently plucked the coin from behind the child’s ear. She shrieked with delight, not loudly enough to startle the room but enough that several adults nearby smiled without meaning to.

Sanji bowed from his stool; a proper bow with his hand to his chest. Ridiculous. Sweet.

Nami looked away sharply, and Vivi noticed immediately. “What is it?” 

“Nothing,” Nami said far too quickly. 

Vivi followed her gaze until she too found the sight of Sanji’s magic show, and her expression softened in a way that made Nami regret existing within twenty feet of her. “Oh.”

Nami stabbed a potato in her stew. “No.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said ‘oh.’”

“That is barely a word,” Vivi dismissed.

“It was a very pointed ‘oh.’”

Vivi smiled into her cup. Nami hated princesses. Not all princesses, just the one currently sitting beside her looking entirely too knowing. 

At the bar, Sanji had produced a second coin. No, not a second coin, a button.

He held it between two fingers, then made it vanish too. The girl immediately grabbed his hand and turned it over, searching his palm with fierce suspicion. Sanji let her, his expression solemn as if he were a magician under formal investigation. It was an odd sight to see him clearly acting yet being much less performative than Nami would usually expect.

The innkeeper’s wife paused behind them with a tray balanced against her hip. “Found yourself an audience, have you?”

Sanji looked up with that easy smile of his, but it was different from the one Nami expected. Gone were his usual flirtations, replaced with a quiet joy that was far less polished, less aimed and practised. He was merely enjoying himself without any pressure or threat hanging over his head. “She’s a very discerning one.”

The girl nodded seriously. “He cheats.”

“All magic is cheating,” Sanji said with a knowing laugh. 

“That means it isn’t magic.”

“It means good magic is cheating beautifully.”

The girl considered this with the gravity of a judge, and Nami’s chest did something strange that she didn’t want to think about too much. She tried another spoonful of stew. It had cooled whilst she had been watching them, but she barely noticed. 

The innkeeper’s wife laughed and ruffled her daughter’s hair before moving away. The girl complained, as if her mother were making her look too childish in front of the exciting new traveller, but she did not move from her stool.

Sanji picked up a napkin next, folded it over twice, and with some dramatic showmanship and a few quick motions he turned it into a small flower. It wasn’t a perfect flower; far from it in fact; but clearly a flower if one was willing to be generous with their imagination. 

The girl accepted it with reverence.

Nami stared without consideration of Vivi attempting a one-sided conversation with her about how she’d loved magic shows as a child. She was too busy staring at Sanji’s hands to pay attention. She had seen Sanji do many things with his hands. When he cooked with them, they were precise and confident; fascinating even, but she’d have thrown herself overboard before admitting that aloud. He handled knives as if they were extensions of his own being, moved through a kitchen with almost a musical certainty, measuring spices by instinct and heat by feelings. 

But this was different. This was gentler.

The same hands that could break bone with ease, that could catch a falling pan before anyone else saw it move, that could roll pastry paper-thin without tearing it, were now carefully shaping a scrap of linen into something small enough to delight a child.

There was no performance in it, not the usual kind, at least. He wasn’t doing it to be admired. He was doing it because the girl was lonely at the end of a busy bar and he had noticed.

Of course, he had noticed. Sanji always noticed hunger.

Nami wondered if loneliness counted. 

The thought landed too softly to defend against. She looked down at her bowl again. Vivi did not say anything this time, which was somehow worse.

Across the room, Luffy finally noticed what was happening. “Sanji! Do that again!”

Sanji’s head turned. “No.”

Luffy looked betrayed. “Why not?”

“Because you will try to eat the coin.”

“I wouldn’t.” Everyone at their table looked at him. Luffy paused. “I might.”

The little girl giggled.

Sanji smiled at her, then shifted slightly so his body blocked the noise of the room from crowding her too much. Nami saw it happen with a churn in her stomach that made her set down her spoon. The tiny adjustment. The instinctive placement of himself between a child and chaos.

It was so quick no one else would have thought anything of it, but Nami thought of the way he stood beside her in markets. The way he moved closer when crowds pressed too tightly. The way he could make himself look careless even while paying attention to every threat in a room.

She swallowed, the stew settling heavily in her stomach.

She had misjudged him, not entirely, as Sanji was flirtatious. Absurdly so. Embarrassingly so. But sometimes Nami wondered if that was simply the easiest part of him to see because it was the side that shone through the loudest. Now she was wondering if that was simply how he wanted to be seen, rather than allowing strangers to see his genuine side. 

Tonight, there were women in the room. Pretty ones. Laughing ones. Travellers with bright scarves and painted mouths, local girls leaning against tables, a singer by the fire whose voice had made even Zoro briefly look alive before he vanished again. Sanji had glanced their way, of course. He’d cast his eye around the room with a lazy intention of being a massive flirt whilst he approached the bar, but then the innkeeper’s daughter had asked him why his hair covered one eye, and somehow that had turned into coins disappearing and napkins becoming flowers and a child laughing like the entire world was good.

Nami had expected irritation when he left the table initially, as they’d had inn experiences where Sanji’s flirting with the wrong person had led to angry husbands chasing him out into the street, but instead she felt something much more dangerous. Tenderness. She disliked tenderness. It had no armour. No bargaining power. Nothing to hide behind.

The evening wore on. Rain tapped against the windows as the fire burned lower. The room settled from rowdy to warm, the edges of conversation softening as people leaned into drink and fatigue, and some ventured home to their families. Usopp’s fishermen eventually left, declaring him either the bravest man alive or the greatest liar they had ever met; he accepted both possibilities as compliments.

Chopper woke just long enough to ask whether the island had any interesting plants, then fell asleep again before anyone could answer.

Luffy ate until the innkeeper physically removed the bread basket.

Vivi excused herself to disappear up to their rooms, Chopper bundled in her arms with surprising ease. The doctor might be furious about that later, but when he was tired, even he couldn’t deny he could get cuddly, and he was sharing a room with the two women for a night to balance the numbers between two rooms and to avoid Luffy’s outrageous snoring.

Nami remained at the table, murmuring a half-hearted goodnight as they left, and her eyes remained on Sanji.

Sanji had switched from tricks to teaching. The girl was trying to make the coin vanish, but she was terrible at it. Even from across the room, Nami could see the coin drop into her lap every single time.

Sanji reacted with total astonishment regardless. “Gone,” he said, voice full of wonder.

The girl narrowed her eyes. “It fell.”

“Did it?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

She picked it up and showed him.

Sanji gasped. “Incredible. You made it reappear.”

The girl laughed again, all missing teeth and flushed cheeks.

Nami found herself smiling. Unfortunately, Sanji chose that moment to glance up. Their eyes met across the room, and Nami’s smile vanished instantly, but it was too late as he’d already noticed. His smile didn’t drop, but softened into something else. This was not the ridiculous, heart-eyed expression he sometimes wore when he called her beautiful or made declarations dramatic enough to embarrass the furniture. It was just a smile; small and somehow private despite the mass of people between them, as though he had caught her seeing a hidden side of him but didn’t actually mind. 

Nami looked away first.

Coward, a voice in her head said.

Shut up, she told it.

She stood, gathering her bowl and cup, mostly so she would have something to do with her hands. The innkeeper’s wife tried to wave her off, but Nami carried them to the bar anyway because she was not completely uncivilised and because it gave her a reason to go closer without admitting that she wanted to.

Sanji looked up as she approached. “Nami.”

The girl turned immediately. “Are you a pirate too?”

Nami set down her bowl. “That depends on who’s asking.” 

The girl’s eyes widened. “That means yes.”

“It means you’re smart.”

The girl beamed. Sanji’s smile deepened. Nami pretended not to notice.

“What are you two plotting down here?”

“Magic,” the girl said.

“Cheating beautifully,” Sanji corrected.

Nami arched an eyebrow. “Sounds like theft with better manners.”

“See?” the girl said triumphantly. “I told you.”

Sanji placed a hand over his heart. “Wounded by both of you.”

“You’ll survive.”

“I may not.”

“You will.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because dinner service starts early and Luffy will riot if you’re not alive to make breakfast.”

“Ah. Reduced to labour.”

“You love feeding him.”

Sanji leaned back slightly, looking up at her through that fall of blond hair. “Maybe.”

There it was again. That softness. Nami wanted to step away from it. She did not.

The girl looked between them with open fascination. “Are you married?”

Nami choked on air.

Sanji’s stool scraped.

“No,” they said together. Too quickly. Far, far too quickly.

The girl frowned. “My mother says people who argue like that are usually married.”

“Your mother is mistaken,” Nami said.

“My mother is never mistaken.”

Sanji recovered first, because of course he did, though the tips of his ears had gone faintly pink. “Your mother sounds formidable.”

“She is.”

“Then we must respect her wisdom.”

Nami kicked his ankle. He winced. The girl giggled.

Nami leaned one hip against the bar and folded her arms. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

The girl sighed dramatically. “I’m helping.”

“With what?”

“Customers.”

“You are terrorising a cook into doing parlour tricks.”

“He likes it.”

Nami glanced at Sanji, who shrugged. “She’s not wrong.”

The girl looked smug.

Nami should have left then. She had achieved whatever excuse she had invented for approaching. The bowl was returned. The cup was returned. She could go upstairs, claim the bed nearest the wall, and ignore the strange, delicate ache behind her ribs.

Instead, she stayed. She couldn’t be sure why she felt anchored to the moment. 

Sanji handed the coin to the girl again. “Show Nami what you learned.”

The girl sat up straighter, preparing for her own performance.

“Oh no,” Nami said. “Should I be worried?”

“Yes,” Sanji said gravely. “She’s alarmingly talented.” 

The girl attempted the trick. The coin fell directly onto the floor. It rolled under Nami’s boot. All three of them looked down. The girl’s face fell. For one tiny second, disappointment crept in. Before Nami could think better of it, she shifted her foot, bent, and picked up the coin, before she held it out between two fingers.

“Strange,” she said. “Looks vanished to me.” The girl blinked. Sanji went very still. Nami flicked the coin toward the child, who caught it clumsily against her chest. “You must have sent it all the way over here.”

The girl’s face lit up again. “I did?”

“Obviously.”

Sanji looked at Nami as though she had done something impossible. “What?” she muttered.

“Nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing.”

“It was very much something.”

“Don’t be weird,” she rolled her eyes. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Liar.”

His smile warmed. “Yes.”

The girl missed all of this entirely, too busy attempting the trick again with renewed confidence. This time, Sanji helped her, gentleness taking over. 

He moved her fingers into place, careful and patient as he explained the motion in low words. His hands dwarfed hers, but there was nothing clumsy in the way he guided her. No impatience. No sharpness. When she struggled, he slowed down. When she dropped the coin, he picked it up. When she got frustrated, he made a worse attempt himself until she laughed.

Nami watched his hands again until her gaze was drawn to his face. There was something unguarded there. Sanji was rarely fully unguarded. He hid too much behind charm, behind service, behind smoke and good manners and extravagant devotion delivered so loudly no one questioned what was quiet underneath.

But with the child, something in him eased. Or maybe something in him hurt. Nami could not tell the difference.

Eventually, the innkeeper came over, wiping his hands on a cloth. “Lina, time for bed.”

The girl groaned. “But Papa—”

“Bed.”

“I nearly learned magic.”

“You can ‘nearly learn’ more tomorrow.”

“But they leave tomorrow,” the girl said sadly, looking at Sanji.

The disappointment in her voice made something in Nami’s throat tighten. Sanji seemed to feel it too. He reached into his pocket, then paused. For a moment, Nami thought he might give her the coin.

Instead he picked up the napkin flower from the bar and adjusted one of its uneven folds. “For you, my apprentice,” he said, offering it to her with a solemn bow.

Lina accepted it like a treasure. Then, abruptly, she threw her arms around his middle.

Sanji froze up for a brief moment; not dramatically enough for the girl to notice, but Nami saw the way every part of him halted at once. He lifted his hands slightly, uncertain where to place them at first, but his face flickered with a smile, and he gently patted the child’s back. Only once, but then again, softer. 

“Goodnight, little magician.”

Lina pulled back, smiling. “Goodnight, cook pirate.”

Then she ran off before her father could scold her for it. The innkeeper watched her go, shaking his head. “She’ll talk about that for weeks.”

Sanji looked down at the bar. “She’s a good kid.”

“Aye,” the man said. “Too curious for her own safety, but good.”

He clapped Sanji on the shoulder with easy gratitude, thanked him for keeping her entertained, and returned to the kitchen. When he’d left, Sanji and Nami were alone at the side of the bar. Of course, they weren’t truly alone given the number of guests, the hum of low conversation and clinking glasses, but it felt alone enough that an awkwardness settled over them for a moment.

Nami looked at Sanji. He was still looking at the place where Lina had disappeared. The napkin flower was gone with her, and the coin sat abandoned on the bar. Sanji picked it up and turned it over between his fingers.

“You’re good with children,” she observed. 

He huffed softly. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I’m not.”

“You are a little.”

“Maybe a little.”

He laughed under his breath, but it faded quickly. 

Nami hesitated. There were questions she knew better than to ask. Sanji’s past existed in fragments. A restaurant. A debt. A man he called old geezer with the kind of affection that bruised around the edges. Hunger, somewhere. Survival. A mother, too, mentioned once so briefly that Nami had almost thought she imagined it through her fever. 

She did not push. She had too many locked rooms of her own.

Still, the quiet sat between them, and maybe because it was late, because the rain had made the world smaller. After all, the inn was warm, and the ship was waiting in the harbour, and Sanji had looked so startled by a child’s hug, but she indulged her curiosities for a time. 

Nami spoke gently, “Where did you learn the tricks?”

Sanji’s fingers stilled on the coin. For a second, she thought he would make a joke. He didn’t. “My mother.”

The answer was quiet, almost disappearing beneath the rain. Nami did not move. Sanji smiled faintly at the coin.

“She wasn’t very good at them.”

The words should have been teasing. They were not.

“She’d make things vanish and I’d see exactly where they went. Sleeve. Lap. Once she dropped a sweet straight onto the floor and pretended that was the trick.”

Nami pictured it despite herself. A little boy with blond hair and wide eyes. A woman laughing softly. A sweet on the floor. Sanji’s thumb moved over the coin’s worn edge.

“I thought it was brilliant anyway.”

Nami’s chest ached. “She sounds fun.”

“She was.” He swallowed. “She was kind.”

The word seemed heavier than it should have been, with more intention behind it than she’d heard before. Kind. Not beautiful, or elegant, or perfect, or any other of the dramatic compliments Sanji could throw around so easily. Kind, as if that word trait mattered most to him, as if it were the part of her that survived clearly in his mind. 

Nami rested her hand on the bar near his; not touching, but enough. Sanji noticed. Of course he did. He always noticed.

“I used to ask her to do them again and again,” he said, voice still low. “Even when I knew how they worked. I think I liked that she wanted to make me laugh.” The rain tapped against the windows. Somewhere behind them, Luffy laughed in his sleep. Sanji’s mouth curved at the sound, but his eyes remained distant. “I don’t think I’ve done those tricks in years.”

“What made you start tonight?”

He looked toward the stairs where Lina had gone. “She looked bored.”

Nami smiled a little. “That’s all?”

His own smile softened. “She asked why pirates always looked so serious all the time.”

“And you had to defend our honour?”

“Obviously.”

“By cheating beautifully?”

“It was important work.”

“Vital.”

His smile almost became real. Almost. Then it faded again. “I forgot I knew them,” he admitted.

That was the hurt she’d recognised in him earlier, lingering beneath the smile. Not the tricks, not even the memory. The forgetting.

Nami understood forgetting; not because things vanished, but because survival buried them. Memories could be dangerous, because softness was often the first thing life tried to steal and the last thing a person dared retrieve.

She looked at him then, really looked. At the blond hair falling across one eye. At the loosened tie. At the hand still holding a cheap copper coin like it had become something sacred.

“You made her happy.” Sanji’s gaze flicked to hers. Nami held it. “She’ll remember that.”

Something in his expression shifted. Carefully. Painfully. As if he wanted to believe her and was not sure he knew how. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

His eyes dropped. The silence that followed was not awkward. It was simply full.

Then Nami reached over and plucked the coin from his fingers. His head lifted, following her movement. She turned it over once, then closed her fist around it.

Sanji’s eyebrow rose. “Nami?”

“Quiet. I’m concentrating.”

“Oh, this should be good.” She shot him a look, and he held up both hands defensively. “Silent as the grave.”

She tapped her fist against the bar once. Twice. Opened her hand.

The coin remained sitting plainly in her palm.

Sanji looked down at it, then up to Nami, and then back down to the coin. 

Nami scowled. “I didn’t say I was good.”

His mouth twitched. “It was a brave attempt.”

“I will throw this at you.”

“I believe you.”

She closed her fist again. This time she attempted to shift the coin the way she had seen him do it. It immediately slipped from her palm and clattered onto the bar.

Sanji pressed his lips together.

“Don’t,” she warned lightly. 

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m being very respectful.”

“You’re laughing with your eyes.”

“That’s because you’re enchanting.”

They both froze immediately. The words had slipped out so lightly, almost automatically. She was used to his flirtations, the way he said such things all the time, only this time there was no flourish attached to it; no dramatic bow, no exaggerated swoon. It was just a compliment, quiet and warm, landing between them with a dangerous sincerity. 

Nami looked down at the coin. Her face felt too hot, and her voice was barely above a whisper. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

Sanji’s voice softened. “I know.”

That was not an apology, not exactly, but it was something. He said things like that, knowing it was crossing a line they felt was too dangerous to be close to, and he still continued to bring them closer together.  She should have moved away. Instead, she nudged the coin toward him. “Teach me properly.”

His expression changed again after that, dropping that regretful gaze in exchange for a brief glimpse of surprise, before it shifted into something more careful. 

Hope, maybe.

“Magic?” He questioned.

“Don’t make me regret asking.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

He shifted closer; not much, but enough that his sleeve brushed against hers and that she could feel the warmth of him. Nami was curious because sleight of hand wasn’t new to her, but for entertainment and wonder it was. Dramatic flair had never really applied to the items she’d pilfered from market stalls, pockets and bar tops along her travels; it had been for survival, not joy. 

Sanji picked up the coin and placed it in her palm. “Alright. Close your hand, but not too tightly.”

She did. His fingers hovered near hers. Waiting.

The hesitation was so unlike him that Nami glanced up. Sanji was looking at her hand. Not touching yet. Asking without asking. Something in her softened. “You can show me.”

He exhaled quietly, and then his fingers covered hers. Gentle. Careful.

His hand was warm from the fire, slightly rough in places, familiar in ways she had not let herself catalogue. He adjusted her grip, moved her thumb, and guided the coin into the right position.

Nami forgot to listen, instead focusing on the way the warmth spread from her hand into hers in a way she’d never experienced before.

“Nami.”

“Hm?”

“You’re not paying attention.”

“I am.”

“You are absolutely not.”

“I am absorbing the lesson.”

“With your ears or your hand?”

“Both.”

His laugh was quiet, almost under his breath. She felt it more than heard it. He guided her through the movement once. Then again. The coin vanished badly the first time, better the second, and on the fourth attempt, she managed to hide it well enough that Sanji’s smile widened with genuine delight.

“There.”

“I did it?”

“You did.”

Nami opened her other hand, revealing the coin tucked awkwardly against her fingers. “Huh.”

Sanji looked far too pleased. “Natural talent.”

“Liar.”

“Yes.”

But he was still smiling. And this time it reached his eyes.

They repeated the practice as the inn grew quieter still, until the fire behind them had reduced to embers and even Luffy had been dragged upstairs to bed by Usopp, leaving a few locals to finish their drinks. Nami didn’t know how long they stayed at the bar, but it was long enough that when she finally looked away from their game, the innkeeper was wiping tables with slow, sleepy movements, and she realised she was relaxed in a way she hadn’t been for a while. Her shoulders felt looser, Sanji’s smile grew more joyous and genuine, and the coin had passed between their hands so many times that the touch stopped being startling and became something domestic, almost something dangerous. 

Eventually, the innkeeper called last orders, and Nami slid off the stool. “We should sleep.”

Sanji nodded. “Yes.”

Neither moved immediately. Then Nami held up the coin. Sanji looked at it.

“You’re stealing my prop?” he asked with a smirk. 

“Payment for the lesson.”

“That coin is worth almost nothing.”

“Then you won’t miss it.”

He smiled. “No. I suppose not.”

She tucked it into her pocket, not because it was valuable, but because… well, she wasn’t sure why if she was honest with herself. 

Sanji stood and collected his jacket from the back of the stool. For a moment, he looked toward the stairs again, where Lina had disappeared with her napkin flower.

“She’ll remember,” Nami said. He looked at her, questioning her comment, but Nami didn’t look away this time.  “So will you.”

The words landed gently. Sanji’s expression softened in a way that made her chest feel too small. “Yes,” he agreed quietly. “I think I will.”

Leaving the inn area behind them, they climbed the stairs up to the rented accommodations together. The hallway was narrow, bringing them closer together to fit through the space, but there was no touch further than an accidental brush of hands. The warmth of the hall was comforting, lit by a single lantern swaying slightly in a draft that didn’t reach them, and finding the shared rooms was easy. 

They’d booked two rooms, with Nami, Vivi and Chopper taking one whilst the others all bundled into a shared bunk room, easily identifiable opposite one another thanks to the snores of their crewmates who had succumbed to a night of rest where they didn’t need to be on guard. The doors to each room being opposite another felt convenient at first, but inconvenient in another way when they were awkwardly lingering outside each room.

Each stopped, pausing in the quiet, and for a moment neither moved until Sanji leaned one shoulder against the wall in front of her. 

“You know,” he said softly, “if piracy doesn’t work out for you, you may have a promising future as a terrible magician.”

Nami smiled despite herself. “And if cooking doesn’t work out for you, you can entertain children in inns.”

His expression warmed. “There are worse lives.”

There were. They both knew it. That was why the words felt heavier than they should.

Nami reached into her pocket and took out the coin. Sanji watched as she closed it in her fist. Tapped once. Twice. Then opened her hand.

Empty.

His eyes widened. Not dramatically this time. Actually.

Nami lifted her other hand and showed him the coin tucked between two fingers. His smile came slowly, almost proudly. “That was good.”

“I had an excellent teacher.” The words escaped before she could stop them.

Nami would insist she wasn’t flirting, but Sanji’s stillness and the way his eyes flickered to hers suggested he thought otherwise; almost as if he didn’t know how to react to her flirting back at him for once. Her face warmed, and she looked back down to their hands and pushed the coin into his before he could say anything unbearably sweet, as he inevitably would.

“Goodnight, Sanji,” she mumbled, barely more than a whisper.

His fingers closed around the coin, but he did not flirt back. There was no dramatic bow, he did not call her darling or love or sweetheart or any of the other words she pretended not to hear. He just looked at her with a softened expression, one that felt more honest than all the grand decorations in the world. This was a different Sanji, one she rarely saw and one that seemed entirely reserved for her. 

Her stomach did an uncomfortable flip as his fingers passed over hers, not quite holding on but slowly letting go of her touch. Neither of them stepped away, and it was only when she thought about that and he huffed out a small laugh, that she realised she was close enough to feel it on her cheek. They were too close, this couldn’t happen, this was a mistake, this was---

--nice. 

She couldn’t, shouldn’t, absolutely refused…but she wanted it.

When she was about to do something she’d inevitably force herself to regret, Sanji finally stepped back, and the lingering touch of his fingers disappeared. “Goodnight, Nami,” he whispered back.

He watched her as she went into her room, forcing herself to move before she did something foolish, and when the door clicked quietly closed behind her, she discovered that Vivi was not nearly as asleep as she’d been pretending to be. 

“You were out there a long time,” she mumbled.

Nami shut her eyes, leaning her head against the door. “Don’t.”

Chopper murmured in his sleep and rolled over. Nami crossed the room and sat on the edge of her bed, pulling off her boots. Her pocket felt strangely empty without the coin, or maybe it was that her hands felt empty without Sanji’s fingers dancing through a magic trick with hers. Across the hall, the floorboard creaked, and the opposite door finally opened and closed lightly as Sanji entered the opposite room. 

How long had he waited in the hallway when she’d left? What was going through his mind? Had he needed to compose himself, too? Was he also about to do something ridiculous and regretful as she had been? 

Vivi definitely noticed. But for once, she was merciful. She said nothing.

Nami lay down beneath the blanket, staring at the ceiling.

The inn did not move. The mattress was too soft. The room smelled of lavender soap instead of salt and sailcloth. Everything was unfamiliar.

And yet, across the hall, Sanji held a cheap copper coin in his hand, and a memory of his mother returned to him.

Downstairs, a little girl slept with a folded napkin flower beside her bed.

And Nami, despite herself, smiled in the dark.

Maybe land had its uses after all.