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“Of course I fell in love with Ace,” Sanji says.
He’s got one fingertip steering across the rim of his half-empty glass, tripping over tracks of salt, meandering at the languid pace of something that has yet to realize it’s moving at all. Usopp’s drink lies toppled and defeated somewhere south of his elbow, he thinks, but he’s not too eager to be the one to confirm that theory– not with the pirouettes the room is performing around him. The ideas of fish watch him with clear-cut eyes from inside the bar’s aquar– aquiru– the precise word isn’t important right now.
What is important, Usopp has realized, is the way Sanji’s singular, sad eye is even sadder than usual right now– downturned by three extra degrees, maybe, or sunken deeper into his bony cheek to take shelter from the overreflected aquamarine. Usopp doesn’t know how else to pry it out of there than by prying into the mumble Sanji let slip.
“Whaddya mean?” Usopp spits out around the dead meat of his tongue.
“I mean, what else could I have done?” Sanji says. “Ace was polite; kind. Ace set the table without having to be asked, and washed his own dishes after meals, and showed off around the campfire during those scorchingly cold Alabastan nights by cooking us all perfect sausages with that– that fire that was always trying to leak out of his boiling skin. He let it breathe when we first met, you know, thirty seconds in and he was already leaning in with a finger extended like Adam, or God, I think God, to light my shitty cheap cigarette. I still consider that my first kiss.
“And he loved Luffy, right? He loved him so fucking much it was like he couldn’t see a world that didn’t love Luffy just as deeply as him. And, er, and he was persistent, too, like I used to be with girls back then, except he went about it so much more gracefully than I could’ve hoped to. I mean, I was just a kid, we all were, but anyone could see that Ace was the most mature out of us, even through that cloud of weed smoke that clung to him. He had that half-assed wisdom that comes free with going on twenty-one, and even though I liked to think I got it early at nineteen, I didn’t.
“I don’t know what he saw in me, really, besides a pretty face– and maybe that was all he saw, I can’t say. I was insecure and overcompensating and clearly didn’t fit my skin right, but he made me feel like I could, maybe. He listened to whatever I said and laughed at my mediocre jokes and called me shit I thought you could only call girls, back then. And yeah, I had it bad. I always have it bad, no one ever taught me how not to, but that was the first time I looked at a guy and felt something so violent I knew I had to be allowed to keep looking. I knew you could fuck guys, but I didn’t know I could fuck guys, y’know? And Ace taught me that I could.
“I don’t think it really meant anything to him, though. I think he liked me fine, and I think he was bored and pent-up and that’s fine, it’s okay, it’s not his fault I– I imprinted on him like a dog or something. He used to talk about this guy, somewhere in the waters beyond the ones that splashed over the Merry’s railings, and I knew, know, better than anyone else what love looks like. I think I fell in love with that guy, too, even though I hated him a little bit. I learned, far later, that his name is Yamato.
“I didn’t know what to say when he left. I don’t remember saying anything at all, and I think that’s for the best, because I would’ve said something I couldn’t take back if I’d been able to. The sun was the same color as his necklace when he left. I remember that. I didn’t realize that was the color of blood until the gaping hole through his fucking chest taught me that it was.
“I hope Ace finds Yamato again someday. I hope Ace doesn’t remember me, and I hope that if he does, he knows that I love him.
“Do you get what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Usopp says. He does.