#nakamaship | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

taizi · 2 months

Text

every high and every low

i wrote a tiny little something for @mangogreent, it isnt much but i hope you like ! happy birthday lake ! title borrowed from glad you exist by dan + shay (listen with your platonic nakamaship hat on and dissolve into seafoam with me)

read on ao3

Luffy’s body doesn’t scar easily. It’s one of the many facets of a frankly unhinged healing factor; his body shuffles micronutrients and vitamins around like a circus clown juggling pins, wounds healing so quickly and completely that there is rarely a trace left behind.

There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. The smiling pencil-mark curve beneath his eye is one of them. The cruel, gaping burn across his chest is another.

Sanji and Chopper have spent hours going over dietary needs and goals for everyone aboard Sunny, not just their captain. But it’s their captain whose food works like a miracle in his stomach.

If Sanji thinks too long and too hard about Totto Land—about Luffy’s trembling, emaciated limbs when he handed over a disgusting, ruined bento, the way his skin plumped up and shone with good health within minutes of a meal—there are very good odds that he’ll spiral into a fit of grief or guilt or panic no matter where he is or what he’s doing at the time. So he tries not to think about it, and instead loads his captain with carbs and protein and fiber at every opportunity instead.

Suffice to say, Luffy’s skin is largely whole and undamaged, only a few faint scars scattered here and there that you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t really looking. His rubber body is a marvel, but it burns like a starving furnace, and sometimes it does him a disservice no one could have possibly seen coming.

“You don’t feel that?” Usopp says with a frown.

“Nuh-uh,” Luffy confirms blithely, watching the feather move back and forth across his arm. “If you pinch me or poke me with something sharp I will, but if it’s soft it’s like it’s not there at all.”

For a moment, everyone sits there and absorbs that information. Sanji can feel it settling over his nakama like a blanket of snow; cold and promising to pack in and be a pain in the ass to shovel through. Sanji has to readjust his understanding of the world, too. It takes him a minute.

The only touches that Luffy feels easily are the ones that hurt. That’s true for everyone, in a sense—but just because a slap might register louder and faster than a gentle touch doesn’t mean the latter doesn’t carry a weight of its own.

Sanji wonders, abruptly, if the last thing Luffy felt from him was the fight they had on Whole Cake when Sanji was desperate to free his captain of his obligations to a pathetic, useless cook—when he did everything in his power to drive him away.

Nami and Brook have joined Usopp in the game of poking Luffy’s arms and legs and squishy sides in the name of proving him wrong, finding a spot where he isn’t so thick-skinned. Brook’s phalanges drumming against his ribs make him giggle a bit, but how much of that is real feeling and how much is simply delight at all the attention and affection pointed his way?

It should be cute, but Sanji can see—and feel—it cutting everyone to the quick. Robin has closed her book, watching the scene without a smile on her face. Franky’s hands are unmoving around the great feathered monstrosity he and Usopp have been building at the table together up until this point, as if he’s forgotten he’s holding tools in the first place.

Enough is enough, Sanji decides, and sets aside his pride along with his bowl of red velvet cupcake batter and maryse spatula, moving around the counter with purpose.

“Got an idea,” he says at length and Nami scoots gamely to the side. Sanji keeps moving before he can get in his own way and takes Luffy’s round face in one work-hardened hand.

Luffy, who has been known to use his actual skull as a battering ram, usually fights with his whole chest and carries most of his injuries there, too. His face, aside from an unfortunate unsupervised incident with a knife when he was little more than a toddler with a highly questionable and often day-drunk role model, is unscarred.

Sanji brushes his thumb against Luffy’s cheek, where the skin lays very thin over sensitive nerve endings. His captain blinks up at him, brown eyes wide and trusting, every bit as if he’s looking at someone who has never hurt him before.

The crew present is watching raptly, their disquiet transforming into absurd, single-minded scrutiny. There’s a reason they’re not only living in the New World but thriving there—they’re good at adapting, at assimilating new information, at smacking the curveballs right out of the park on their second swing.

“Feel that?” Sanji asks.

Luffy tips his head curiously, just enough not to dislodge Sanji’s hand. Perfectly willing to sit still and be held when it’s his cook doing the holding.

“Kinda,” the boy says, the barest hint of a furrow forming between his brows. It’s the beginning of an epic spoiled sulk that everyone who loves him is intimately familiar with—because his nakama belong to him, and so Sanji does, and so his hand on Luffy’s face does, and it is rapidly occurring to Luffy that it’s not fair for all of those things to be true and for him not to be able to feel it.

Sanji can’t help but smile, always equal parts charmed and exasperated by the future king in a pout. He leans in and presses his mouth to the same place his thumb was, kissing the soft cheek firmly. He can almost see it when Luffy zings to attention, his overwhelming focus zeroed into that singular point of contact.

By the time Sanji straightens, Luffy is already beaming ear-to-ear.

“I felt that!”

Sanji returns to his dessert prep, perfectly satisfied with the changed world he leaves in his wake. Chopper is already clambering over the top of the table, scattering the bits and bobs of the engineers' project into an irremediable mess in his haste to bury his favorite human in fuzzy reindeer kisses, and similarly everyone else’s eyes are gleaming with promise.

Luffy’s rubber body is both a wonder and a menace, much like the golden soul it houses. But where it falls short and fails him, his friends will pick up the slack. Luffy is probably going to get his cheeks and forehead pinched and poked a lot more when he’s whining or complaining or elsewise being his annoying, incorrigible self.

But he’s also going to get kissed a lot more there, too.

#one piece #opfic #black leg sanji #monkey d luffy #sanlu #nakamaship #my writing #op #mangogreent #it turned into pure fluff 🥺🥺 nakama soup for the soul

112 notes · View notes

redriotinggg · 3 months

Note

You know what I need? Strawhats raising a child, could be shippy or not, but I need them finding a baby and Luffy being like "I WANNA KEEP IT! How hard can it be to raise a child?" (Famous last words) This is less about wanting to be a father and more about thinking about this as another great adventure and experience for Luffy (besides if its a situation like finding a baby in a treasure chest they cant exactly leave it... tho I imagine Nami seeing Luffy with a baby in arms and being like "wtf, where did you get that???" Luffy: "I found it in a treasure chest :)" Nami: "WELL PUT IT BACK ITS NOT YOURS!")

Of course raising a baby in a pirate ship is bound to be dangerous, so most of the crew is like "lets find it a good family in the next island" so maybe it's more of a Tokyo Godfathers situation.

Who are the better parents? Who absolutely suck at parenting but want to help regardless? Are any of them like "I absolutely don't want any part in this" but end up being roped in regardless and end up getting attached to the child? Does the child end up being raised by Strawhats or they get them to a nice family somewhere safe?

If you know of any fanfics that are like this (if they're gen/Nakamaship the better) please reccomend them to me I'm in desperate need to see that, child raised by a village trope my beloved

Pffttt a baby should definitely NOT be aboard the Sunny but if it happened I can imagine that yes, Luffy found a baby in a treasure chest and by the time they realized what happened, they were already on the open water headed to the next island.

However, the first thought that came to my head was that Zoro was sleeping while guarding the ship and someone managed to dump the baby onboard. He wakes up and there’s a baby—just under a year old—sitting across from him, fist in their mouth and a note on their forehead that says, “YOUR PROBLEM NOW”. There’s nothing left for him to do other than wait and pray that the kid doesn't start crying or pooping.

The rest of the crew comes back like Uhhhh Zoro???? When did you give birth????? To which he yells that he didn't, you idiots!

Now they don't know what to do because they can't bring a baby on the seas in the New World, but the island they're docked at wasn't very welcoming and likely wouldn't care about an orphaned child.

Luffy makes the decision easily--they'll bring the baby with them and they'll be an honourary Straw Hat! If they get their adventure started now, the baby will be at a huge advantage when they become a pirate when they grow up. Raising a baby must be easy if so many people do it! But it doesn't take long for the others to convince him that keeping a baby abroad for an extended period isn't a good idea, so they decide to keep the baby until they can find them a good home.

Luffy is not so surprisingly great with the kid, although he's not allowed to be left alone with them. The crew freaked out when they found him and the baby asleep on the head of the Sunny. It would've been a sweet scene if they both weren't at risk of falling and drowning to death. If the baby starts crying and Luffy can't get them to stop in 2 seconds, he dumps them off to the nearest crewmate--he usually deals with crying kids by beating them up, but the baby's too young for that. Plus, the noise really hurts his ears!

Nami canonically loves kids and babies!! She doesn’t mind taking care of the baby until they can find somewhere safe for them. Except this baby is getting on her damn nerves because, for some reason, they don’t like Nami. At all. Every time she tries to hold them, they cry bloody murder. To add insult to injury, the baby absolutely loves Zoro, who still wants nothing to do with the baby. But she is nothing if not stubborn, and eventually, she and the baby are thick as thieves.

The baby loves Usopp because he’s so silly! He makes the baby laugh by playing peekaboo and he even whips up little toys for them to play with. He flails dramatically when the baby grabs his nose or pulls his hair, both of them laughing without a care in the world.

The baby is too young to be scared of Brook, so they just laugh as he dances and sings nursery rhymes from all over the four seas. His lullabies are very effective in calming the baby's crying fits or getting them to sleep.

Sanji prefers dealing with children when they’re old enough to speak, but he’s not immune to the effects of an adorable baby. If it’s a girl she gets the absolute princess treatment, complete with baby talk and compliments of how cute she is. A boy baby gets his hair gently ruffled. Either way, Sanji happily admires Robin sitting with a baby in her lap before he’s off to puree some fruits and veggies.

Chopper loves babies and thinks this one is so cute!! But he’s embarrassed by how jealous he is of all the attention the baby is getting. He can’t help it! He’s used to being the one taking naps in Zoro’s lap and being fawned over by Robin. He’s happy to have the baby with them, but he wishes he got some more attention, too.

Jimbei and Franky don’t dislike babies per se, but they’re just so small and fragile compared to them. They mostly watch the other crewmates interact with the baby from the sidelines.

Franky’s nerves aren’t helped as Robin keeps coming up to him while holding the baby and talking about how cute they are and how parenthood is such a privilege, don't you think, Franky? She manages to convince Franky to hold the baby and when he does, he bursts into tears. Overwhelmed, he passes the baby off to the closest person, who happens to be Jimbei, whose eyes also fill with happy tears when the baby snuggles up to him. Both of them stop keeping their distance after that.

Robin reads the baby bedtime stories! But the crew have also walked by and overheard her reading books about death, disease, and war. She speaks to the baby in all of the languages she knows and tells them all the secrets she's learned. It's too bad the baby is too young to retain all that knowledge, but she's more than happy to share anyway.

Zoro doesn't like kids in general, but kids love him, including this baby. The rest of the crew find it hilarious how awkward he is with the baby. You'd think he'd be used to holding a small being considering how often he carries Chopper around, but no, he's hopeless. Zoro is teased relentlessly for the way he talks to the baby. He talks to them like a grown adult and it's both endearing and ridiculous.

Absolutely nobody wants to change dirty diapers. There are physical altercations, manipulation tactics, and an abundance of tricks used as each Straw Hat tries to avoid diaper duty. (Usopp uses dirty diapers as canon fodder and ammo when they run into trouble on the water.)

Most, if not all, of the Straw Hats have mommy and/or daddy issues, so raising this baby gives them all a chance to heal, whether they realize it or not. It also gives the crew an excuse for group cuddles, not that they ever needed it.

The crew have all grown very attached to the baby by the time they reach a safe place with people they trust to raise them. A few crewmates (Usopp, Nami, Robin, Brook) want to keep the baby around--it's too cruel to leave them, now! But Luffy has made his decision. It's too dangerous for the baby out on the seas of the New World. But once they've found the One Piece they'll be back to visit.

Usopp made the baby a teddy bear and dressed it as Luffy, complete with a straw hat. Sewn to the red fabric of the hat is a note written by the crew, a photo of them all, and a piece of Luffy's vivre card. If the baby grows up and ever wants to come sailing with them, all they have to do is ask.

AAAHHH this was so fun omg!! I love babies sm and there'd be so many antics if a baby was on the Sunny. I doubt I'd ever write a fic myself though, but I'd be happy to think up more hcs in another ask :)

I don't know of any nakamaship fics like this, so if anyone does please link it in the comments. But! KazimaKuwabara has this FANTASTIC fic feat. the Straw Hats taking care of their de-aged nakama. I've read it so many times, it's great.

Thank you for the ask! Keep em coming y'all, I live for this.

#one piece #strawhats #monkey d luffy #roronoa zoro #cat burglar nami #god usopp #black leg sanji #nico robin #cyborg franky #soul king brook #jimbei #tony tony chopper #one piece au #red's asks #red's writing #nakamaship

103 notes · View notes

kyuyua · 9 months

Text

Luffy really does call Law ‘nakama’ not ‘tomodachi’ and that makes me happy

#eng subs just don’t get the nuance #heard it with my ears #one piece #op #monkey d. luffy #trafalgar d. water law #trafalgar law #lawlu #lulaw #nakamaship

254 notes · View notes

sanji-piss-hell · 5 months

Text

I've been reading alot of fics about de-aged Sanji and the strawhats interacting with him. Will probably do more doodles like this (if you have any de-aged sanji fic recs please send me my way)

#one piece #sanji #black leg sanji #one piece sanji #vinsmoke sanji #ty art #luffy #monkey d. luffy #one piece luffy #straw hat luffy #straw hat pirates #baby sanji #iron mask sanji #nakamaship

144 notes · View notes

geneenart · 8 months

Text

🌙🐐

#lunami #luffy x nami #monkey d luffy #nami #one piece #nakamaship #luna

98 notes · View notes

acewithapaintbrush · 2 months

Text

Four times the Strawhats struggle with insomnia and Luffy keeps them company and one time they all return the favor.

(it seems I have lost the prompt this is loosely based on)

#one piece #straw hat pirates #one piece fanfiction #nakamaship

23 notes · View notes

lewiscarrolatemybrain · 2 months

Text

Halloween festival type thing on some island and the Strawhats separate for a bit to resupply and stuff with plans to regroup when the festival officially starts. Luffy is dressed “as a pirate!” (Meaning a cliche captain’s coat and tri-corn hat over the straw hat, with a dinky fake cutlass at his hip and an eyepatch) with zero self-awareness or irony. Zoro strolls along beside him in the Hooded Black Cloak Of Indeterminate Costume known by lazy bastards everywhere.

When they get to the festival ground and start looking for their crew they find Usopp first, sitting near the entrance, wearing sandals, shorts, a red vest and a straw hat. Luffy laughs his ass off.

Then Chopper comes toddling over with Nami, both of them also wearing shorts, red vests, and straw hats. “Meat!” Chopper demands. The other Luffies (fake and real) all join in the chant “Meat! Meat! Meat!”

Sanji, Franky, and Robin are all near the buffet table, also dressed as Luffy. By this point Luffy is folded in half and barely on his feet from laughing so hard. Franky declares a “Suuuuuper gum guuuum rocket!” Before preforming a maneuver that’s less launching himself at his Nakama and more pulling them in towards him, but Luffy will allow it because 1) this is hilarious and 2) he likes hugs

He turns at the sound of an approaching Jinbe, and is once more reduced to delighted, crying laughter at the sight of Jinbe’s Luffy costume…

And Zoro’s, when he shrugs off the cloak and takes the extra hat from Jinbe’s outstretched hand.

Edit I FORGOT TO MENTION BROOK but obviously he’s here and he’s Luffy too

#one piece #straw hat pirates #monkey d. luffy #monkey d luffy #nakamaship #I’m not tagging everybody #halloween #I know it’s February but this idea wouldn’t let me go #they’re so silly I love them

34 notes · View notes

fluffyartbl0g · 1 year

Text

FRICK YOU *age regresses all ur nakama including their memories for leik a month or two*

#one piece #op fanart #strawhat pirates #monkey d. luffy #roronoa zoro #op sanji #nakamaship #jinbei #op robin #op brook #tony tony chopper #op franky #op nami #GOD I HATE TAGGING EVERYONE #CAUSE IM ALSO LIKE…. WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON TAG FOR THESE PEEPS?????#luffy is like… something things wrong here but i cant rlly put my fonger on it #ALSO this is set like in the future when luffy is pirate king #which is y he looks older!#sanji is literally SOOOOOO soggy and sad omg

7K notes · View notes

dragonbonez · 6 months

Text

Three different drawings because in the end I just wanted to experiment and had the impulse to continue. I also did a Boa Hancock but I’m not happy with it yet. I feel like I’m getting better and better at drawing Luffy which I love! I’m also debating whether I should try to paint the sketch, more as practice than anything else… I’ve done digital drawings for so long but I just have never really figured out the painting part.

#monkey d. luffy #Luffy #mugiwara crew #mugiwara kaizoku #straw hat pirates #nakamaship #nico robin #jaguar d. saul #one piece #one piece art #op art #my art

180 notes · View notes

brigidfromthecelts · 2 months

Text

Please check this out! It's so good! I'm having so many feeeeeels! I can't 😭 I want to hug my baby Sanji!

Go follow @mikytgl89 and also on AO3 cause that's where all the goodies are! Let's show some love with Kudos and Comments so we can find out what happens next cause I'm dying here! 😱😭

#one piece #fanfiction ao3 #fanfic #vinsmoke sanji #black leg sanji #sanji #nakamaship #strawhat pirates #strawhats #i'm crying #im dying #feels

19 notes · View notes

taizi · 7 months

Note

could you write a kid sanji fic like you did with luffy?? like sanji gets whammied with a devil fruit n gets turned back tk his germa years or something??

Sanji wakes up in the infirmary. He lies there for a moment, blinking up at the ceiling. The room is cool and comfortable, a fan blowing gently in the corner and a door wedged open to let in a breeze rich with the salty, briny tang of the sea.

Something about it seems strange. He knows that this is the infirmary, recognizes it somehow, even though it doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to. The last time he was sent to the ship’s medical room, it was barely more than an out-of-the-way broom closet, manned by a grizzly old bear who made it clear he didn’t have time for clumsy trainees and their second-degree burns. There certainly wasn’t room for a proper bed, and if there was, Sanji wouldn’t have been tucked into it so carefully.

Was the wood in The Orbit always this color? he wonders, eyes drifting to stare at the wall nearest his bed. Rich, almost red, each finished plank as smooth as glass.

“Oh,” a voice says, “you’re awake!”

Sanji is very used to strangers. The Orbit is a cruise ship, ferrying hundreds of different customers across the Blues every day. But he’s never seen a person like this before.

It’s a little reindeer, in a pink and blue hat and a fluffy white hoodie with a sheep printed on the front. They hop down from their chair and cross the room to him in an enthusiastic clatter of hooves. Sanji is a runt, according to most of the crewmen on The Orbit and all of his former siblings, but this reindeer is even smaller than him, by almost a foot.

Did they hire a new doctor?

“How are you feeling?” they ask earnestly. “All your labs came back okay and your vitals are strong, but I’m worried you might be coming down with a fever. And I think you were having some bad dreams.”

Sanji blinks, still half-asleep, and decides to humor the little creature. “I feel okay.”

“Good! Let me get you some water and take your temperature again. Then I’ll let the captain in to see you.”

“The captain? Why does he want to see me?” It occurs to him, belatedly, that he might be in trouble. Sanji sits up fast, ignoring the way it makes his head spin, and cries out, “I didn’t mean to!”

The reindeer turns with an insulated water bottle in their tiny hands, brow furrowed beneath their fur. “Didn’t mean to what?”

“I don’t—whatever I did. It was an accident. I can still work.” Don’t send me back. Don’t make me go. He’s frozen with a familiar terror, one he has done his best to outrun but will never outgrow.

He knows it’s silly. He boarded the ship on Cozia and told everyone who asked that he was an orphan. If they decided to go through all the trouble of bringing him home, instead of just kicking him off at the next port, then that would still be leagues away from where Germa Kingdom usually resides in North Blue. They can’t send him back because they don’t know where he’s actually from. No one will ever, ever know. Sanji will never tell.

But he’s afraid anyway.

“You’re not doing anything until I say so,” the reindeer says firmly. “Doctor’s orders! Luffy only wants to see you because he’s worried about you! He’ll say it’s ‘cause he misses your food, but that’s not true. Well, it is true, but it’s not the only thing he misses.”

Sanji isn’t sure he followed all of that, but the reindeer seems pretty certain that the captain isn’t going to storm in here and shout at Sanji or fire him. It’s enough that Sanji is able to release his death-grip on the blanket and accept the water bottle that gets shoved insistently towards him.

Luffy? he wants to ask. The captain of The Orbit is called Chas. And Sanji is only a trainee in the kitchens, hardly allowed to do more than shadow the seasoned chefs. When he does cook, it's for himself, and maybe sometimes the mice that live in the underbelly of the ship. He can’t think of any reason why the captain—or anybody, really—would miss Sanji’s food.

Luffy. The name settles inside of him like the first swallow of warm soup on a blustery winter day. He doesn’t understand it, but he presses his hands to his chest and tries to hold onto it.

When the reindeer is satisfied that Sanji’s sufficiently hydrated and his temperature is normal, they say, “Okay, you wait right here while I go get him. Is there anything you need? Are you hungry?”

Still a little nervous, Sanji shakes his head quickly.

The reindeer makes a dubious “hmmmm” noise like they’re not convinced but they don’t want to argue. They pull the door open the rest of the way and disappear out of it, calling for someone at the top of their lungs.

There’s a lot of noise out there. Sanji tilts his head, trying to listen. He can hear music and laughter. Then he hears the thunder of feet approaching the infirmary at a breakneck pace, and he barely has any time to get scared before a beaming face appears in the doorway.

Oh, that’s Luffy. Sanji knows it’s him right away. He doesn’t know how he knows. It’s the warm soup feeling again.

“SANJI!” the familiar stranger exclaims, bursting inside with wild enthusiasm, like there’s something very wonderful waiting in the medbay somewhere. Sanji is sure there isn’t—it’s just him in here.

But Luffy bounces right onto the bed, sitting cross-legged on top of the soft blankets so that he and Sanji are eye-to-eye.

“Chopper said you woke up! You’ve been asleep for ages. How do you feel?”

“Okay,” Sanji says carefully. Luffy definitely isn’t Captain Chas. So this definitely isn’t the infirmary on The Orbit after all. He must be somewhere else. But how did he get here? And how do they know his name?

“You look okay,” the older boy agrees, leaning in like he’ll be able to tell it’s true just by getting a good look at Sanji’s face. “But there’s no way you’re not hungry! You missed dinner and breakfast and lunch!”

Twisting the blanket in his lap, Sanji says, “I’m really okay.” Judge used to send him away without dinner all the time, for any little thing. It was a punishment Sanji actually preferred, because it was the only one that didn’t leave him bruised or bleeding. Hunger pains are like an old friend to him.

“Nope,” Luffy says suddenly, and leans forward and scoops Sanji right out of the bed. “There’s not a ton of rules on my ship, but the ones we do have are super important. And this rule even belongs to you—no skipping meals, shitheads!”

He adopts a low, slightly husky drawl for that last part, like he’s imitating someone. Sanji is too preoccupied with being picked up, clutching at Luffy’s shoulder and the front of his shirt, to wonder much about that.

“Put me down, please,” he blurts, barely clinging to the manners that were sometimes his only saving grace in Vinsmoke Castle, even though he really wants to flail and shout and kick until he’s dropped or tossed away. Bigger people make him nervous. Bigger people grabbing him makes him nearly black out with fear.

But Luffy just laughs, and it’s a warm, ringing sound. He doesn’t seem like he’s going to listen. And it’s actually not that frightening, after all, being held up by him.

“Can’t,” he declares. “Chopper said you weren’t allowed to get up, which means I have to carry you.”

“The reindeer said you were the captain,” Sanji says suspiciously.

“I am the captain. That means I’m not the doctor, or the shipwright, or the navigator, or the cook. I can’t do any of those things that my nakama can do, that’s why they’re so important. That’s why what Chopper says goes!”

He tosses Sanji up playfully and catches him, the way Sanji has seen guests do with their children sometimes. Luffy’s not big and burly like the deckhands on The Orbit are, but he’s strong. His slim arms feel safe.

Outside, Sanji has to squint through the late afternoon sunlight, lifting a hand to shade his eyes. They’re on the second story of a grand ship deck, coming down the stairs at a brisk clip.

From their seat on a rope swing, the reindeer themself wails, “Luffy! I said he had to stay in bed!”

“Huh? I didn’t hear that part,” Luffy calls back blithely, everything he just told Sanji about listening to his crewmates tossed out on its ear. “We need food! Nami, the fridge!”

“Yes, yes,” a tangerine-haired woman says, sounding put-upon. She folds the paper she’s reading and sets it aside. When her eyes fall on Sanji, she smiles in a way that transforms her whole face. “Hi, there. Iva said you’d be a little confused until the hormones wore off. Do you know me?”

Sanji doesn’t know Iva and he doesn’t know what hormones she’s talking about, but he likes her smile. Everyone on the deck is smiling at him, like they’re happy to see him. He doesn’t understand. No one has been happy to see him since his mom died.

Behind the tangerine-haired woman, there’s a skeleton in a feather boa, strumming absently on a guitar. The bare skull where his face should be is wearing a rictus grin and heart-shaped sunglasses.

It should be a frightening thing to see. Instead, it simply makes everything else make perfect sense.

Oh, Sanji realizes, the worry and confusion in his heart finally settling. This is a dream.

“Guess not,” the woman is saying to a man with a long nose and lots of curly dark hair piled up in a bun, since Sanji never answered her.

“It’s only temporary,” the man replies earnestly, though he sounds a little anxious himself. “We’ll have him back to normal before you know it!”

“We’d better,” a green-haired man says dryly. “If Franky cooks for us again, I may throw myself overboard.”

“Oy! I make boats, not fancy five-course dinners!”

“I can,” Sanji starts to say, forgetting himself. He stops abruptly, covering his mouth with one hand, but it’s too late. Everyone’s already looking at him again. But if it’s a dream, and they’re all dream people, then they won’t mind if he talks out of turn. Testing the waters, he continues carefully, “I can make dinner.”

“You can?” Chopper, the reindeer, asks like it’s some amazing feat. “But you’re so little! You already knew how to cook when you were this little?”

“I’m almost nine,” Sanji says importantly. “That’s practically almost a teenager. That’s almost grown-up.”

“Almost, almost, almost,” a tall woman with a curtain of shimmery black hair murmurs, her voice rich with laughter and openly affectionate.

“Naaamiii,” Luffy whines, unlike Judge or Chas or any other authority figure Sanji has ever met. “Fridge!”

“Well, get a move on then!” she says, turning him by the shoulders and propelling him forward to one of the doors by the stairs. A bunch of the others start to follow, but a sharp look from the green-haired man causes them to stay behind and glare mulishly at him instead.

Even Nami doesn’t linger after unlocking the fridge. She swipes a snack from inside, something in a delicate little crystal dessert cup, then tousles Luffy’s hair playfully, then touches Sanji’s cheek like she’d like to tell him something, but doesn’t know how to make him understand. Then she goes, the galley door swinging shut behind her.

Luffy sits Sanji down on the counter and stands back with his hands on his hips.

“I may not be a cook, but my brothers and I grew up by ourselves most of the time and we didn’t always have someone around to make meals for us,” he declares. “Before Ace went away, he made sure I wouldn’t starve. There’s like three whole things I know how to make really well! So Sanji can tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. What should we cook?”

The name Ace causes a tender pang in Sanji’s chest that he doesn’t understand. It makes him want to check on Luffy and make sure he’s okay, even though he’s standing right in front of Sanji, beaming ear to ear.

He kicks his dangling feet back and forth, glancing around the big kitchen, with its spotless counters and hand-stitched dish towels and the pink apron hanging from one of the cabinet handles. It’s a kitchen that belongs in a home.

He looks back up at Luffy.

“What was your favorite thing to cook with your brothers?”

Barbecued alligator isn’t a viable option for half a dozen reasons, but there’s dark meat chicken in the fridge that will make a neat substitution. Luffy is hapless but enthusiastic. Sanji doesn’t actually trust him with an open flame so once the chicken is seasoned it goes in a big dish to bake in the commercial-sized oven.

The entire kitchen is messy somehow even though they didn’t even use the whole thing. Sanji’s face hurts from smiling.

“I hope you like it,” he says, twisting the dial on a funny tomato-shaped timer. “But you don’t have to eat it if it’s bad.”

Luffy boosts himself up to sit on the counter beside Sanji. Lifting a big bowl of fresh fruits into his lap, he picks out a lychee and begins peeling it with deft fingers.

“Sanji is amazing,” he says plainly. “He’s the best cook in all the Blues and the whole Grand Line. He made a cake so yummy that it stopped a crazy rampage once. I’m really glad he’s mine.”

Reaching over, he takes Sanji’s hand. It’s small and fragile in Luffy’s grasp, and covered in scars, but the young captain doesn’t say anything about any of that.

He puts the peeled lychee in Sanji’s palm, a perfect shining little moon.

“Sanji can’t make anything bad,” Luffy says, utterly certain. “His hands are good.”

It has to be a dream. Most people only get one big miracle in their lives, if they’re lucky, and Sanji had his already—the chance to run to freedom, granted to him by his sister in an uncharacteristic act of kindness he still doesn’t understand.

There’s no way a place like this could really exist, full of people who smile warmly at Sanji and touch him without hurting him, who worry about him when he’s sick and miss him while he’s gone.

Sanji hopes he remembers all of it when he wakes up.

For now he mumbles shyly, “Can we cook together some more?”

‘Together’ ends up meaning together-with-everybody as the rest of the crew refuses to be left out for much longer. Even the green-haired man slinks inside the dining hall eventually. He doesn’t help at all with the tricky lemon blueberry icebox cake that Usopp stubbornly insisted on, but he gamely tastes whatever gets pushed his way. The kitchen becomes even more of a mess than it was before, and there’s flour everywhere and sticky blueberry sauce all over Sanji’s hands, but he hasn’t laughed this much since he was little. Since he could still run off to mom’s room and climb into her big soft bed and curl up with her arms around him, while she told him stories that made the world seem like a smaller, kinder place.

These people don’t make the world seem smaller. They make it seem huge. And Sanji isn’t afraid of it. He doesn’t want to hide. He wants to see the whole thing.

He wants them to be there when he finds All Blue. He thinks maybe he can really, actually find it, if all of them come with him.

(Two nights later, Sanji wakes up overheated and extremely cramped in a bunk not built for two grown men. He bites back a groan at what feels like the remains of a bad hangover and cranes his neck to see who is sprawled out over him like an inconvenient blanket.

Of course it’s his captain, the overgrown kid snoring away with his arms tucked around Sanji’s middle.

Little shit, he thinks, beginning the careful process of extracting himself. He manages to slip out of bed without waking the younger boy up, scowling without real ire at the shameless way Luffy stretches out in his sleep to fully commandeer the whole bunk. Did he have a bad dream? Sanji wonders a second later.

He untangles the blanket and covers his captain with it properly. Lighting a cigarette, a brief flicker of fire in the dark quarters, Sanji lingers just long enough to push a hand through Luffy’s hair.

Whatever happened, it’s nothing a good meal won’t fix.)

#one piece #opfic #black leg sanji #monkey d luffy #nakamaship #my writing #prompt #anonymous #op #yes so this one got away from me #i say to absolutely no one's surprise

132 notes · View notes