Author’s Note: Mah first One Piece story. I’m only on episode 30-something of the anime and am relatively new to the fandom, so when I make blundering continuity errors just pat me on the head and remind yourself that I suffer from newbie retardation.

Also, I’m aware that the Baratie crew did not sail around pillaging and plundering, thus making them not technically pirates. But most of their cooks were pirates. A good deal of their customers were pirates. People were too afraid to work there because of the pirate fights. In my (admittedly silly) head, that makes the Baratie a pirate ship.

Cigarette Box

Klayter McCabe

000

It is a well-known fact that Sanji worships women. Women are beautiful creatures – long and slender and pale and soft and graceful and intelligent and tender and… Well. Altogether entirely out of the realm of his experience.

The main reason for this is that he has spent his entire life on ships, and that most of those ships have been heavily involved with pirates. There are female pirates, of course. There are even women pirates, and, occasionally, lady pirates. Nami-san is a prime example of this last category.

There weren’t, however, any female pirates on any of his ships. Until painfully recently, most of his interaction with women has involved him pouring their wine and trying to make their dates look bad while talking up his latest culinary work of art.

Women fascinate him.

The most amazing and confounding thing about them is that they are not men. Sanji knows men. Even before he became one, when he was still a boy, Sanji understood men. Men are loud and raucous and proud and stupid and strong and swear a lot. They also drink a lot, in which case all of the above traits are multiplied exponentially. Men spend a lot of time talking about women, but usually not in flattering ways. According to men, women are whiney and silly and airheaded and whorish and would really not be worth dealing with at all except for the sweet place between their legs and the things they sometimes do with their hands and their mouths.

What men think of women does not mesh very well with what Sanji thinks of women. He isn’t sure why that is, except that he wants something in people that he hasn’t been able to find yet, so it must be that women have it.

Sanji is a strong man. He knows this, because he is proud and sometimes raucous and sometimes loud and he sure as hell swears a lot. When he drinks, he is all of this and even stupid too. He does manly things, like beating the shit out of people who piss him off and cooking gourmet seven course meals and not admitting that he’s hurt even when he can’t get up of the floor.

To a certain extent, Sanji enjoys the company of men. He likes fighting with them and competing against them and having the assurance that, in a pinch, he won’t have to look after anybody else, because men can take care of themselves.

To a certain extent, Sanji hates the company of men. He is a solitary person by nature, and would be content in his kitchen with all necessary supplies and his interaction with people being limited to them appreciatively eating his food. Sanji doesn’t like men because they are obtuse and interfering and arrogant. Even though he is now a grown man himself, groups of men still make him uncomfortable sometimes. Particularly when they are all larger than him, and there has been drinking.

It’s funny, the things that still make him nervous even though he’s more than capable of taking care of himself now.

Sometimes, especially at night, especially if he has been drinking, Sanji is not a particularly strong man at all. Sometimes he wants someone to talk to, just to talk to, about stupid things and important things and what he thinks that he never tells anyone because he’s always around men, and you don’t talk to men about things. At those times, he wishes for a woman. He would like to hold one in his arms, round shoulders and soft breasts and long hair and comfortable hips, a woman whom he could make giggle with his words and moan with his touch.

He would like that. But the idea is terrifying.

It’s not just that Sanji wouldn’t know what he was doing, because he has a pretty good idea. It’s that women know things, things that he wouldn’t want to have to admit to. How, for instance, do you explain to a woman that you’re not exactly a virgin, not by several times over, but that it’s been awhile, it’s never been with a woman, and it’s never been exactly pleasant? He’s afraid that he would somehow give it away, that any woman he did sleep with would know, and… Well. Most women don’t know about men in the way of pirate things, in the way of being on the wide ocean for months at a time. There’s no reason for women to know things like that. Hell, half the time he thinks there’s no reason for him to know things like that, but… Well. He just had some bad luck, didn’t he?

To a certain extent, Sanji hates the company of men.

And now here he is on a brand new pirate ship, only everything is topsy-turvy. A pirate ship with a woman on board all the time, Nami-san, who is a lady. Who is slender and pale and soft and graceful and intelligent but not exactly tender, not necessarily kind. Nami-san, who is untouchable, and he’s grateful for that, but he also wishes terribly, terribly, that she weren’t.

A pirate ship where the boy is the captain, because Monkey D. Luffy is an idiot, but an idiot who Sanji is beginning to think that would follow a lot farther than he’s willing to admit. Because Monkey D. Luffy would never have bad luck, and anyone who tried to make him wouldn’t survive the attempt.

A pirate ship where the coward is open about it. Usopp, with his Pinocchio nose and kinky hair, his liar’s smile and fantastic stories, whose idiocy Sanji doesn’t mind nearly as much as he pretends to. Usopp, who always very vocally enjoys Sanji’s cooking and who sometimes does the dishes without anyone having to threaten his life. Usopp, who, unlike Luffy, doesn’t break all the dishes when he washes them.

Really, Sanji thinks that he fits here almost well. No one complains that he smokes in the kitchen or that he sometimes rolls his cigarettes on the table while he waits for things to boil, both of which Zeff would have flayed him alive for. All of his meals are gleefully devoured, and this always pleases him, though he’d never say it. So what if Luffy could probably eat his own boiled shoes and not notice that it wasn’t meat? So what if Zoro always complains and never says thank you? He knows that they all enjoy it.

Roronoa Zoro. He’s the only person who isn’t really a surprise at all. Zoro, after all, is a man, and sometimes Sanji is even grateful for his presence. He never has to pull his punches (or kicks, in his case), against Zoro, because he knows that Zoro can take care of himself. He knows that Zoro will always have Luffy’s back, and that if Sanji were for some reason incapable of doing it himself, Zoro would have Nami-san’s back, too. Zoro, who says kind things to Usopp when he’s sure that no one else can hear, and returns Sanji’s curses with such vehemence that Sanji’s toes curl in delight. They drink together at night, sometimes, and there’s a comfortable familiarity to it for Sanji. Even when they’re quiet, when they’ve run out of things to brag about and offensive songs to sing and lewd comments to make, it’s comfortable. Just sitting, passing the bottle back and fourth (Sanji has learned not to waste good alcohol on Zoro, because the man has the refined palate of a dying farm animal) and moving with the gentle rocking of the boat.

Nami-san, after all, is a lady, and sometimes Sanji thinks that he loves her, but he knows better than to expect anything of the kind to be returned. He knows that he’s not worth a lady.

Luffy and Usopp, after all, are boys. Sanji was a boy once, and even though Luffy and Usopp are loud and naïve and ignorant, there’s something about them that he’d like to protect. Never mind that Luffy could beat his ass into next week if they fought, Sanji can’t help the fact that he’d rather protect them from feeling pain.

But Zoro, at least, is man. A pirate. He doesn’t know the ocean like Sanji does, doesn’t even know piracy like Sanji does, but he knows life. He knows fighting. He knows those three swords of his the way that Sanji could make white sauce in his sleep. He understands owing someone, and the way that some debts are unpayable. They’ve never discussed any of these things in any way more articulate than fists, but it’s there. And it’s comfortable.

Hell, the Going Merry is comfortable. It makes him content. Sanji doesn’t believe in weak concepts like “home,” a word that has nothing to do with pirates. He doesn’t. But if he did… Well. If he did.

He smokes cigarettes in the kitchen and is pleased that he’s alive.

000

May 16, 2005