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“Sanji! I wasn’t expecting you today.” His mom holds out her hand, beckoning, “Come here, come here.” He dashes over and takes her hand between his smaller ones and her smile lights up her face, radiant against the rain-splattered window.
Holding her hand is as close as the doctor allows him to get to her. They said that her condition has worsened, she’s too frail to handle anything more, but… he doesn’t really understand.
His mom doesn’t seem weak whenever he visits, but he doesn’t want to hurt her either, so he puts all the strength of a hug into the way he squeezes her hand to his face instead.
He says into her palm, “Hi, mom.” Her hand feels wonderfully cool as it cradles his cheek. He shuts his eyes and leans into her touch.
He’s felt so hot today and even though the nurse took his jacket, it didn’t help him any. Even the chilly rain didn’t help like he thought it would, it only made his hair damp, sticking uncomfortably against his face.
“Sanji?”
He opens his heavy eyelids again.
His mom frowns down at him, her face pinched with concern. “Are you feeling alright?”
He thinks so? His ribs hurt from his brothers kicking them, his knees are scraped raw from tripping over his own feet during training, and his head hurts, though he managed to keep his brothers from kicking him there this time. But nothing feels out of the usual, he decides.
“I’m fine,” he nods. It sends a stab through his head and he manages to hold back most of his wince.
His mom’s brows draw together and her frown deepens. He feels a squeeze in his chest as he watches her. She looks sad, he thinks, but he’s fine, so why is she sad? Was it something else he did? He wracks his brain, but comes up empty. His thoughts turn.
Was- was it maybe something Father did?
Before he can ask, she slides her hand from his cheek to the back of his head and he can’t quite hold onto her hand comfortably there, so he reluctantly lets it go. His empty hands curl to his chest as she pulls in his head to hers, pushing his bangs up with her other hand.
Her forehead presses against his and it’s cool like her hands. He can’t stop his eyes from fluttering shut again. He’s hot, he’s been so hot all day and her touch is the only thing that’s helped so far. He leans into her, soaking in the comfort like a withered sponge, but she suddenly pulls away from him with a gasp.
“Sanji, you’re burning up! You don’t feel sick at all?” She presses her hand against his cheek again, then quickly against his forehead. Her hand is starting to get warm from his skin, he wants her to use the other one now.
He blinks in his daze. “Sick? But- but I can’t get sick.” It comes out almost like a question. He was designed not to, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that part of the whole point of him?
Her jaw tenses at his words, her expression darkening. Her eyes harden to iron.
It’s almost scary for a second, but then she blinks back to herself and suddenly her eyes shine again. They’re like the sun after a rainy day: warm, bright, and a little bit watery. Her lips squeeze themselves into a wide, thin smile and she puts her hands on his shoulders.
She just looks at him, her eyes glistening, filled with an emotion so huge he can’t name it. “Sanji,” she breathes and pulls him into a hug.
Sanji goes stiff in her arms.
He needs to pull away. The doctor said hugs aren’t good for her in her condition. They said they exert her too much. They ordered him not to—but her neck is so cool against his forehead, he doesn’t want to. He can’t and his lip trembles because he knows he might be hurting her, but something in him gives and then he’s climbing the rest of the way onto the bed anyway.
He melts in her arms. He’s so hot, and his head hurts, and his ribs hurt, and they hurt less when he’s with her. He twists his hands into her gown, trying to fight the tears prickling in his eyes.
His mom squeezes him tight. She presses her lips against his hair and pets the back of his head. “You can get sick, baby, you can get sick,” she trembles repeatedly. Her voice is choked, and if Sanji didn’t know that being sick was a bad thing, he would say it sounded like relief.
His head whirls as she repeats the words, over and over again.
He can get sick? He didn’t know that. He thought…
Hope flutters in his chest.
Maybe he is sick, then.
He knows his body isn't supposed to, but maybe that’s why his head hurts and his skin feels so hot. Maybe that’s why he keeps tripping and skidding his knees during training. That’s why his performance is so poor. He’s sick. That must be it.
But deep down, he knows better.
His father’s voice thunders in his head, loud as it always is, booming his words, “There are no excuses, only failures,” and Sanji knows that he’s been a failure for far longer than he’s had a headache.
His hope flickers and dies. He buries himself further into his mom’s chest.
He wishes he was sick. If he was sick like his mom, then maybe they would let him stay with her a little longer.
Something cool brushes against Sanji’s forehead and the wisps of his dream vanish from around him. He flinches at the touch and someone laughs. It’s distant, yet right against his ear, and unmistakably familiar. The loudness of it makes him wince, but the person it belongs to brings the safety of his dream rushing right back.
“Oh, sorry, sorry,” the voice chimes above him, “Sanji’s eyebrows are just funny.”
The world is bleary around him as he opens his eyes. He blinks and his captain comes into focus sitting criss-cross on the bed beside Sanji, straw hat in his lap. He barely fits on the bed.
“L’ffy?” he croaks, “What’re you doing?”
“Checking Sanji for a fever,” he answers. He lifts Sanji’s bangs away from his face and presses his forehead against his. His brown eyes are startlingly close, but Sanji barely reacts as that cool touch seeps into him again. He shuts his eyes and savors it until Luffy pulls back and declares, “Yep, Sanji’s sick.”
Sanji’s eyes open again at the statement. He frowns.
He doesn’t feel sick. But, he doesn’t exactly know what feeling sick feels like either. Most of the crew has fallen sick by this point, but he’s not normal. His father’s genetics experiments failed on him and thank god for that, but some days he can’t help but wonder if, in some small way, they didn’t.
His lungs are perfectly healthy despite smoking since he was 13, to Chopper’s shock. And he knows normal people can’t light their feet on fire.
He’s never gotten sick either.
He might have once, as a kid, but he can’t be sure. That week was foggy in his head, little blurs that started with his mother and ended with him in a dark and lonely room. His brothers could have just as easily kicked his head too hard and produced the same results.
Right now, he just feels hot.
It’s making the pounding in his head worse, like someone tenderized his brain while he was sleeping. He tries to push his blankets off of him, but his arms only shift uselessly against the mattress.
“My mom used to do that,” he says, then blinks. He didn’t mean to say that.
“Do what?”
“Check for fever like that,” he answers anyway, though the line of conversation feels like walking on a precipice. Too far one way or the other and he thinks he might fall and shatter. He grasped for words. “The… forehead,” he faltered.
“Oh. I don’t have a mom,” Luffy says as if it isn’t heartbreaking, “but Dadan taught me how to check for fevers when Ace got sick once. I didn’t know what to do, so I brought him to her and she did a bunch of weird stuff to him and he got better! But we have Chopper now, so I don’t need to do any of that. Do you want Chopper? Do you feel sick?”
“I don’t get sick,” he grumbles and Luffy laughs again, grabbing his ankles like they’ll keep him anchored against the force of it.
“You’re just like Ace! He always said that too. We had to tie him to the bed—he kept trying to get up to hunt. So I went and killed a gator for us, but he got mad at me! Said it was ‘risky’ and I ‘could have drowned’,” Luffy emphasizes with air quotes, rolling his eyes, then he shrugs, “But he stopped trying to get out of bed after that. He was just worried I wouldn’t have anything to eat.”
The mention of eating seizes his lungs. Guilt hits him like a sea train.
In a jolt of energy, he sits up. His head spins and his elbows give easily as Luffy presses him back down with a hand on his chest, but Sanji can’t lie still.
He hasn’t cooked anything for the crew to eat yet. Here he is, lazing in bed while they’re probably starving, waiting for him to get up. They even sent Luffy to get him.
It might not even be breakfast time anymore. If he knew what time it was, he could figure out how many meals he’s missed, but he doesn’t. His eyes dart to the porthole and he tries to calculate it from the angle of light filtering in, but he can’t think well enough to figure it out. He squints and blinks at it, his brain fogged over and his thoughts drowning in its waters.
The hand on his chest spreads its fingers and Sanji realizes it’s getting hard to breathe.
“Is Sanji worried too?” Luffy asks.
He hesitates, panting, wanting to say no because if he admits that he’s worried, then Luffy will get worried about him. His chest tightens even further at the thought because when Luffy gets worried, he likes to eat and Sanji can already see it blooming in the slight pinch of his eyes as he watches him fail at something as simple as breathing.
His captain’s probably starving.
Sanji’s breaths get faster and shorter, sharp puffs of air that his lungs use up just as quickly as they pull in.
“Usopp made breakfast for us,” he hears and Sanji latches onto Luffy’s voice like a lifeline, dragging himself up and out of his thoughts. He forces enough strength into his arm to grab the hand spread over his chest and presses it hard against it as he tries to breathe. With barely a pause, Luffy puts his other hand over Sanji’s and starts playing with his fingers.
“It wasn’t as good as your food, but nothing is as good as Sanji’s cooking!” he boasts, rubbing circles around Sanji’s thumb. “Nami just made lunch for us and I asked Robin to make dinner because I want her to make her dinner pancakes. Is Sanji hungry?”
Sanji shakes his head tightly, straining for air, and Luffy goes on, regaling the food with not as much detail as Sanji would like, but for what Luffy doesn’t say about the food, he makes up for with stories from the meal. Like how Chopper accidentally put the wrong hot sauce on his sandwich and how Zoro lost half an eyebrow to the flames that burst from their doctor’s mouth.
Sanji wheezes a laugh at that, picturing a three-quarter eyebrowed marimo. He’s sorry he missed it.
Soon enough, the vice around his chest eases enough for him to pant out, “Robin’s dish… they’re called… blinis, Luffy.”
“Right! Robin’s making bikinis for dinner.”
He grins and shakes his head breathlessly. He feels shaky and weak. His bangs are damp with sweat, dragging uncomfortably across his forehead and Luffy brushes them to the side.
“You wanna know the best part of Ace getting sick?” he asks.
“What?” Sanji rasps and Luffy’s eyes glint.
“I could cuddle with him all I wanted.” He grins sharply. “And Ace couldn’t do anything about it.”
The instant the words are out of his mouth, he’s pulling Sanji’s covers back and sliding in next to him. Sanji stiffens, something long-instilled in him telling him to pull away, pull back, but Luffy wraps his arms around him and Sanji is gone.
He feels so safe it should be illegal, it should be forbidden for Sanji to feel this safe—but it’s Luffy, the word forbidden doesn’t exist with him.
Sanji is hot and sweaty and he knows his shitty captain will only make the bed hotter and sweatier, but with his arms wrapped around him—arms that have toppled gods and liberated kingdoms—Sanji feels more content than he has in a decade. Already, his eyelids are trying to droop shut.
Luffy smushes his cheek against his. “But Sanji needs to get better soon. I miss his food.”
“I’m not sick though. I can’t get sick,” he argues, but honestly, he doesn’t even care if he is sick or not. All he wants right now is to stay in his captain’s arms, just a little longer.
Luffy squeezes him tight in rebuke and pouts, “Sanji’s stupid. He’s allowed to get sick. His nakama will take care of him till he’s better.”
Luffy’s words, always a promise, open a floodgate in him. Wave after wave of exhaustion washes over him and he lets it sweep him far away. With his captain’s permission, Sanji closes his eyes and falls asleep.