Archive of Our Own

Nami imagines her view of beaches must be how most people see the sea.

When the older women in her village whispered about old wives’ tales and bitter water, Nami used to sneak out onto the overhang and imagine the horizon as a folded edge, as if the world could unfurl in front of her if she went out far enough into the water. She would watch Marine ships roll onto Cocoyashi’s beaches, lost on their way to the pier, until the sight of them became commonplace. Swarms of the same white-lined backs and heavy feet would carry the villagers’ pleas for help back to the sea after only a brief trek into the town, if even that, and then disappear without a trace.

Too big a fight. Bigger business than we can handle. 

If Nami was not careful, she would let her rage rise to the surface and chase Marine ships down the shore. She always fell behind, so prudence made no difference in the end. After all, even if one little girl were an actual threat, there was always a point where the sand ended and the water began. 

It went similarly each time Arlong allowed Nami to leave the island. Her rowboat reached beaches before she could find villages, and upon returning to Cocoyashi, she navigated to the shore to avoid the villagers and pirates on the pier. Nami dragged treasure across the sand, the skin of her fingers pink and raw, sea foam slicing her cheeks. The horizon called out to her each time, like a siren, as the shore held fast the division between liberation and obligation. 

Cocoyahi’s beaches always reminded Nami of just how little freedom she had—of how close she could get before her anchors to this life found her again.

She has been lucky to make kinder memories on the beach since then. Sand can bring to mind the weightlessness of Skypeia, of sweet voices and soft clouds. At other times, the bumpy shells underneath her feet feel like the sand dollars and conches lining her bedroom windowsill. 

Still, Nami hesitates. 

“Island ahead!”

Usopp’s voice rings through the Sunny, summoning everyone onto the lawn deck. Leaned up against the ship railing, Nami lets the waves below cradle her. She tries to remind herself to breathe; it's easier when Sanji steps out of the kitchen and bridges the distance, with a soft kiss pressed into the side of her hand.

“An island?” Luffy yells. He swings up to the mast. “Let me see!”

Usopp swats him away absent-mindedly. “No port, so we’ll have to drop anchor on the shore. Nami—”

“On it.”

Nami checks her log pose and relays a list of directions to Franky, who returns a creaky thumbs-up.

“Can we get there any faster? It looks so cool!”

Sanji laughs into Nami’s palm, as Luffy hops like an excited child. His lashes flash in a gleam of silver when he glances down at her, grinning.

“Hungry? Want anything before we get carried away by a freak current or something?”

Nami snorts. “Don’t speak that into existence.” She pauses in thought. “And just stay by my side.”

This answer seems to please Sanji, whose smile widens. “Yes, ma’am.”

As Nami takes his hand, she glances at the sky. The long path they have taken here lounges in front of her, as far as the eye can go, and opens out along the cord of the horizon.

—

one year ago

“So, what’s your ‘why’?”

Sanji blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“Everybody has to have a reason they’re crazy enough to go with Luffy. What’s yours? Why did you join this crew?”

Sanji balances against the ship railing on carefully crossed arms. In his three-piece suit, with one eye curtained behind a meticulous fleece of blonde hair, the detail of his features takes a moment of study to decipher. His face is fine and fluid. Little of his skin has been touched by the sun, and he is thin in the cheeks and jaw. The most solid part of him seems to be his legs, bearing a muscled gravity that should defy their easy glide along the deck when he shifts his weight. 

None of this is the first thing Nami notices.

She tries not to, but it ends up confronting her, indelicate and striking. Although sleepy and half-lidded, Sanji's eyes are impossible to miss. Cradled in a cloudless blue, the full color of them fixes upon her. His gaze is unnervingly familiar, its sense of recognition making her skin stir. She cannot help but wonder how this stranger manages to peer at and through her, past her scrutiny and certainty, and deep into the part of her that has unwittingly become bared in wonder. He greets her with a similar awe, seemingly to ask, What do you need from me? What can I offer you?

“I want to find the All Blue, and Luffy can take me there,” Sanji says. “He seems kind.”

Kindness. Finally, a familiar farce. Nami knows he must have seen through her guise of loyalty. This is not a fair exchange. Looking straight at him feels akin to glancing upon the sun in the sky—at once, captivating and two times as blinding. She wants to pull away as much as she gravitates to that open blue. It is impossible not to.

“Trust me,” Sanji continues—beaming through a cloud of cigarette smoke, leaning his elbows so far back against the railing that he nearly falls off—“I’m all in.”

In the end, Nami tears herself away, back to the banquet celebrating Arlong’s fall and welcoming this strange boy. She accomplished what she set out to do. It is clear that up against her, this newcomer is everything she is not: a giver, a crooked smile proclaiming deliverance, an outstretched hand. The smell of cigarettes and the infinity of the sea.

Nami wonders, briefly, if it means anything that the way he looked at her—brilliantly warm, like he could discern the good in her—seems to untether her to everything she has ever known until now.

—

Once, when Nami was only a few years old, she scraped her elbow chasing a raven through Bellemere’s orange orchard. She still remembers Bellemere’s face when she found her, half-smiling but otherwise displeased. As she rinsed Nami’s arm in the sink—ignoring Nami’s whining and kicking, and the trickle of blood down the drain—she chastised her, “What the hell were you thinking, going after a bird like that?”

“Rotten meanie! I’ve got a bird to catch!”

“Yeah, alright, kid. As if! I’m not letting you out there again! Do you go looking for trouble or something?”

Nami kept chasing the raven, wriggling out of her mother’s reach.

So what, she used to think. What if trouble just happens to find me?

As the Merry sails further from Cocoyashi, the familiar memories of her childhood fade. Thankfully, her past self wisely chose to bring a piece of Bellemere’s orchard onto the Merry. The last night’s rain intensifies the smell of citrus and Earth. Orange is an incredibly robust color under the crystal sky, grounded to nostalgia. This must be a reminder to not chase birds too far, so that after all of these years, Nami can turn to the heavens and tell her late mother she has finally learned something.

“Nami, I’ve been thinking.”

Are you watching, Mom? Trouble found me again.  

From above, where Nami sits on the edge of the orange grove, Sanji appears small. He leans on the railing guarding the galley door, clipping into Nami’s vision as she swings her legs over the rooftop. He has a dish rag thrown over his shoulder, his hair sticks to his forehead slightly, and a sheen of exertion sweat covers his brow. Nami briefly wonders what he has been cooking. 

“It’s your watch tonight, right?” Sanji continues.

“Right. I’m after Zoro in the rotation.”

Nami gestures below. On the main deck, Zoro snores against the mast, his arms wrapped protectively around his swords. Usopp and Luffy flank him, giggling and trying to pass his swords back and forth without Zoro noticing. More trouble.

Sanji nods absentmindedly.

“Why?” Nami asks, feeling defensive. 

“Oh, I just realized you haven’t assigned me any responsibilities on the ship. Well, after I realized Luffy wasn’t going to be the one to do it. He’s got a weird captaining style... So, I was wondering if I could take your shift tonight.”

Nami freezes and frowns down at him. He wears a horribly hopeful look on his face. Another stroke of blue on the horizon.

“Sanji, you’re already the cook. Aren’t you busy cutting carrots and washing your knives or something?” 

“When I’m not peeling potatoes and cleaning fish.”

Nami ignores Sanji’s wry smile and crosses her arms.

“Point is, I’m fine. I can handle things myself.”

“I want to help, Nami. You deserve to rest.”

Suddenly, a great weight has chained itself to Nami's chest. It must measure as generosity.

Nami can’t stand it at all.

Her distrust is not exclusive to Sanji. As recent as the events in Cocoyashi Village are, she still can’t shake the unease that follows her onto the Merry. She is uncomfortable receiving their niceness, hearing these people say things like “our crew” and “our navigator.” Worse: “Friend.”

It is the worst with Sanji. To think: for a stranger—who had no obligation to her at all, so much so that he had never even met her—to rush into Cocoyashi to help her. Sanji, who constantly offers sentimental displays of unearned camaraderie. Sanji, who turns that moony-eyed look on her every time she so much as glances at him, even though they barely know each other. Sanji, whose earnestness was almost painful to witness in that first conversation by the ship railing. Nami cannot make sense of him at all. 

“You know, if you guys are going to yap this much, you should probably just leave it up to our captain.” 

Zoro shouts at them from the deck. He squints up, one eye squished shut, still blinking the sleep from his system. He has skewered Luffy’s vest on one of his swords, and holds him out to them like a misbehaving puppy picked up by the scruff of its neck. Usopp, the slippery coward, must have left Luffy to save his own tail.

Luffy beams at them. “Hey!” 

“Hey, captain, tell mosshead to shut up and mind his own business,” Sanji grumbles.

Nami ignores him. “Look, Luffy, it’s nothing for you to worry about. Sanji just had a request.”

“Hmm. Ya sure? As captain, don’t I need to make sure we all get along?”

Luffy strikes what must be his idea of an authoritative pose, but it is hard to take him seriously when he is dangling in the air. He seems to realize this and struggles to free himself. 

“Everything is fine, Luffy,” Nami says, as Zoro sighs and lowers Luffy to the deck. 

Luffy takes the opportunity to bound up the stairs to Nami. He peers at her seriously. For such a free-spirited guy, he has a way of looking at you that is unnervingly intense, hawk-like. Nami keeps her expression carefully guarded, but can’t help but wonder why Luffy made a point to say he wanted to make sure they all got along. 

As Luffy frowns at her, it suddenly feels very much like being examined by a proper captain, who knows something Nami does not. She remembers she owes a debt to this small boy.

“You’re really sure?” Luffy asks.

“Yes, Luffy. Sanji was just confused about what his role as the cook included.”

Nami shoots Sanji a pointed look. His face is unreadable. 

“As the lady said,” he agrees.

Luffy seems like he wants to protest, but the conversation loses his attention when Sanji switches the topic to dinner. Luffy scrambles after Sanji into the galley, with demands for meat. Nami turns back to her orange trees, trying to release the tension from her shoulders.

“You have a problem with the cook.”

Nami glares at Zoro, who has not moved an inch. She can’t tell if he is frowning more than usual, or if she is just staring down his perma-scowl.

“That’s rich coming from you,” Nami retorts.

“I may think he’s a playboy with dishwater for brains, but between the two of us, I’m not the one letting personal feelings get in the way of ship duties.”

Zoro crosses his arms and raises a stern eyebrow at her, posing the obvious question of why. 

“He’s just too nice,” Nami offers, a lame excuse.

Zoro pauses. “You think he’s too… nice?”

“Shut up, you wouldn’t get it! It’s my night shift, so I can handle it!”

Zoro scoffs at Nami's sour face. He shoots her a pointed look in response, slumping back down against the mast. When he tilts his head back and settles in for another nap, Nami swears she can see Usopp cowering behind him.

“Whatever. You know I’m right.” 

—

It nearly kills her to admit, but Zoro is right.

Everybody notices the tension between Nami and Sanji at dinner. Luffy neglects his plate to watch them as though every interaction between them were a tennis match—which would be an awfully unentertaining rally. Sanji is politely brief, and Nami makes a point to avoid him as much as possible. At some point, she almost crashes into him while trying to get her tea.

When Nami heads back to her study after dinner, she half expects to find Luffy waiting for her. Instead, to her surprise, Usopp greets her, hovering by her drafting table.

“Can we talk?” Usopp asks, fidgeting.

"Talk" is a dishonest request. He stalls with mindless conversation and watches Nami start a new map, fiddling with his watch. Nami finishes mapping three new islands before he finally goes for it.

“You know, Nami, speaking of, um, handles. Now that I’m looking at you, I’m just saying, just because you can handle things on your own doesn’t mean you have to. Or should. Um. You know?”

Nami slowly turns her head to Usopp.

“Uh, never mind. Sorry, maybe we don’t handle it all then. I think you're gonna turn me to stone with that scary look on your face.”

“Spit it out, Usopp.”

Usopp yelps, rubbing his arm where Nami punched him. “Okay, okay! I heard about the Sanji thing.”

“Did Luffy put you up to this?”

“Luffy? Huh? No, he didn’t tell me to talk to you. It was kinda obvious that something was wrong at dinner, so I asked Zoro. And, well, to me, it’s pretty clear what’s going on.”

Nami likes Usopp. She would probably consider him the closest thing she has to a friend out of everyone on the crew, especially because he understands what it’s like to be a relatively normal human being on a ship of crazy monster fighters. He also understands her hesitation to receive help, at least in part, deep down.

“It’s like he thinks I can’t handle myself,” Nami admits bitterly. “And whatever, tell me to rely on other people, but that just sounds like asking for trouble.”

“Right. Well. You know, I watched him bawl his eyes out when he left the restaurant he was staying at before—oh, the Baratie. He doesn’t seem like the type to hide his feelings well, so it’s not like it would be easy for him to lie to us. Plus, he helped out in Cocoyashi. Even I can’t think of a reason to be scared of the guy. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s as crazy as the other two, but he seems like a nice guy.”

Nami sighs, setting down her drafting pencil. It’s then that she spots the cup of tea she had neglected to notice earlier, sitting on top of her desk. She softens as she reaches for it, feeling that the teacup is still hot.

“I guess what I’m saying is… Promise me you’ll at least give it a chance? We need a cook,” Usopp says.

“Look, I’m going to do what I think is right. You can’t change my mind, so just trust me.”

Usopp blinks at her. “That’s not reassuring at all,” he whines.

Nami hits him over the head with her pencil, to which he shrieks about how being turned to stone would be kinder. She takes her first sip of tea, letting it warm her stomach, and then tries to explain to him that she has a plan. When Usopp gives her another blank look—the expression of a nonbeliever—she raises her teacup as a warning. He almost leaves an Usopp-shaped indent in her door when he bolts out.

She’s not lying. She does have a plan—to tough it out, even if she is exhausted and this warm tea is making her eyelids heavy. Nami has been through so much worse. If it’s a matter of resolve, she refuses to lose.

Unfortunately, as she finds out, Sanji does not agree with her plans to tough out this shift alone, or for that matter, any of her night watch shifts this week.

After completing her map, Nami drags herself to the watchtower. She fumbles with the railing of the lookout pit and tries to settle into a comfortable position, fighting off the exhaustion sinking her limbs into the seat.

A few hours in, once the sun has fully dipped underneath the horizon, she notices Sanji step out of the kitchen. He stomps out his cigarette and calls out for her. She peers slowly over the side of the watchtower, in an attempt to act like she didn’t already see him. He is even smaller from this angle.

Along with an offer to lend her his jacket, he tells her, simply, “Goodnight, Nami. I’ll be here if you get hungry.” 

Nami does not say anything back. She doesn’t even acknowledge him. She whips her head away and stares straight ahead, stubbornly fixed on the sea. 

Regardless, Sanji slyly accompanies her for the rest of her shift, under the guise of cooking duties. He peels vegetables on the deck and fishes out by the railing. Once the sun peeks out again over the horizon, right before Nami climbs down from the watchtower, he packs up his materials, calls out parting words, and vanishes back into the kitchen. Breakfast is done in the next hour.

It goes like this the next night. And then the next. And the next. 

Halfway through the week, Nami has watched Sanji dice carrots outside the kitchen on a makeshift tabletop, rinse his knives over the side of the ship, and catch a decently sized bass. He flashes her a cheeky grin every single night, no matter the activity, rinse and repeat. The jacket offered. The quiet expression. The same soft voice when he says, over and over, “Goodnight, Nami. I’ll be here if you get hungry.”

All things considered, Nami should be annoyed. But she realizes a few things on the fifth night, as she stargazes from the watchtower with long-numb, crossed legs. 

One: Though she hates to admit it, her body is fighting to handle the discomfort of the tiny crow’s nest after everything that went down in Cocoyashi village.

Two: Sanji’s little display is ridiculous and stubborn, but it feels real—not like a gesture, or overdramatic pleasantries, or even superhuman physicality.

“Trust me. I’m all in.”

It is the first time she believes him.

On her last night shift, she calls out to him while he peels potatoes outside the kitchen.

“Sanji, can I ask you to make a drink, please?”

He looks up in surprise. “Of course, Nami! It’s my pleasure.” He pauses, grinning. “As your cook.”

For a chef who avoids getting his hands dirty, Sanji can be a little shit. Nami can at least respect that.

He reappears from the kitchen with two drinks—one cold and one hot, to offer her variety. Nami chooses the hot chocolate, so Sanji returns to the deck, iced lemonade in hand, to continue carving away at a bucketful of potatoes. Nami finishes her drink as she watches his nimble fingers work through their thick skin. Even from the watchtower, she can glean years of practice and discipline. 

Once he finishes the last of the potatoes, Nami awkwardly pretends to yawn, waving her cup in one hand. 

“I think I’m dozing off because of the drink,” she calls out. “Would you mind taking over for me, Sanji?”

Sanji’s eyes fly to her again, this time inquiring. He tilts his head with a grin. Maybe Nami has finally lost her mind without knowing it, but she suddenly realizes how his smile fits his face. The expressiveness of it. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he calls back. “Leave it to me.”

Nami has to bite her tongue. She saw the meal schedule he posted. Potatoes aren’t on the menu for another three days.

As Nami heads for the women’s quarters, Sanji bids her the same farewell as always, the awkward goodbye that she has always left abridged and one-sided.

“Goodnight,” she calls back for the first time, catching his twinkling eyes from over her shoulder.

When the conversation of Sanji’s next night duty shift rolls around, Nami does not protest.

—

Realistically, Nami knows the orange grove should not have made it this far.

This is partly because its existence makes no biological sense. Trees have roots, which do not take well on a moving ship, and need stable environments and temperate weather. True to Nami’s bloodline, the orange grove persists against the rules of nature, nothing short of a miracle.

The second, more immediate threat to the grove: Luffy.

Nami tries everything to keep Luffy’s hands off her oranges. Upon her request (and debt-fueled blackmail), Usopp strings up a fence around the grove, which Luffy tears down like a tower of blocks. He also does not seem fazed by any of the lies Nami tells him in hopes of deterring his gluttony. The only semi-effective one is that oranges make you allergic to meat. It keeps Luffy away quite well—until he starts refusing Sanji’s orange-based dishes. Sanji has to awkwardly confront Nami about it. 

After that, Nami gets desperate and neurotic. She catalogues every square foot of tree growth in an itemized record to track when and where Luffy is stealing oranges. Vivi refers her to an insect deterrent called kaolin clay that is available on a nearby trade island; Nami bears the bewildered look the seller gives her after he asks what bug species she’s targeting and she replies, “A rubberman.” When it turns out said rubberman will, in fact, still eat the oranges, clay and all, she painstakingly scrapes the kaolin clay off every single orange.

Between the portion of oranges that goes to Sanji for meal preparation (which she hands over only after seeing how careful he is with food), Nami’s private treasure storage (otherwise known as her snack stash), and Luffy’s sticky fingers, Nami’s orange grove is stretched too thin. Things get so bad, she asks Zoro for advice.

“I don’t know. Ask the love cook. He’ll do anything if you just ask.”

Then he goes back to sleep.

She resists the urge to fling Zoro overboard, especially when Sanji pokes his head out of the kitchen to blink at her curiously.

The most annoying part is that there is probably at least some truth to Zoro’s half-assed advice. Nami is still getting used to Sanji’s extraordinary niceness. He brews her fancy drinks and designs special desserts. He compliments her with that crooked grin. He flirts shamelessly (though Nami quickly figures out this is neither here nor there, even if he often surprises her with references to her likes and preferences, which she didn’t even realize he remembered).

And he asks nothing in return. Not even knowing her.

Nami initially figures that his appreciation for women and theatrics just funneled into her. But sometimes—instead of being so moony-eyed that she fears his pupils will permanently mold into the shape of hearts—he will give her that one look again, calm and honest. Usually, it is at the end of the night, when he brings tea to her study after dinner and bids her goodnight. Nami can’t figure out what his second thought is in those candlelit moments, a soft smile sprawled on his face. 

So, asking Sanji to help with the orange grove is entirely out of the question.

Just when Nami starts resigning to the existence of a permanent raccoon in her garden, she finds a surprise in her study. 

Luffy, his head hung and sporting a shiny bump, holds out a basket of oranges to her.

“I am very sorry, Nami. I vow on my dream to be King of the Pirates that I will not steal your oranges anymore,” Luffy says robotically, as if reading the words off a script.

He hands off the basket to Nami and darts off. Nami blinks down quizzically at the bundle of oranges, glossy with condensation underneath her study lights. The oranges do not reply.

She gets her first idea of an answer in Little Garden, as she listens to Sanji’s recap of tricking Mr. 0 and sneaking around his agents. With the uptick of his eyebrow and his clever grin, Sanji looks strikingly sneaky.

Nami intends to confront her suspect, but a few days after they escape the wax men and stinging insects of Little Garden, she falls ill. Or so she gathers, from the few bits of consciousness she gets in the following days: Vivi calming down a blubbering Sanji and Usopp; the crew snoozing in a pile on her cabin floor; and nimble fingers brushing snow off her cheeks. 

Each time Nami drifts back into the fever, the world pitches to white, but she dreams of oranges.

—

Nami hugs her coat flush to her chest. Even with Drum Island behind them, remnants of the snowscape linger in the grey morning. Her orange trees wear icy caps on their leaves, and a few of their branches are frostbitten. Still, the orange grove is much better off than she expected it to be after their primary caretaker got stuck in a week-long coma. 

She has a good idea of who is responsible for this.

As expected, she spots blonde hair floating through the tree cover. A smile tugs at her mouth when she realizes that, in his yellow dress shirt, he looks like a lemon amongst her oranges.

“That’s a bad habit, you know.” 

Sanji smacks his head on a branch. 

“Nami,” he says in a high-pitched voice. He clears his throat, dropping an octave. “Nami. Hey.” 

Nami nods at the cigarette between his lips. “Expensive, too. Are you skimming off the top of the grocery budget?”

Sanji laughs nervously, but there's a sharp gleam in his eye. “The rest of us can have secret treasures, too, you know.”

“Well, I don’t love them near my trees.” Nami waves a hand when he reaches to put the cigarette away. “I’m kidding, Sanji. The trees are used to it. Just don’t light anything on fire while you help me.”

“It’s alright. Chopper’s already on me about my smoking anyway.” Sanji presses out the cigarette with his fingertips, as if the fire does not faze him at all, and slips it in his pocket. Nami doesn’t miss the way he kicks the shovel hidden behind his back into the planter box. With a smile, he takes the basket from her. “But I’m always happy to help out a lovely lady.”

They start from the left of the grove, which Nami settles on by circling each tree a few times. Sanji trails after her patiently. Nami can hear him humming a chirpy tune over the rustle of the leaves and branches and the whistle of the wind. She would almost believe that he isn’t nervous, if it weren’t for the constant drumming of his fingers against the basket handle.

Nami waits until she can focus on one square in the foliage. Then, eyeing a particularly colorful orange, she casually says, “So how long have you been secretly taking care of my trees?”

Sanji freezes. He cranks his head to her, his face pure white. He has already bumbled through half of an apology when Nami stops him.

“Don’t be so scared. As long as my treasure is safe, I’m happy.” She pats the trunk of the tree, beaming. 

Sanji’s forehead smooths out in relief. “You’re really not mad?”

“Not about free labor. Were you the one who lectured Luffy, too?”

“Eh, more like kicked some sense into him.”

She crosses her arms, amused. “I don’t get it, though. Why sneak around?”

He is quiet for a second before he replies. “They’re your treasure, like you said. I didn’t want to seem invasive. But I noticed they weren’t doing well after Drum Island.” He scratches his head. “Not that I think you don’t know that already or can’t handle that or anything—”

“You’re right,” she assures him, studying the shriveled leaves on the edges of the grove. “We always had pretty stable weather in the village, so my trees didn’t love the snow. I’ve been worried about them.” She catches his eye again. “But I guess I didn’t need to be.”

In a trick of the light, under the beam of the oranges, it almost looks like Sanji is blushing. 

“I picked up a few things at the Baratie,” he says, tracing the braids of the basket handle. “My old man started his own little herb garden, so I’m used to helping plants through weird weather.” He shudders. “Even that awful snow.” 

Nami laughs. “Not a fan of the cold?”

“I can’t stand it. I’d much rather be hot than cold.”

“You’re just like my trees, then.” 

The connection makes Sanji’s eyes shine. Nami still doesn’t completely get how or why he manages to be so soft, so giving, wearing this innocence so plain on his face. Where the world has hardened her, it is as though he has refused the hardship. 

“I’m thankful,” she adds quietly.

She plucks the orange and places it in the basket, hoping Sanji understands she is not only talking about the oranges. He grins so hard, his face practically stretches around it, as if his joy has absorbed Luffy’s Devil Fruit.

That goofy smile does not leave his face as they continue collecting oranges. By the time the basket is half full, the sun has snuck out of the clouds, and Nami feels sure enough in her feelings to be brave again. 

“Hey, Sanji,” she says. “I wanted to say sorry. I was kind of an asshole when you first joined.”

For what feels like an eternity, he says nothing.

Finally, he bursts into laughter. She blinks up at him in surprise.

“I wouldn’t call it that, but thank you, Nami. But anyways, I couldn’t stay mad at you.”

He leans close, eyes gleaming through the hair that tumbles over his face. Nami can’t figure out why she is disappointed to find him half-joking again. 

“You are so hard to read, you know?” she says.

That catches him off guard. His eyes flicker. “Really?”

"A little tough to figure out, yeah. I was like that too, but... Bellemere was one of those people who could see right through anybody. For her, you would be easy to read, even if it's hard for me.”

Nami's hands have slowed on the branches. Sanji's voice is gentle when he speaks.

“I would have loved her." 

A dull ache tugs at Nami, so she tries at a joke. “Even more than you like me?”

“Ah, well. Maybe after tasting her cooking.”

“Oh, she would have blown you away.”

“Really? What would she make?”

Nami freezes, realizing, in horror, that she has already told him too much. She must still be insane with fever, with the way it all just spilled out of her—Bellemere, her worry about the trees, childhood memories—in a languid back-and-forth. Talking to Sanji is disarmingly easy once she starts, as if—according to the recognition in his eyes during the first conversation they had alone by the railing—they really have met before. 

But Nami is always running from him and then some. Judging by that look on his face, Sanji is just as good at catching on.

“I know what you’re doing," Nami says. "Don’t bother. Nobody can make those dishes the same way as her.”

“Do you like cooking? Maybe you can help me.” 

“I can’t cook. I can only make tea.”

“Anyone can cook.”

“Let Zoro in your kitchen and get back to me.”

“Well, I’m sure you can cook better than the swordsman. I know I can’t make Bellemere’s dishes exactly the same, but if you ever want me to try making something similar, you could help me make things a little more accurate. We have the right oranges for it, is all.”

Nami does not say anything in response. She asks Sanji to pass her the shears, and the conversation ends there. 

But when she hands him another orange to place into the basket, she notices a smudge of pollen on his cheek. Where the new sunlight slips through the gaps of the orchard sky and dapples his skin, Nami absentmindedly wipes the mark off his face. Sanji flushes, his face bursting into dopey, boyish embarrassment. Even though he has not pressed her to talk any further, he is practically singing, hope breaking open within him. All at once, it terrifies and exhilarates her; it makes her begin to wonder how much of the universe she has mistaken for darkness.

The sea hums, and they pluck fruits from the grove until their entire bodies are yellow with pollen. Swept into stillness, Nami thinks to herself: this still feels like a beginning.

—

For the next month, that feeling lingers. 

At first, Nami chalks it up to her simple appreciation for Sanji’s craft. She observes him closely, out of what she believes is innocent curiosity, and updates her mental tabs. Part of it may admittedly be her attempt to decipher the most ambiguous person on the crew, so she watches covertly. 

Nami does not say anything about the way Sanji moves food off his plate and onto Luffy’s. She ducks her head when entering the galley for a snack so she can pretend that she cannot read his notepad, in which he tracks the crew’s favorite foods and recent injuries. Even when Alabasta drains their food and water supply, and she glimpses the chew marks on the paper of his cigarette, she acknowledges none of his anxiety. 

Nami also refuses to point it out for Sanji's sake. It would feel too much like a spotlight, a demand. It would remind Nami of the blunt edge in his eyes when she joked about him using the grocery budget to fund his cigarette habit. Whether he realizes it or not, the sensitivity with which Sanji gives himself to feeding others, however aloof he can be otherwise, is not so far from sacrificial. 

That isn’t from abjectness. Sanji wears the heart of someone who knows they have been loved at least once, because they know a life without love well enough to tell the difference. Nami finds Zoro’s contemptuous nickname for Sanji, “love cook,” strangely fitting, knowing his work is that of translation.

For Sanji, to cook is to love, to savor and sate life and the living. 

This comes almost as a revelation to Nami. She has never understood that artistic calling towards sentimentality. While Sanji knows how to make something beautiful, Nami was taught to build something permanent—a map that will outlive her, a freedom call.

Still, under the cover of her mother’s orange orchard, Nami once knew and lost love all the same. 

As this beginning of thought becomes another, so too do the ways Nami and Sanji fit into each other’s lives. Sanji floods outside the margins of a cook with each time Nami lingers after dinnertime to chat, and every instance Sanji ducks by her study to make conversation about the garden and the crew.

When it is just the two of them, Sanji remains easy to talk to. He is tender and less over the top. Without the pageantry, his manner of speech is rich and strong but all over the place. He talks about wooden cutting boards and bird migrations and wine, his wide eyes straying outside the gleam of the lights. Nami jokes about the way Zoro tried to make coffee the other day—“Who adds tarragon?”—and nearly does a double-take the first time she hears Sanji really laugh, high and sweet and warm. She tries to memorize the moment, to breathe him in like a morning draft or a thick drag of smoke: the smell of lemon that lingers on him washing the dishes; the red tips of his ears in the evening air; the wrap of his lips around a precarious cigarette; and that now-familiar distinctive quality to his gaze when it settles again, equally discerning and inviting.

She finds herself following Sanji like a moth to a flame throughout the rest of the talk, rapt by what he is and what he is not, what he says so carelessly and what he unexpectedly obscures. For the most part, Sanji wears his heart on his sleeve, from the way his entire body awakens at the mention of the All Blue, to his awful lying on poker nights. Nami finds she likes that honesty a lot—but just that and just a bit, because she could never do more than that. 

Of course, she would never let this get to his head. 

“I can help,” she says after breakfast one day, as Sanji starts putting dishes away into the sink. The scent of lemon lingers with them, as they part from the rest of the crew, who have already begun clambering out the galley door.

“That’s sweet of you, but it’s part of my role as the cook.”

“I can still help out. Plus, there’s something about the dock options I want to run by you.”

A smile crawls onto Sanji’s face. "What’s this? I think you might even like me now, Nami.”

“I’ll hold you over the side of this ship and drown you,” she says sweetly.

“Ah. I told you.”

—

Sometimes, when Sanji beams at Nami and her mouth is too dry to do anything but bite back, she is sent back to Cocoyashi Village. 

Nami wonders if the boys back home were right: a pretty face without room in her heart for anything but herself, they always called her. She used to shrug their words off as bitterness about her betrayal. The identity almost became a badge of honor; Nami was a wild child, icy and untenable. She could be the line in the sand, steeled and unyielding. 

Lately—between letting Chopper coddle her injuries after battles, and Luffy, who has a knack for busting down anybody’s walls, no matter iron or steel—Nami has found it harder and harder to hold onto that self-image. 

Of course, the worst of it has to be Sanji. 

“What’s your absolute favorite dish? All I know is you like tea and oranges.” 

Sanji fixes his intensity upon her again now, as if he were handling very serious business. It makes Nami want to laugh. She has not been asked for her favorite anything in a long time—not since summers chasing ravens, the scent of the orchard curled up against her nose. 

“I don’t know,” she admits.

The smell of tobacco latches onto her, even though Sanji is careful to politely turn his head away when he lights the cigarette. Smoke coils out of his throat, into the crannies of the market’s bustling bodies and stalls.

“Hm. What about your favorite tea? Actually, no, it’s got to be orange tea, right?”

“Well… Only a specific kind. You have to get it just right.”

Sanji rolls his cigarette between his fingers. Subconsciously, Nami finds herself following the movement. She licks her lips without thinking, overtaken by restlessness. 

“I’ll get it right,” says Sanji, like a promise. He grins. “Then, you’ll fall for me, yeah?”

Nami punches him in the stomach.

Even as it lingers in the back of her head, she tries to dismiss the thought of a future. Of tea and lingering glances and parsing through preferences.

The boys in her village had it partly right. Nami can be selfish and guarded, but there is a space in her heart that they had never accounted for: the love she had long decided would die with one person. She is not nearly selfish enough to let this go too far, knowing that hope is the cruelest thing to hold over someone. 

Long after they have left this humble town, Alabasta offers her a reminder of how she learned that lesson. She swears, from the moment she spots cruelty so natural on Crocodile's face, that she knows exactly what kind of man he is. Her heart aches as the brunt of Crocodile’s world threatens to crush Vivi’s optimism under his shoe. This is something Nami understands—hope as a knife.

Then, Alabasta offers her a miracle.

The moment Sanji breaks through Crocodile’s trap and grabs Nami's arm. The first time the climatact clicks into place. The pitch of Vivi’s voice across the chaos, just before Luffy bursts into the sky.

Nami has felt this magic trick before. It’s like watching Arlong fall again when Crocodile’s mirage finally collapses. Vivi’s tears sparkle under the pouring rain, and Nami hears liberation as a rhythmic pounding in her chest, so all-consuming that it chokes her up.

She really could do this forever. She could help Luffy spread this feeling across the world and immortalize the path of freedom in ink. Hope transforms from a weapon to salvation. It clicks into place, weightless, surreal.

Afraid that admitting this will make it disappear, Nami does not dare say this aloud, even as they part ways with Vivi. The desert air gradually fades behind them as Alabasta slips farther away. She takes the feeling out on her maps and the climatact, and spends the majority of her days locked in her study. 

The most she slips up is when the phrase “our crew” tumbles out of her mouth at dinner. Luffy babbles in excitement—“That’s the first time you’ve called us that! You’re a real pirate now!”—and only settles down when Zoro smacks a hand against his chest. Nami delivers a flick to Luffy’s forehead, complete with a half-hearted whinge about how it was nothing more than a slip of the tongue.

Her mistake is chancing a sideways glance at Sanji. He pauses in the middle of setting plates to stare at her. The look lasts only a moment, but just long enough, unwavering, that Nami begins to think of the melt of the desert, of the heat clamping her hair to her neck.

She suddenly finds herself caught in her own lie. 

Nami contemplates him, enkindled by the burn of the sun. She would challenge his stare with her own, if it were not for the flick of his lighter, which sets shadows wild across his face. Sanji becomes impossible to look at in the flickering flames. Nami can only wonder if she imagines the way he smiles around his glowing cigarette, as he places a cup of orange tea in front of her.

—

Visiting a dingy restaurant in a desolate trade town while fresh on the tail of their bounties is, surprisingly, Sanji’s idea. As they slip into a plastic tent, Nami is careful to check that the crew still has their disguises on. Luckily, smog chokes out their faces, while tables of old men, who pay them no mind, focus on stomping out their cigars. 

When their order comes out, Sanji’s excitement is palpable. He goes on about the restaurant's specialty and dissects techniques for cooking in barren, dry environments. Even when Zoro groans at him to shut up and Luffy sneaks meat off of his plate, Sanji is enraptured by the food. If it weren’t for the mask and sunglasses, Nami is sure she would see his eyes bared wide, captivated by the novel cuts of meat and vegetables.

In the middle of a material restock, Sanji turned to Nami with those same enormous eyes and pleaded with her to visit a hole-in-the-wall famous among sea-faring cooks for pioneering the preparation of water birds. Considering Sanji rarely ever asked for anything, Nami cautiously agreed, with the condition that the crew all wear disguises to evade their new bounties. 

She has to admit that the look of pure wonder on his face makes it worth it.

She only feels sorry when Luffy unravels his face cover to shovel an entire roasted duck into his already-full mouth, and a table of veteran Marines shrieks an unmistakable sound of recognition. Nami has to tear Sanji from the table as the owner bursts from the kitchen and chases after them with a broom and a tobacco-stained pocketbook.

“I’m just sad I never got to ask him about his recipe,” Sanji bemoans later, rubbing a spot on his back where the owner had caught him with the spine of his pocketbook. “Now I can never go back.”

“Oh, I don’t think you need to bother with that,” Nami says breezily. 

Sanji’s eyes snap to her. “You didn’t.”

She grins and waves a page in the air in front of him—the roasted duck recipe she managed to snatch from the owner’s pocketbook.

Laughter bubbles out of Sanji as he smooths his hands over the paper and presses it flat against the railing of the Merry. Nami catches the sparkle of awe in his gaze full-force again—this time, directed at her.

“You are an incredible woman!”

Nami shrugs. “I know.”

It is disquieting how the wonder on his face unearths a core of warmth in her chest, making her shiver under the pressure of cool wind. Inexplicably, as she witnesses happiness illuminate Sanji’s eyes, Nami feels something shift.

—

The first time Nami lays her eyes on Nico Robin—the woman, not the “Demon Child,” and not the assassin—she recognizes her. An unmistakable freeze of apprehension flashes across Robin’s face, as Sanji approaches her with a friendly grin, a cup of coffee, and a comment on her book. 

Sanji says something to Nami as well, but, distracted, she replies absentmindedly. She ignores the sharp bite of guilt in her chest when he places a teacup in front of her.

“Seventh version of the recipe,” Sanji announces happily. “Your orange tree peels, in a tea bag with cinnamon and a few of the unblossomed flowers. Plus honey and a little bit of saffron.”

Nami sighs. “You shouldn’t have. You’re not going to figure it out, Sanji.”

“I can at least try. One day, I’ll get it.” He puts on a playful smile, leaning his elbow on her drafting table. “Will you fall for me after that?”

Nami pushes him off her desk. “How’s the coffee, Robin?”

“Perfect. Thank you, Sanji. You didn’t have to.”

Sanji, still getting back on his feet, offers an awkward laugh. “It’s my pleasure. Let me know if you need anything else.”

Once Sanji leaves, Robin’s eyes cross paths with Nami’s over the lamp light. 

“Your cook is very friendly,” Robin observes.

Nami sips her tea. It's delicious, as always. “You’ll get used to him. He’s just an idiot.”

“It’s alright. I find the passion of your young love quite admirable.”

Nami chokes. She blinks at Robin, who stares back at her owlishly. 

“Robin, Sanji and I are not in love.”

“You don’t enjoy his advances?”

“Okay, you just don’t get it yet. He’s like that with all women.”

Robin’s eyes flit to the tea in Nami’s hands.

“Ah. Apologies for the misunderstanding,” Robin says. “I suppose I’ll see.”

Robin barely makes an effort to make her words sound believable. All she offers is that mysterious smile, her cheek falling into the palm of her hand.

Nami feels suddenly defensive. Shouldn’t Robin, of all people, understand? Nami figured they were the same in hardness and defenses, in solidness and selfishness. What else did people like them know but survival? Nami had long surrendered her heart to surviving, to memorializing, knowing her mother had died suffering the worst curse of all: love. Nami would bear love as grief instead, and wear loss like a brand. 

People like Nami leave romanticism to people like Luffy and Sanji.

Besides, there is nothing to question about Sanji, of all people. Their arrangement is mutual—a back and forth, of Sanji pushing and Nami pulling, coy and unserious. Sanji knows Nami cares about him underneath her eye rolls and sharp tongue. Nami knows Sanji’s lover boy persona is a front (and likely a coping mechanism of some kind), and he does not, cannot see her as anything more than a good friend. Nami is a pastime for him; the way his eyes linger on her at dinner is a quirk. Sanji gives and gives, characteristically forward, and Nami willingly receives. It is simple gratification, letting Sanji indulge himself. Harmless.

In good faith, she even briefly tries to entertain the idea of Sanji, underneath all the ridiculous theatrics of love and surface-level flirting, actually feeling something for her. Thinking about her. Worrying about her. Looking for her in a crowd. Just Nami, for the person she is. The idea is so ridiculous, she wants to laugh. 

She also can’t stop thinking about it.

For the rest of the day, Nami cannot focus on her map. Discomfort sticks to her, as if every time she moves, Robin is watching her.

At dinner, Nami can’t help but notice Robin approaching Sanji. He gawks and turns red at whatever she says to him, but when he catches Nami’s eye, his face is painstakingly blank. He lights a cigarette at the table, avoiding her through the cover of smoke.

Birds of a feather, Nami supposes. Perhaps she understands both of them less than she thought she did.

After dinner, she decides to take her mind off things by going to the origin of her internal strife. 

“Some extras from my last batch.”

She drops the basket of oranges on the galley counter. The sound draws Sanji’s curious eye. He stops rinsing dishes and walks up to her with a smile, examining the oranges with one hand. 

“Someone’s feeling generous.” His analytical eye slides sideways at her. “Are you sure you’re Nami?”

“I’ll take them back—”

“Sorry, sorry. But, seriously. You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you mean that?”

Nami wants to bite something snarky back, but there is nothing she can say. She wouldn’t believe her either. 

“Did Robin say something to you?” she relents, unable to curb her restlessness. 

Sanji wipes his sudsy hands on a dish rag and turns to face her, apparently deciding the conversation has become important. She realizes he is smoking another cigarette.

“Just something about tea. Why? Did she say something to you?”

“She thought you and I were together.”

“That’s funny.” Nami watches his expression closely, but Sanji just looks at her like she just told him about the weather. He clears his throat, glancing away. “Hey, try this one for me.”

Out of nowhere, he pushes a cup of orange tea to her. Nami eyes it, glancing over the cigarette in Sanji’s hand and the pale sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“Didn’t you have one of those right before dinner?”

Sanji takes a long drag. “I’m nervous because you haven’t tried the tea I’ve been trying to get right for months.”

“Alright, no need to guilt me.”

Nami flicks his arm, sending him back to the dishes. She takes the teacup and watches Sanji rinse the last few plates. He takes occasional breaks to smoke his cigarette. 

Once Sanji finishes the dishes, he raises his brow at her hopefully. Nami stares at him. 

“This one is close.”

His eyes light up. “Orange peels and leaves with cinnamon and cane sugar. Nothing fancy.”

“It’s a good try. You’re just missing a few things.” 

“See, I’m sure you can cook. I can’t even make your favorite tea without your help.” 

Nami laughs, which seems to lighten the heaviness of Sanji’s shoulders. He peers at her with a smile and pulls the basket of oranges closer, setting down a cutting board.

“Only if you want to,” he offers.

“Trying to get out of your job?” Nami teases, but she takes a knife from the dish rack and starts slicing. “I should charge you for this.”

“I’m only one man. Plus, I can hardly compare to a woman who grew up on an orange farm.”

Nami pauses, holding the knife out. Knowing it will get under Sanji’s skin, she says, “Maybe Zoro would be good at cooking.”

“Do not insult my craft like that.”

Nami laughs. “Before you came, I did all the cooking, you know. Usopp’s an alright cook, but those two—Zoro and Luffy—are hopeless.”

“You don’t have to tell me. You’re the only other person I trust in here. God forbid I let Luffy do this.”

Sanji leans in as he says this, smiling. Nami usually writes this sort of playfulness off his nature, his propensity as a flirt. But this time, the air seems to shift around him as he comes closer, echoing the shape of him against her skin. He radiates a warmth in the cold of the galley that makes her cheeks sing.

It must be Robin’s stupid ideas infecting her, but all of a sudden, things feel different between them. 

Nami hastily switches the subject, clearing her throat. “What are you making with this many oranges anyway?”

Sanji releases a mouthful of smoke. “This is for that roast duck dish you stole. I made a few adjustments. Changed it to an orange sauce I thought you’d like. Any tips for the sauce?”

Suddenly, as though Nami has been caught in a whirlpool, the tide of memory swallows her: grinning over a wooden spoon; cut and burned by the still-unfamiliar terrain of the kitchen; scraping precious and scarce berries together to pull together Nami’s third birthday meal as Bellemere’s daughter. 

“Your favorite.”

“How can it be my favorite? I’ve never had duck. You’re such a weird lady.”

“Just try it, would you, kid? You’ll love it, I know it.”

It is like the cold has engulfed Nami. She can feel Sanji’s warm eyes on her, steady with concern.

Sanji silently takes over the oranges for her, as if nothing was said. The memory is still sticky on her skin.

“Hey, Sanji.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t try to do too much. Why are you going through the trouble of something like that for me?” 

Sanji leans back and glances at her through his hair. Resignation crosses his face. A long beat.

Then, he turns back to the oranges and tries to fake a laugh.

“You know better than to ask that of me, Nami.”

For someone who wears his heart on his sleeve, Sanji is a mirage. For someone who claims she has learned to leave her heart out of things, Nami thinks she might be slipping.

—

“I think my skin is going to melt off. I might just end up as soupy fire monster food.” 

Usopp sinks his forehead further into the deck, muffling the end of his sentence. A small propeller fan sticks out of his cap, coughing up pitiful puffs of air.

Nami considers swiping it from him, but thinks about how much energy it would take to move. She slumps back against the ship railing, which groans against her weight.

The Merry has seen better days. Skypeia left the deck creaky and loose-floored, and Usopp’s stopgap fix-ups have proven futile in recovering the hull and balusters from Aokiji’s ice. While Luffy and Usopp have remained optimistic, Nami can feel everyone else growing uneasy. In the post-battle days, the crew skated by on the simple euphoria of escaping with their lives. Now that the adrenaline has fizzled out and the next destination is unclear, they wander sluggishly through the interim journey, with only Nami’s log pose to guide the way to salvation for the Merry.

Nami would try to enjoy the rare moment of rest, if not for the fact that her log pose has bounced them into a two-week long rough patch: from a grass sea crawling with neon green, man-eating turtle ducks; straight through a current made of lightning-charged jellyfish, to which Usopp grumbled that they had seen enough electricity for a lifetime; and into a trade town where every building leaned fourty-five degrees and only accepted artistically folded money.

Now, her treacherous log pose has led them to an ocean that boils under white sunlight and glues their skin to their bones with a thick paste of humidity. Nami has studied the horizon for days, determined to steer far away from this sea at the first sign of cooler waters, only to be met with endless heat. The water below has steadily become a milky pink, as it sits frozen under a bleary, red sky. While the waves lurch the Merry forward, the heat aboard becomes wetter and more oppressive, until it seeps even into the cabins below, soaking the wooden floors and fogging over the metal plates.

Tired of suffocating in the lower levels, the rest of the crew has followed Nami’s lead onto the deck, save for Chopper, who seeks respite in an herb bath. Usopp, Zoro, and Luffy splatter across the decks in puddles. Sanji slips into the galley to prepare drinks, though Nami has no idea how he doesn’t find that tiny space smothering in this heat. Robin lounges against the mast with a book, as impossibly unmoved as always. 

“Fire monsters,” Luffy echoes Usopp, glancing at him with a slothful grin. “I’d love to beat up a fire monster. Are we close to any fire islands?”

Nami tries to shout at him, but her voice comes out dry. She blinks through a syrup of exhaustion and weeks-long frustration, as the humidity squeezes her slippery back into the railing. 

Robin, popping her head over her book, fills her space more kindly. “Unfortunately, the Screaming Sea isn’t close to any islands or fire monsters, Captain. This spot on the Grand Line rises to extraordinary temperatures due to changes in surface pressure and air conditions, which not many organisms can naturally withstand,” Robin says. She offers a serene smile. “Let’s hope the Screaming Sea does not prove equally fatal to humans.”

“Why would you even say that?!” Usopp shrieks.

“Aren’t the mosquitoes bad enough for you, Luffy?” Nami mutters. She squeezes her eyes shut. Everybody’s faces have begun blurring into halos of light under the glare of the sun, soft and impossibly bright. “The heat has attracted a lot of them. The wind’s bringing more of them, too.”

When Luffy opens his mouth to complain, Nami raises a finger to her lips. An eerie, low drone fills the silence, sinking in around them like a fog. Hordes of fist-sized mosquitoes flank the Merry, attracted by the heat and carried along by the wind. 

Nami—who was the first to hear them, while on night watch with Sanji a week ago, before the heat had fully descended—initially mistook their droning for the little cicadas that plagued summers in Cocoyashi, until she decided to peer over the edge of the crow’s nest and came nose to nose with one of them.

When she screamed, Sanji came bursting out of the galley with a leg alight. His face went transluscent when he spotted the mosquito blinking at the two of them with beady, red eyes. Nami didn’t give him time to try to be chivalrous. She took off running into the galley and knocked him down as she went, dragging them both under the table.

A very unhappy Zoro woke up to cover Nami’s shift.

When Zoro tried to snidely bite at Sanji for being scared of “itsy-bitsy bugs” at breakfast the next day, the crew’s laughter seemed to take him by surprise.

“I forgot! You two were like that with the spiders on Skypeia, too! You’re total scaredy-cats!” Usopp howled. 

Nami, red in the face, smacked Usopp’s nose with her napkin. Goddamn hypocrite.

More than embarrassment, something began plaguing Nami since that night. When she was crouched under the table with Sanji, her head crowded up close to his chest and her knees slipping across warm kitchen tiles—pain struck her. A headache. Blood thrashed in her temples, in rhythm with the mosquito drone. 

Nami swallowed the pain down, knowing Sanji would fuss over her if she let it show. But, almost like he could sense it, Sanji raised a trembling arm around her shoulders, in a gesture of protectiveness.

“It’s gonna be okay. I’ll save us,” he croaked meekly.

Nami stared at Sanji’s bloodless, terrified face, centimeters away from hers. The air was hot, stifling. 

Then, Nami shoved Sanji’s arm away and set out her escape route to the women’s galley, ignoring Zoro’s disgruntled shout as she passed him. 

In the days since, the mosquitoes have only grown greater in number and louder. Swarms of them follow the heat in an endless murmur. With the headache lingering and worsening, a wounded creature writhing against the confines of her skull, vigilance has crept back into Nami's body. She nearly leapt out of her skin when Usopp accidentally snuck up on her. Anxiety shot up her spine when Sanji knocked on the women’s quarters door with a plate of sandwiches. 

Most nights, she lies awake, allowing the stifling humidity of the cabin to swallow her, and growing tenser and tenser amidst the drone of the mosquitoes. 

“I agree with Nami.”

Sanji's smile is a chunk of snow, by some miracle persisting. He balances two trays loaded with tall glasses and a pitcher of blood-red fruit punch, glistening like rubies in the burning sun. The mosquitoes buzz around him in interest.

“Surprise, surprise,” Zoro mutters.

“I have a bad feeling about these mosquitoes,” Sanji continues, ignoring him. “If Nami says more are coming, we should figure out a game plan in case they attack. Worse, they could be leading something towards us.”

“You’re just upset that they’re only biting you.”

“Shut up, mosshead! It’s not about that. I’m not a whiner like you.”

“A what?”

Sanji descends the stairs and lovingly hands Nami a glass of fruit punch. The ice cubes floating at the surface are already melting. Nami offers him a weak smile of gratitude. 

Satisfied, Sanji whips around to glare at Zoro again. 

“The mosquitoes upset Nami the other day, and I can’t forgive that! You wouldn’t understand that kind of chivalry, you brute.” Sanji sets down the tray to light a cigarette, sighing. “Luffy, if you want to fight a monster so bad, then we should beat up these pests.”

Luffy heaves an unhappy noise out of his throat. “If the wind really is bringing something cool to us, I wanna see.”

Luffy catapults himself to the ship railing to stick his head into the wind. The mosquitoes buzz around his head unhappily, noisier than before.

Nami looks up, feeling like she is moving through honey. “Hold on, Luffy. You shouldn’t get close to those things.”

“It’s so hard to see with all these stupid bugs in the way,” Luffy rambles on.

Nami curses, leaping to her feet. “Luffy, don’t even think about–”

Luffy punches the mosquitoes. 

At first, they don’t react at all. The mosquitoes tumble off in various directions, floating aimlessly in the sizzling breeze, and then right themselves, as if nothing happened. The drone returns to a low hum.

Then, a high-pitched buzz pierces the air. Nami cries out and covers her head, but the noise only worsens, as every mosquito’s jaw unhinges to release a cacaphonous screech. They begin funneling towards the bow of the ship, moving faster than Nami’s eyes can follow, each blending into the next. 

“What are they doing!?” Usopp screams over the cry of mosquitoes.

“Are they all gathering into one big thing?” Zoro shouts, drawing his swords. “Like a school of sardines?” 

Nami watches in horror as the swarm hovering over the Merry’s figurehead slowly starts to take shape. The deck feels like the surface of the sun.

“They’re not gathering,” Sanji yells. “They’re all getting absorbed into something! Into a–”

“Fire monster!” Luffy declares with joy. “It looks like a vampire! A bug vampire!”

Laughing, Luffy stretches his arms around the mast and, winding himself up like a kid on a swing, catapults himself at the flaming, fanged mosquito-giant looming over the bow of the Merry. The mosquito roars and swings a fiery antennae at Luffy. Luffy yanks on the mast to dodge, making the ship lurch under his weight. The force tosses everyone around the deck. Sanji, smacked against the ship railing, swears and leaps off the balusters with a kick aimed for the mosquito’s wing, while Usopp, who slams into the galley, scrambles to warn Chopper. Zoro scrambles to his feet and makes a straight dash from the upper deck to the mosquito’s thorax, sword-first. Robin hangs onto the railing for balance as the ship continues to rock back and forth under Luffy’s command. A flourish of cherry blossoms curls around the monster, unfurling disembodied arms that tug it away from the Merry by its wings.

Nami crashes toward the bow of the ship. Her head erupts with sharp, white-hot pain as she slams into the deck, flat on her back.

Just her luck, she lands right under the mosquito’s nose. 

“It has Nami!”

“Nami?!”

Its face is even more horrifying up close. Matted hair clumps onto two white tusks that swoop out of its hollow cheeks. Each of its antennae is the length of the mast, dwarfed by the impossible size of its needled nose.

By far, the worst part is the monster’s teeth—like a bug vampire, just as Luffy said. Thick, red liquid drips off its freakishly human canines, hissing holes into the wood of the deck on either side of Nami’s head. 

“I think it’s thirsty! The bloodsucker’s going to drink her!”

“DRINK HER?”

“Can you not hear me or something, you idiot?”

The mosquito releases a roar, the vibration rattling Nami’s skeleton. The sharp agony in her head collides with the same pounding headache that has gnawed at her all week. Not now, she wants to scream.

There’s no time. The mosquito unhinges its jaw. The buzz is louder, thumping. It wrenches its mouth open around her face. Nami’s breath bottoms out in her stomach. Her head pounds and pounds.

Then, it is quiet.

Nami hears herself screaming.

When she blinks, she’s not on the ship anymore. Her fingertips are stained with ink. Papercuts litter her palms, stinging against the dirt on the concrete. She has huddled herself into a rare corner of her room, stuffed between overfilled boxes of maps and books.

And Nami is unleashing the worst sound she has ever heard—an awful, shrill, desperate scream.

Chew, one of Arlong’s more paranoid men, burst into her room, his hands clamped over his ears. 

“Do you have any idea what time it is, you little brat?!” 

Nami is too young and terrified to care. She is still screaming. Chew leers at the shaking point of Nami’s small finger and the enormous mosquito at the end of it. Sneering, he snatches the mosquito’s wings between his fingers. 

“You humans are pathetic. Afraid of a little bug?”

Nami gasps, choking as the scream extinguishes in her chest.

“Don’t kill it!” she cries.

“Are you ordering me around? I think you’ve got it backward, kid. Why do you want to save the life of something like this?”

Chew hurtles the mosquito’s needled nose towards Nami’s face. It buzzes pathetically. Nami shrieks and scrambles further into the wall. She chokes on her fear, grappling for an answer. 

But even all these years later, Nami has no explanation. It had been too long since the last time Arlong’s men returned to bring her food, so the mosquito had been drawn in by the damp heat of Nami’s room. It floated around for days and stung her so badly that she cried herself to sleep because of her itchy skin. Like with every bug that crawled into this room, she hated it—small, invasive, beady-eyed. She should have been relieved to see it die. Why feel allegiance to something that brought her so much terror? Why tie herself to the fate of such a tiny thing?

At the time, the best Nami could come up with slipped out of her gritted teeth: “It’s still alive, just like me! I can still let it live!”

The rest after that, time has blurred in her memory, maybe protectively. Only Chew’s voice is clear in her mind. 

“You think you and this pest are the same, do you? Look at me, kid. You might have made your deal with Arlong, but I don’t believe a bit of it. You’re still hoping we’ll change our minds. You’re hoping your mom is going to walk through that door and tell you it’s all a bad dream, right? You think she’ll die for you twice? Let me teach you something, little girl. This is something that weak humans like you should figure out early. You are just like this pest. No one is coming to save you.”

The rhythm of his voice pounds in Nami’s head again—the same wounded creature, writhing, tortured. It’s been hiding in her head, threatening to break free. It’s the reason her shoulders tense when she thinks she sees a bug land nearby. It's why her eyes flit around rooms fast and flighty, never too comfortable, never too relaxed.

Nami’s head pounds and pounds.

“Nami!”

Her eyes open too slowly, too languidly. They lift through a leaden veil, revealing a soft cloud of worry on Sanji’s face, whited out by the unbearable glare of the sun.

Nami hits the deck again, but her body never makes contact. A hand yanks her face into a chest, cradling the back of her head before she can slam into the floor. Her body curls into cotton and silk, cool to the touch where the air swelters and trembles, like a mirage. When Nami glances up, she is met with a mop of blonde hair and a limp cigarette.

“Sorry, Nami,” Sanji says. “I know how much you hate bugs.” 

Nami wants to unhinge her jaw in another scream, still blinking the memory away. Her skull throbs. She itches to push Sanji’s arm away, to sidle closer into the side of the ship, into a corner. It should be safer that way. Helping people like Nami doesn’t do any good. 

“You’re dead-afraid of bugs,” is all she musters, barely a whisper.

“No, I’m not,” Sanji refutes, but his face is pale as he sits them both upright. “Here, can you stand? I’ll take you to Chopper. You’re not in the condition to be fighting right now.”

“You’re an awful liar,” Nami mutters, blinking away the pain. 

Looking around, she pieces together what happened. The mosquito lies face-down on the deck in a puddle of red liquid, a broken pitcher of fruit punch hanging out of its mouth and leaking juice onto its teeth. Sanji’s hand lies limp by his side, dribbling with blood and needled with glass. The mosquito’s right fang pierces the middle of his palm.

“Are you worried about me, Nami?” Sanji says, smiling. “It’s nothing. The fire monster wanted a drink to cool down, so I gave it some.”

A million emotions flash through Nami’s body. Rage that Sanji thinks she can’t handle this on her own. Shame that she's been lying here, limp, stuck on a past she should have already left behind, while her crewmates fought for their lives. Embarrassment, from being saved by Sanji’s stupid equalizing chivalry, as if she ever asked for his pity. 

There are a million more emotions in the ache that rears its head at the sight of Sanji this close, his eyes wet with worry, his fingers shifting across her skin to brush against her cheek. His touch is so unsteady and delicate, his expression untainted by expectation. As much as the voice in Nami’s head tries to misconstrue Sanji’s feelings, she cannot flinch from the truth when it is a breath away. 

Sanji does not look at Nami like she needs to be saved. He does it like she is the only thing worth saving.

It is just as Chew said; Nami has been foolishly hopeful her whole life. The worst part, realized in a split second, as a chill seizes her: if Nami is truly honest with herself, this hope does not feel like an ache. It has no rhythm, no time. 

She must be sick. This hope feels weightless again.

The mosquito groans and shifts onto its side, dragging Sanji’s hand with it. He cries out in pain, his grip loosening around Nami’s waist. 

“Sanji, I have Chopper!” comes Usopp’s voice, emerging from the lounge. “Watch out, the bloodsucker’s getting back up!”

Nami scrambles for her climatact to finish the job, but Zoro beats her to it. He slices the mosquito clean in half, just as it begins to hover menacing antennae over Usopp’s nose.

“I might fall for you,” Usopp tells Zoro grimly.

Zoro smacks him upside the head with the back of his sword. 

Robin disposes of the mosquito’s body, as Usopp tells Luffy off for putting the Merry in harm’s way. Zoro slices the bulk of the fang off of Sanji’s hand and offers him a grunt that must be their begrudging equivalent of thanks. Chopper plugs Sanji full of needles and medical devices, just as Sanji finally crumples onto the deck, casting a final glance at Nami. 

Nami wants to attribute it to the familiar hazy heat, magnifying a shadow of him against her tired eyes. The air still crackles around them, sticky and heavy, but the red sky is steadily giving way to blue, prickled with coarse clouds. As Sanji smiles, a wisp of cool wind sweeps his hair away from his eyes. 

This is no illusion, Nami realizes.

—

“Would you ever eat a Devil Fruit?”

“Isn’t that the dream? Of course I would.”

Nami can barely hear Usopp from where his head is buried into the side of the Merry. He punctuates his sentences with bangs of his hammer.

“You wouldn’t be sad about the sea hating you after?” Nami asks, twirling her climatact between her fingers. The bucket of nails rattles in her other hand.

Usopp’s laugh booms as if he were deep in a cave. “It already hates me. Being a brave warrior of the sea would be a whole lot easier if I were strong—damn, that mosquito really did some damage here—whether the sea wants to drown me or not.”

“Yeah. Sometimes I guess I just feel…”

“Useless? Weak? Defenseless?”

“Gee, thanks, Usopp.”

“You know what I mean!”

“I do, I do.”

Usopp emerges from the hole in the Merry’s side, his hands on his hips. He sits next to Nami on the deck. 

“Is this because of what happened with Sanji the other day?”

Nami frowns. “I don’t get him at all. He doesn’t even take his hands out of his stupid pockets when he fights, and he just risked them like it was nothing. Why the hell would he do something that stupid?”

“You have no idea why? None at all?” Usopp deadpans. Nami gives him a blank look, and Usopp sighs. “Look, Nami, there are two types of people in this world: there are people like Sanji and Zoro and Luffy, and there are people like us. To be honest, if I really think about it, maybe a Devil Fruit wouldn’t make any difference for me. We’ve got nothing on Zoro and Sanji in a fight, regardless. People like Sanji just have crazy trust in themselves, like they were born with it. So, yeah, he’s willing to leap at a giant flaming mosquito with a pitcher of fruit punch and impale his hand.”

“What does that mean for us—or people like us? That we were just born weak?”

“No. I don’t know. Aren’t they just crazy? The All-Blue, the greatest swordsman, king of the pirates... Our dreams are different from theirs, but we want to get stronger, too. So we’ll eventually have trust in ourselves when giant, terrifying mosquitoes come at us.”

Nami’s head drops to her chest, her knees pulling in. “I just hate that feeling, Usopp. Like I’m helpless. Like I need him.”

Usopp shoots her a sympathetic look. “Yeah, I get it. But, you know… Isn’t it a good thing to need someone? I’d love to know how it feels to be needed.”

Nami glances at him—at his curly hair that he singed in battle, at the grease and paint on his rumpled clothes. Her best friend, telling her such a heartbreaking thing, looks defeated. 

“I would never be able to have this conversation with Zoro, you know,” she says softly.

Usopp snorts. “He’d fall asleep.”

At that moment, Nami makes a decision. She extends her pinky to him, nodding with determination.

“Alright, let’s make a pact. You and me, the weak duo—maybe add in Chopper, too, and we’ll make it a weak trio.”

“Shouldn’t Chopper be here if we’re going to make a pact on his behalf—”

“We’ll promise to stick together, as the weak trio. We need to lean on each other.”

She pushes her pinky forward again. Usopp stares at her for a second, as if she has suddenly grown two heads. Then, his face breaks into a grin. He wipes off one hand behind his back and takes her pinky with the other ceremoniously.

“Deal!”

—

The cheapest hotel in Water 7 is so close to the shipwright factories that the smell of smoked wood and the high hiss of grinding metal barrel through each unit. In Nami’s single room, which has very little furniture to soak up the noise, everything seems louder. She can even hear the men of the crew snoring on the other side of her wall, Zoro in particular, halfway to triggering a tsunami. Somehow, though, things feel uncomfortably empty from Nami’s perspective, as she stares out the window at the twisting smog and faded sun. 

“I brought you some coffee.”

Nami breathes in deep with relief at the sound of his voice, filling out the space. When she catches sight of his silhouette in the doorway, Nami even lets loose a sigh, but she does not beckon him any further.

Since the Screaming Sea, Nami has attempted to put distance between them, seeking him out less, curbing foolish impulses, and starving out any of the ridiculous sentimentality that happens to rise in her chest. She wonders if his careful tone now is a sign that he has gauged her shuttered heart. She hoped it would be enough for him to give up on her. 

Of course, he is too prideful for something like that. His stubborn fixation, the soft kind of staunch, may explain this inviting air between them, as thick as the steam escaping the coffee in his hands. It becomes another layer of Water 7’s endless noise, at the very same time that it silences everything else around them.

Nami tries to stifle it, turning her head. “I usually don’t like coffee.”

“I know. I made it out of habit, and then… I didn’t know what to do with it.”

Nami finally takes a proper look at him. Where the overhead fluorescents tug his face into her vision, the harsh light reveals sunken eyes and a stress line down the length of his forehead. His hair, usually carefully styled, lies limp; as he leans against the doorway, he keeps running a hand through it, a nervous habit. This makes the movement of his eyes hard to discern, but Nami catches them flitting to her more than once. 

“Sorry that I can’t do more,” Sanji continues. “There’s no kitchen in this hotel.”

“No, I’m sorry, I was being… I just…”

Sanji holds the coffee out, shrugging. “I get it. Rough day for everyone.”

Nami shakes her head and takes the mug with a grateful smile, gesturing absentmindedly for him to sit beside her on the bed. She shivers when their knees knock together and his trousers prickle her bare skin.

“We’ll find her, Sanji. It’s not your fault.”

Sanji’s brow tightens. “Chopper and I decided that if Robin is okay, she’ll turn up. I have this bad feeling, though. About her, and Usopp.”

“I get it. I keep looking through the papers for news about them. Robin is one thing, but Usopp… I can’t imagine him there all on his own.”

Nami remembers Usopp’s bloodied face after his fight with Luffy, and how the pain had disfigured him so greatly that his expression was invisible. How his small figure faded into a pinpoint in the distance, until he was gone, like he had never been a part of the crew at all. 

Nami worries most about Usopp being alone on the crumbling Merry, with nothing but the echo of his thoughts. 

“I guess that’s the problem,” Sanji sighs. “He doesn’t want any of us worrying about him.”

“He’s being such a guy.”

Sanji nods thoughtfully. “Yes, I agree, he’s being such a guy.”

Nami scoffs, nudging him. “You guys are all idiots. Especially him. When is he gonna figure out that friendship’s not about that stuff? Being weak or whatever.”

“You say that because you’re strong, Nami.”

“What? You fight like a monster, Sanji.”

“Nami, you’re—literally—a hurricane. You have this incredible certainty in everything you do, so when you see something you want, you just charge forth and take it.”

“That’s selfish, not strong. Honestly, I wouldn’t have done what Usopp did. I would have just taken the ship and left in the middle of the night.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

Nami frowns. “How would you know?”

“I know you.”

“What does that even mean? You think you get me?” 

Nami is bristling now, but she can’t quite understand why.

“No, Nami. I just know you better than that by now.”

Sanji’s leg against her feels different all of a sudden, as though the atmosphere between them has slowly grown warm and sullen throughout the time they have been speaking. That feeling hits her again—like they are on the brink of revealing something. That he is going to catch her.

For a moment, they sit in the silence that follows. Then, eyeing her full mug, Sanji stands up. 

“If you’d like, I can try to dig up a tea packet and come back with a new cup.” 

All Nami can do is shake her head, trying to overlook the disappointment that flashes across Sanji’s expression—in desperate denial of how they can both see through his offer. 

A thought captures her, gone as fast as it comes, to ease the worry off his face, as if it were as simple as wiping away that smudge of pollen in her orange grove. Tea sounds banal compared to the idea of dragging her thumb across Sanji’s mouth, firm and warm, until his frown softens out underneath her skin.

If Nami must admit it—though she feels the sting and the heat are more of a pressure than a catalyst—the weeks since the Screaming Sea have involved more of this self-denial than she cares to admit. She knows it is improper to trace the line of him in the dark, to miss him even more when she denies him. Torn, she has absolved herself of the ache in her chest when he tries talking to her in the early mornings; during the calm of cold night duty, in which he offers his shoulder; and when the goodness of their friendship squashes her courage, reeling it back into a rib cage already near overflow with a nagging feeling of realization.

In this way, Nami understands Usopp. His terror of being dispensable, the defeat in his face. Weakness. Even now, Nami cannot do anything for their crew. She cannot even figure out the right choice to make with Sanji. Is it worse, she wonders, to give him hope when she cannot make any promises than to simply turn him away? Can she call this want harmless, to take and take from a man like Sanji, as selfish and demanding as she has always been?

Isn’t it a good thing to need someone? I’d love to know how it feels to be needed.

Nami feels tears prickle her eyes. Did you think I didn’t see you crossing your fingers when you made me that promise? You awful liar. Usopp, you hypocrite.

“Sanji, wait.”

In the doorway, Sanji slows, the shadow of his back cast by the ceiling light.

“Would you just stay with me for a bit?”

Maybe it is too forward, even for Nami, to ask a man to stay in her empty room. Maybe the words stumble forward because, after a day that has been so undoubtedly, entirely awful to them all, the strange world she has made of this crew feels precarious. Maybe Nami has a cavernous weed in her chest, a stifled ache decaying underneath her skin and demanding liberation.

The worry on Sanji’s face is unavoidable, but the approach of hope, stark and vulnerable under his harsh white light, is a curious thing. 

Within every give and take, maybe there are exchanges between two people that no one can understand—not even them. 

“As you wish.”

Water 7 is so loud and so empty at the same time.

If Nami lets herself lean on his shoulder, if he feels her tears on his dress shirt, if he is both solid and trembling—then these are their secrets for the night. 

And if later, at the train station, Nami stows his ridiculous love letter in her pocket, then only she has to know that.

—

“So, how’s it feel having people go to war for you?”

Nami slides onto the railing next to Robin, letting the wind carry her hair off her shoulders. She has to shift her legs to steady her footing, the Thousand Sunny still an unfamiliar terrain. Robin, on the other hand, is so impossibly still that Nami would think she did not hear her question over the ruckus of their crew, if not for the soft, watery smile on her mouth.

It is hard to look at Robin like this without trying to compare her to other versions of her—the sneer with which she peered down at them in Water 7, the rage she wore atop the Tower of Justice. Nami realizes Robin has braved so many convincing faces, but one rises most clearly in Nami’s head: the mysterious, distant smile, so different from this one, on that first night Robin moved into the women’s quarters. 

Nami was right to recognize the look in Robin’s eyes back then, how it carefully distanced her from the rest of them. It even makes sense now, having heard her story. Although Nami will never know the loss of Ohara, she understands Robin; they have both been children of suffering, taken in and washed away. She knows her need to lay down defenses to reckon with her grief, and the terror of being offered an outstretched hand. She knows wild, impracticable need, all-consuming.

But Nami cannot help thinking how wrong she was for hoping that Robin, of all people, would empathize with freedom by shutting the world out. When Robin spoke her wish at the Tower of Justice, it felt like Nami was watching herself. She understood the words as Robin shouted them like a protest: “I want to live!” 

“I feel almost selfish,” Robin says, watching over the crew on the deck, “but a part of me is quite touched. Is that horrible of me?”

Nami catches Sanji’s eyes from below.

“No, I don’t think so. You deserve to have a life like that.”

“Don’t we all?” Robin says.

Nami considers what it means to need another person. Does it look like this? Smiling, toothy and wide, so unambiguous and obvious that even someone like Nami can recognize it.

Laughter rings in the air. It must sound like this, too.

—

Nami would recognize him anywhere.

There are no birds or clouds overhead in the humming sky of Thriller Bark; Nami can only feel the darkness and the whisper of the undead. In the middle of it all, stark at the front of Perona’s Garden, Sanji is a beacon.

When Nami swears that she sees Sanji in the dog-penguin standing before them, Usopp and Chopper look at her as though this island has finally made her snap. She would love more than anything—besides, maybe, booking it out of this creepy castle with all the treasure she can stuff onto the Sunny—to blame insanity when she recognizes something behind those stitched-up eyes.

But the truth is too obvious, so unavoidable and strange. The dog-penguin zombie stomps to position itself between Nami and the other zombies and declares to the deafening crowd of monsters, in a gruff voice that slurs many of the familiar words together: “My power can’t be judged by ordinary means—a power that makes the impossible possible. It’ll blow everything away! The name of that hurricane… is love!”

Usopp and Chopper scratch their heads as the zombie shields Nami’s ankles with a protective flipper.

“I owe you an apology, Nami,” Usopp says.

Chopper sighs. “Yup, that’s Sanji.”

When the dog-penguin-slash-Sanji launches into a full-on assault on the other zombies, Nami has no time to wonder how this could be. Her reflex is relief. It emboldens her to hold onto Chopper and Usopp tight, in all their cowardice, and remember how much strength she can still find, even in a place where the air itself is desolate.

It’s a bittersweet feeling to be hung up on, as she ducks murderous zombies, jealous women, and manmade giants throughout the night. The horror fest of Thriller Bark somehow feels more survivable with her friends at her side—in particular, because of one idiot who has never been smart enough to leave her behind. 

When Absalom steals her from the crew, the feeling becomes an unspeakable wish. Her consciousness slipping away, Nami fights to let the thought out—not as strategy or survival, or even as instinct.

She knows someone will hear her through the fog and the chaos.

I want to live, too.

—

Nami wakes to Thriller Bark in an uproar.

The ceiling overhead has caved out in patches, where black spotlights of the exposed night spill into the church, stressing the cut of Sanji’s jaw above. Nami tries to fully open her eyes, but it feels as though she has been submerged in a vat of molasses. Her body is liquid in Sanji’s arms, sloshing back and forth.

Nami can only pick up flashes of the situation, as she fights to cling to lucidity. She can hear Sanji yelling at someone—Absalom—something, something, “no way to treat a lady.” They must still be in Thriller Bark. For some reason, Sanji is carrying her bridal-style. Something, something, “goddess.” Sanji hugs Nami’s head to his chest, groaning with effort. His face contorts in pain, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead, and his clothes smell of smoke. Something, something, “salted bastard,” “immoral ceremony.” Absalom shoots in and out of Sanji’s legs, bringing him to his knees. 

In a brief moment of clarity, Nami feels Sanji lay her across the aisle. He stumbles away from her, doubled over, clutching the front of his jacket. Something thin-edged and shining sticks out of the middle of his chest, but in a half-state of awareness, Nami can barely even take in the contorted sight of him. 

All she can do, as her senses drift back to black, is muse to herself: What an idiot.

Sanji’s voice chokes, “Forgive me. I can’t let my blood ruin your white dress.”

Always trying to save me.

—

In the aftermath of Thriller Bark, the crew seems even livelier than usual. Nami attributes it to Brooke’s presence. While she has not completely gotten used to the idea of a walking, talking skeleton, or all of the quirks that come with him, she has to admit he knows his way around an instrument. His cheerful piano has Usopp and Franky dancing along in a tango line of villagers, as they guzzle gallons of wine and rum accompany. Nami briefly laments that Zoro, still resting in the sick bay, cannot drink himself to recovery. Chopper disappeared from the dance line a bit ago, probably to fuss over Zoro’s injuries.

Nami has chosen a more peaceful spot for the celebration. From a quiet table in the corner, she is content to watch the festivities from a distance as Robin enjoys her food next to her. 

Well, peaceful might be the wrong word, Nami thinks, when Robin catches her looking for Sanji—who is busy cooking, serving, and keeping Luffy at bay—in the crowd. She does not miss the way Sanji winces and clutches his side after he turns too fast to get Luffy another plate of drumsticks.

When Robin wanders off to find Chopper, which Nami suspects is just an excuse, based on that knowing smile, Sanji slides into the open seat next to her.

“Is there anything I can do for a lovely lady like yourself?”

Nami lets her tight shoulders relax, pushing down the echo of Usopp’s voice in her head. He cornered her earlier, gawking as she confessed her train of thought, and then cast her a very unimpressed look.

“So,” Usopp drawled, “his soul fights freaky shadow magic to protect you even in a possessed zombie body, he crashes your fake wedding, and he keeps looking at you like that. C’mon. There’s no way you still don’t get it, right?” 

Indeed, the truth was too solid and obvious, in the makeshift bandage of chapel light that draped Sanji’s bloody body in Thriller Bark. Sanji acts like a livewire of a man, too eager to offer himself as the price for someone else’s freedom.

Well, that’s just how you are, Nami thinks as she analyzes his tired face. So, how much of it is about me?

“What else can I possibly ask of you, Sanji?” she says, sighing.

“If you’re feeling nice, then food.” Sanji grins and gestures to the banquet spread. 

The sound of Brooke’s piano floats towards them. Nami can hear Luffy and Brooke laughing and singing. Usopp shoots her a knowing look that will become another conversation later. Next to her, Sanji smells of his cologne and chocolate frosting. She can see the rise and fall of his chest, tight with effort. 

When her eyes find Sanji’s, she realizes this was over long before she ever allowed it to begin. 

To have something waiting for her, something to cherish and, even, to lose. What a terrifying gift.

“Not yet,” Nami says with a small smile. “Just sit with me for a second.”

—

“Yet” comes in with the recovered kick of the sea breeze through the Sunny’s sails, and another sleepless night.

For the first few days after they leave Thriller Bark and set sail for Fishman Island, Chopper bans Sanji from the kitchen, in hopes of forcing him to rest. Per doctor’s orders, Nami and Usopp cover the meals for the weekend. Franky tries to help out, too, but most of his cooking is soda-based. Nami eats cola hamburgers for a night before she makes the executive decision to take over again.

Sanji praises Nami’s cooking skills almost excessively, but it’s obvious that he is not happy about Chopper’s decision. He walks around the Sunny all day, anxiously flicking his lighter, but seems to grow even more restless when he has nothing to light it on. Nami feels almost bad, knowing that Chopper entrusted Sanji’s confiscated cigarettes to her. 

Although he would never admit it, Nami wonders how much of Sanji’s anxiety is related to Zoro, whose condition has barely improved since the still-ambiguous incident in Thriller Bark. Chopper—whom Nami suspects is especially shaken after his encounters with Hogback and the zombies—has been strict with Zoro as well. Confined to the sick bay and forced into sobriety, Zoro spends most days asleep or grumbling that he is “losing progress” in his strength training. 

When Nami brings him dinner the final night Sanji is out of commission, it’s obvious that their begrudging mutual care comes more than a little awkward to Zoro. 

“Is the cook not making these?” Zoro asks, gesturing to the plate of rice balls Nami places in front of him. 

“Chopper won’t let him in the kitchen. Why? Got a problem with my cooking? I don’t care if you’re injured, you know, I’ll still charge you–”

“That idiot didn’t get himself killed, did he?” 

Nami raises a brow. “Nope. He’s in better condition than you.” She scans him. “Still sticking to the story that nothing happened with Kuma?” 

Zoro grunts, avoiding her eyes and chomping on a rice ball.

Nami lets it go. That’s one idiot she can’t get through. She knows, when Zoro asks her if Luffy has eaten enough, that Zoro has his own problems to deal with.

After dinner, Nami and Franky dock the Sunny at the nearest island, a small forested pot of land right off the edge of the Florian Triangle, to restock medical materials. Apprehensive of any surviving Thriller Bark Pirates and hoping to keep public attention at arm’s length, they drop anchor on the island’s southern beach instead of the town port. The moon has hidden away today, as if following their lead, so the crew moves swiftly under the cover of the dark, cloudless night sky and sheer starlight.

Without Zoro to cover his usual night watch, Nami volunteers to take his place. Luffy begins to complain about her greed—“C’mon, Nami, isn’t all that treasure from Thriller Bark enough for ya?”—but stops him briskly when Nami says she’ll do it for free. 

“Everything okay?” Luffy says slowly, a concerned knot forming between his brows.

“I’m not that greedy!” Nami shouts.

In all honesty, Nami does have an ulterior motive. 

She’s looking to solve her problem, whom she suspects will drag himself to the galley at a godforsaken hour. Nami settles into the observatory deck with a map for the night, waiting patiently for him to appear.

At four in the morning, he takes the bait.

“There are orange slices in the fridge,” Nami says.

Sanji jumps, scrambling to move something behind him. He is leaning up against the kitchen counter in a loose sweater, his back lit only by the warm glow of the range hood light.

“Nami,” he greets, laughing nervously. “Why are you up this early?” 

“I could ask you the same.”

“Chopper’s letting me back today.”

This, Nami knows, is true. She confirmed it with Chopper when she asked him for the materials she needed for her trap. 

“Hmm,” Nami says. “Still, pretty early to get started on breakfast, even for you.”

Nami hops onto the counter, noting the way Sanji’s cheek twitches, likely in annoyance about the sanitation of his kitchen. If he can sneak around, she can sit where she pleases, Nami figures. 

“So. Why are you hiding from me, Sanji?”

“I’m not hiding.”

Nami raises a brow. She reaches behind him and snatches the pack that he hastily hid in his pocket when she came in. 

“Hey,” Sanji protests, with no real bite.

Nami waves the cigarettes in Sanji’s face while making an exaggerated sound of disappointment. He should know better than trying to trick a thief.

“Didn’t Chopper ban these? How did you even get these?”

“Ah… I have a pack hidden in my pillow.”

“You have a problem.”

Sanji, who has been hiding his face in one of his palms, looks down at her with a boyish smile. “In doses.”

Nami tries to stifle her laugh, but finds it escaping into the small space between them. This makes her laughter all the more traitorous, as she becomes acutely aware of how stealing the cigarette—slanting off the counter, her ankles hooking under the drawer handles below—has gotten her very close to Sanji’s shining eyes and gently curled mouth. 

She argues with herself that she must have acted on muscle memory, drawing on a history of sweet-talking easy men and lonely women—albeit, back then, with more caution and greed on her end. A younger Nami would never allow herself this unpracticed intimacy, so natural that it can only feel clumsy. That is the only way to describe what should be precarious here: how far she has leaned toward Sanji; the muscle of his arm tensing up to catch her, as it came up earlier to rest beside her on the countertop; and the clean, plain tenderness in Sanji’s eyes. 

After a moment of consideration, Nami sighs and, without pulling away, places the cigarette between her lips. The end of it grazes Sanji’s jaw, making him wince, as if he were expecting the unlit cigarette to somehow still hurt him. Nami briefly considers what experiences created such vigilance in him, as she tilts her head back and pretends to take a drag. She exhales a fake puff of smoke, Sanji’s cheeks briefly sporting the imprint of her cold breath.

“Now I’ll get in trouble, too,” Nami says. 

The corner of Sanji’s mouth twitches with what Nami thinks is amusement. She doesn’t dare ask about the darker fog that dawns on his face, or the feeling that the air has suddenly grown warm and thick.

“I owe you,” Sanji says quietly. “I don’t want Chopper to worry. He already has his hands full.”

Nami lets her instinct guide her in what to say next, without parsing too heavily through the quieter implications of Sanji’s words.

“I saw Zoro earlier in the sick bay, when I brought him dinner. He seems well, since he had enough energy to complain about the rice balls I’ve been making.”

“Yeah? Damn mosshead. He better have eaten his share.”

“Point is, he’ll be okay.”

Sanji grunts. “He’s Zoro.”

“Well, Chopper is tough, too. Don’t take him so lightly.” 

Nami knows, as much as Sanji does, that neither of them can stand mercy if it is for themselves. This is why she does not say what she means by that—what they both know is actually being hidden here—and instead lingers on Sanji’s expression, pulled into her vision by fleeting streaks of warm light from the stovetop. The bruises along his cheek trail up to where something indiscernible hangs in his narrowed eyes, carving out an acute picture. He looks so troubled, so anxious, that Nami comes to the jarring realization that Sanji, like her, is still so young.

Nami clenches her jaw, closes her fist, and breathes. Shifting the cigarette between her teeth, she places a hand on Sanji’s chest and stares up at him with a firm determination. When Sanji stills and finally meets her eyes, she can barely feel the rise and fall of his breath, obscured by the pounding of his heartbeat.

“Let me help, Sanji.”

He seems to understand in that moment that she has seen through his farce from the beginning. He can’t hide well, even in the dimness of this room. Nami has finally figured out the surreptitious parts of him, after all this time, in the gradual ways they have shared every sort of secret. Sanji is always a flame in the darkness.

Hesitant, like a butterfly nearly upon something dangerous, Sanji takes both her hands in his. Nami lets him lead her to the hem of his sweater.

“I’m not doing anything weird,” Sanji murmurs. “Trust me. It’s easier if I show you.”

Nami’s legs press back against the kitchen counter, hyperaware of the sudden proximity. Sanji’s hips balance against her thighs as she gingerly lifts the sweater, revealing the stretch of his stomach. Sanji winces as she shifts forward to slip the collar and sleeves off of his taut shoulders. Her fingers graze against the muscle of his arms occasionally, and she feels him tremble with effort.

When his sweater has been discarded on the kitchen counter, Nami understands what Sanji meant, as she takes in the sight of his bare torso. Gauze drapes across his abdomen, unfurling at the top of his chest, where he has already undone the first few rows of dressings himself. Here, the hints of a long, deep wound peek out, along with a map of bloody valleys and lakes leading downward from his collarbone. The stench of antiseptic alcohol masks what must surely be an awful smell.

He looks like shit.

“You look like shit.”

Sanji offers a weak smile. “You don’t think I clean up nice like this?”

Nami sighs around the cigarette. “You have a lighter on you, right?”

“Who’s the one with the problem again?” 

But, with a flinch of effort, Sanji fishes his lighter from his pocket anyway. He surrenders the gauze and antiseptic he’s been hiding behind him as well. Nami takes it all and drops it in her lap. Her fingers, nimble and fast, begin working on two things at once; one hand raises to cradle Sanji’s cheek in her palm, while the other begins undressing his wounds. Silently, she thanks the years of solitude that gave her familiarity with nursing her own injuries, and her time as a thief, for making her an efficient multitasker. It serves as a helpful grounding experience as she catches the flash of Sanji’s sleepy eyes in the low light of the range hood.

The wound underneath the bandages is worse than Nami could have imagined. A nasty stab wound splits Sanji’s chest, surrounded by dried blood and angry, red skin. His stitches have reopened. Nami can’t help but eye the little distance between the wound and Sanji’s heart.

His secret unravels: why Sanji went looking for the medical materials Nami set up in the galley, the way he skated around Chopper, how he worried about Zoro’s condition, and the caginess around patching up his injuries. Nami hadn’t understood, from the beginning, why Sanji was hiding how he was obviously fixing himself up, or why he was doing it in the kitchen, of all places. Sanji has willingly invaded the sanctity of his safe place, his precious haven, hoping to tend to and hide his pain away from everyone else.

Away from the reason he got that stab wound.

Nami swiftly raises the hand resting on Sanji’s face to grab the cigarette from her teeth. Tapping the end of it against the corner of Sanji’s mouth, Nami stares at the part of his lips.

“Open,” she tells him.

The distraction works momentarily, as Nami slips the cigarette between Sanji’s teeth and swipes her thumb over his stubble. Sanji looks dazed, although Nami can’t tell if this is because of her or the catharsis of the nicotine. It is only when Nami tilts his jaw back gently and lights the cigarette, while she swiftly presses a wad of antiseptic to his wound, that the pain finally registers, and a sharp hiss escapes Sanji’s gritted teeth.

“For the pain,” Nami explains, watching Sanji muffle a grunt in a drag of smoke.

Sanji tries at a smile when he looks down at her. His eyes are half-mast and foggy. Nami turns her attention back to his wound, meticulously dabbing the alcohol against each part that has reopened. 

“So kind,” Sanji mutters. “You’re my salvation.”

“You’re one to talk. I’m the reason you got hurt this bad in the first place. You’ll need these stitches redone, even after I help disinfect and wrap you. It’s lucky it only opened in the front, or I’d have to spin you around like a top.”

“This happens all the time, though. Just battle wounds.”

“Don’t even try that.”

Sanji’s breathing grows quick and strained under her fingers when Nami presses the antiseptic against the last, but particularly bad spot. Nami mumbles comforting noises absentmindedly, bottling the alcohol and reaching behind Sanji’s back. 

“I need to wrap the wound now.”

Nami clears her throat and shows him the gauze for proof.

As Sanji’s cigarette dangles from his lips, the hanging ember catches light on his amused expression. It squares him right and blue, a low tone of amber slight across his cheekbones. 

“Wanna spin me?”

Nami strongly resists the urge to hit him in the chest. “Just stay like that.”

Sanji nods. His eyes grow wide as Nami scoots toward him on the counter. 

“I have to wrap the gauze around your back, so I need you to be close.”

“Nami, you don’t have to—”

“Let me help,” Nami repeats from before.

Resigned, Sanji says nothing further. Nami shifts to make room for him between her legs, terribly slow and careful in an attempt to maintain some distance. This proves difficult, as she finds that the only way to balance on the counter and get a good view of Sanji’s back is to hold him close—very close at that, with one arm steady on his side and her chin hooked over his shoulder. 

”Is it okay if I,” Nami says, gesturing down at the awkward angle of her legs. She has bandaged her own wounds plenty of times before, so it shouldn’t be too hard to do on someone else. She just needs to stabilize them both. This is an easy way to do it, is all.

“Yeah,” Sanji says, so low under his breath that she only hears him because of the ghost of his breath against her ear. “That’s okay.”

Nami wraps her legs around Sanji’s hips. Her knees shift to accommodate the line of his body, her thighs bumping around the rings of his ribs. 

“I’m starting now,” Nami says quietly.

Sanji hums, closing his eyes on a long drag of his cigarette. The muscles of his abdomen twitch when Nami makes contact. As she begins to wrap the gauze, she sidles closer, encouraging him to lean forward into her.

“I’m probably gonna get blood on you,” he mutters.

“Then you’ll get blood on me,” she dismisses.

Nami makes careful work of the bandaging. She has Sanji hold up the first layer of gauze until she moves onto the second, and tries to ignore the jolt that goes through her when their hands skim each other. The movement of leaning over his shoulder and looping the gauze around his back is awkward at first, but they fall into a comfortable rhythm. 

Slowly, Nami slips into the quiet of the kitchen and the static tingle of Sanji’s body against hers. She almost gets used to the radiating warmth of his skin and the stretch of his muscles under her fingertips, as she works to hold him steady.

Almost.

There is too much to notice about Sanji at every second in the process, from each close brush of his hair tickling her neck, to the stubble he missed on his upper lip shaving, to the impossible shade of blue that his cigarette’s faint glow illuminates within his eyes. Perhaps too observant, Nami manages to catch it all in the back and forth of wrapping the gauze, even though Sanji keeps his head turned away to keep the smoke out of her face. The distance leaves little to the imagination; Nami can even feel his breath rise and fall each time he cranes his neck to take a drag. When he chokes down a cry with another inhale, Nami feels the bottom of his ribs stutter against hers. Although the cigarette seems to relax him, Sanji still seems more distracted than Nami expected. 

“Does it hurt?” Nami murmurs, hoping to take attention away from this strange atmosphere that has descended on the galley.

“No, you’re doing a good job.”

“Are you just saying that because you like being this close to me?”

“It’s a factor. But I’m really just,” Sanji sighs softly, “grateful.”

Nami pauses, hoping to read his expression. To her surprise, Sanji is already facing her. She feels as though she has been caught when he watches her keenly, in such a way that the intensity is both exhilarating and overwhelming. Her cheek brushes against his bare shoulder, sending a twitch down her spine.

Nami hastily returns to the bandages, leaning over his shoulder again. Luckily, they’re on the last lines of gauze now. She hopes she can return to the rhythm and dismiss the swoop in her chest at the sight of him, but then. 

“Nami.”

“Hold still, I’m almost done.”

“Sorry. But Nami. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you from Absalom.”

So typical. Of course, Sanji would grit his teeth through a dagger wound and worry about her instead. 

Nami sighs, rounding back to his front. She pats his chest to test the tightness of the bandages, careful not to linger.

“I can save myself, idiot.” 

“I know you’re strong. It doesn’t make me worry about you any less.”

“You know, you’re going to kill yourself one day just because you want to take care of everyone, and I can’t stand to watch it. You might think I don’t notice, but I do.”

As Nami comes around Sanji for the final strip of gauze, she catches him frowning. 

“I’m a cook. My life is about service.”

“Your life is still yours. You treat it like it’s nothing. Why do you keep giving that up just to help the rest of us?”

Nami sighs a breath of relief as the gauze meets its final seam. She tapes it off, tucking in the edges neatly, and moves to pull away.

Sanji’s hand on her shoulder stops her.

“You do that, too,” he says quietly.

“What?”

Sanji’s fingers move down, ghosting over Nami’s upper arm, where edges of the old Arlong tattoo have scarred around her pinwheel cover-up. He follows the loop of the ink in barely-there circles. The warm drag of his hand leaves a trail of goosebumps on Nami’s skin, making her shiver. Then, he continues trailing down to the faded mark on her hand, from when Nami stabbed herself to save Usopp in Arlong Park. He finishes with a defiant tilt of his chin towards her, which would be infuriating if it didn’t steal the breath from Nami’s throat, drawing him that much closer to her. 

“You're an idiot,” Nami mutters. She can’t tell if she imagines the shape of her words echoing over the slope of his nose, like a puff of breath sounding out in crisp winter air. “That’s not the same. You know what I’m talking about. You’re trading lives.”

Her own hands, almost of their own volition, follow his lead. They circle the scars on Sanji’s chest through the bandages, counting memories—Drum Island, Skypeia, Thriller Bark. Too many times he traded his life for hers. 

Now there is a different look on Sanji’s face, but Nami has no clue what to do about this one. Sanji stares unflinchingly down at her, his eyes flitting between the corner of her mouth and her eyes. As if his touch burns Nami every time, the way Sanji’s restless hand finds Nami’s in the shadows is another unspeakable riddle. 

“To me,” Sanji says, “I’m not trading lives when it comes to you. I want to live, and that’s the only way I can.”

“What are you saying?” Nami whispers.

“Nami.” 

Sanji releases the sound of her name as something deeply intimate, a secret for the two of them. That dropped edge to his tone, the faint ending. Voice soft, eyes steady. Sanji looks very grown-up, very scared. 

Sanji leads Nami’s hand to his jaw, gentle and torturously slow, as if to let her pull away if she wants. A thought crosses Nami’s mind that she should tell him to take it easy, to avoid agitating his fresh dressings, but she finds herself, in the sudden silence, wanting to take his offer. To reach out and feel what the hard line of him feels like in her palms. To seek her answer with her hands instead of words. 

Nami settles her hand on his cheeks and figures the magnetic pull must be calling him as well, as he nudges his face into the cradle of her palm. The air catches in Nami’s throat at how her body somehow seems to know this sensation, how the familiarity of what she has never felt before is something she never could have consciously imagined herself. The instinct has her drawing even further into him, the last slice of space closing between them. Sanji’s hands slide down her waist, and she exhales, her ribs molding into the indents of his palms. 

In a flash of clarity, Nami wishes she could freeze this moment in time: two hours before sunrise; his legs pressing hers against the kitchen counter; her lips an exhale from him. She only has to lean forward that final stretch and chase down her final answers, but the simplest knowledge sits between them. Nami is holding her breath in the interim, before everything changes forever, before she has to admit just how much he shakes her to her core. 

But he knows. He has to know.

Resting her weight against Sanji’s chest, lurching so far forward into him that the countertop feels like a cliffside, Nami thinks slipping feels worse than the fall. 

Then, the kitchen door swings open.

“Hey, Sanji, you’re back! Did you already start breakfast?”

Sanji jumps to the stove. Nami fumbles to steady herself, her heart wild in her chest. A flash of red hops onto the countertop next to her.

“Oh, hey, Nami,” Luffy says casually. “So, what do we have to eat?”

Sanji, red in the cheeks, says through gritted teeth, “Oranges.”

Luffy beams. His arms start reaching forward, but he suddenly frowns and snaps them back to his sides. He stares at Nami solemnly. 

“I vowed on my dream to become King of the Pirates that I would never steal Nami’s oranges.” He frowns, the string of his straw hat riding up to his chin. “But I’m really hungry, ‘cause now, all I can think about is breakfast.”

“Why don’t you just pick some oranges from the grove?” Nami snaps.

Luffy blinks at her. His attention flits to Sanji, whom Nami would curse for being so hopelessly easy to read, if it weren’t for the fact that neither of them stands a chance against their captain, anyway. Luffy’s bright eyes, keen and penetrating, continue to flicker between the two of them until his face steadily stretches into a smile. 

“Okay,” Luffy says brightly, sliding off the counter. “See ya.”

When Luffy ambles out the kitchen door, he shuts it with one stretchy palm. 

Nami follows Luffy’s lead. Her name is already on Sanji’s lips when she slips off the counter and away from the galley, just barely missing his cloying hands. The imprint of his breath on her nose, of his grasp heavy against her sides—still hot on her trail. 

But, just Nami’s luck, she runs into Luffy on her way to the surveying room. He catches her at the stairs.

“Hey, Nami,” Luffy calls cheerfully. “Do you know when breakfast is going to be?”

“Um, no idea.”

Luffy tilts his head, wielding those big, round eyes. “Oh, I thought you were helping Sanji in there.”

Feeling her cheeks flush, Nami clears her throat. “Why are you up so early anyway?”

“Wanted to see Zoro in the sick bay.”

Nami fights off images of an innocent Luffy, just looking to get to the sick bay through the kitchen, and walking in on Nami in a very compromising circumstance. 

“Sorry about that,” she mutters.

“It’s okay. I’ll just beat him up for trying to die on me whenever Sanji is done with breakfast.”

“I get that,” Nami says sympathetically, and moves to leave.

“Hey, Nami. You haven’t looked me in the eye once since we started talking. Something up?”

When Nami first met Sanji, she compared him to the sun. She realizes now that it is Luffy who truly fits the title. Sanji’s coaxing is an ebb and flow, a slow, ruminating inquisition, but Luffy’s questions are a spotlight, like the demands of the wide horizon lightening for a new day. Nami supposes there is simply a different kind of freedom for the restless. 

Luffy, the boy whose ambition never sleeps, seizes the truth with both hands. Whether someone like that takes or lets go afterwards is a mystery to Nami.

“Don’t worry about me, Luffy,”

“Man, you’re just like Sanji. He would say the same thing.”

Nami cracks a smile. “You think so?”

“Yeah, I don’t get that at all.” Luffy peers at her, wide-eyed. “You know, Nami. You’re a pirate now. There’s nothing wrong with taking what you want if it’s right in front of you.”  

—

That night, Nami steals one of Sanji’s cigarettes from his suit jacket, which he has left slung haphazardly across a chair in the dining room. After a second thought, she takes the jacket with her, too. She climbs the front of the ship clumsily, hands full. 

From the Sunny’s figurehead—higher and sturdier than the Merry’s—she stares off into the water. 

In the waves, she sees Bellemere poorly washing and preparing sweet potatoes. It is the one vegetable she can’t make right, besides tomatoes (as those are a fruit by technicality). Tired from making lunch, Bellemere rests with Nami in her lap.

“Nami, my baby, what should we eat tomorrow?” she asks, and then begins listing tons of dishes.

In the bleak winter moonlight, Nami rests her weight on her stomach, full. Three is a good age for a first memory.

If Nami did not know better, she could relive every bit of it in her body, where it faded into hunger and power; the legacy of childhood, desperately attaching her to goodness. Growing up and bearing witness to her guilt, with her best secret as the thing she was the worst at saying. It didn’t sit right, once Bellemere died, to have the words on her tongue: I love you. Nami lived through money and schemes, and let them hate her. She couldn’t have realized it at all, caught in the contours of fate and responsibility, that the village knew all along, had even listened for it: I love you.

A flash of gold catches Nami’s eye. She traces it to the orange grove, where a spool of fine, blonde hair weaves through the trees, careful and illuminating. There is so much abundance, even as he takes. 

“Bellemere,” Nami whispers into the night sky, “Could you forgive me?”

The trees rustle, so riotous that the chorus sounds like a single voice. The creak of the galley door swinging open joins them, and Nami listens quietly, for the first time in her life, without fear.

When the moon kisses the horizon, Nami retreats to the women’s cabin, the cigarette long discarded, Sanji’s jacket nimbly returned.

“It’s worth it, right?”

Nami does not say the greater part aloud, but somehow hopes Robin hears her anyway.

They are hypocrites, people like them, trying to teach the very thing they do not yet understand themselves. What courageous fools.

Robin looks at Nami—really looks at her—and lets loose a great, big laugh. Then, she says something to Nami that lingers, too reminiscent of home. 

But, for now, Nami puts it aside. She has a decision to sleep on.

—

Nami dreams of Nojiko.

In the dream, Nami is back in her childhood home, fidgeting at the dinner table. The small platter of food in front of her is untouched. She recognizes this scene, actually—the night before she left Cocoyashi, with Nojiko in that scraggly, white tank top. Nojiko made roasted duck in orange sauce, the first sign that Nojiko knew Nami had already decided to leave.

“Eat the good stuff,” she chastises Nojiko. 

“I should be telling you that.”

Nami laughs a little under her breath. “Stop trying to act like her.”

A pause.

“Sorry,” Nami says.

“Just eat.”

Nojiko’s expression is tight, held together with indignation. At times, Nami wonders if this is the same face—jaw set, eyes narrow, one side a little tenser than the other—that Bellemere saw in her. 

Nami pokes at her duck with her fork. The haze of the dream obscures the tactile feeling of the house, but she has it committed to memory—the distinct smell, the roughness of the floors, the endless noise of the rustling orchard. Still, even in the dream, she notes the marks of Nojiko on the space, in potted plants and the headband on the nightstand. As Nami wonders if she could pick up on any signs of her own existence in the room, her eyes settle on Nojiko’s tattoos.

“You guys didn’t have to hide it from me,” Nami says. At Nojiko’s blank look, she continues, “That you knew about my deal with Arlong, I mean.”

Nojiko sighs. “You know why we did that.” 

“But I never would have run away.”

The tightness of Nojiko’s face smooths out as she scoffs, failing to fight the smile on the edge of her mouth. “That’s the problem with idiots like you.”

“What?” Nami says, a little defensively.

“You’re too selfless for your own good, putting up with that asshole for so long. Pretending we didn’t know was the least we could’ve done.”

Nami’s bristles fall. She lowers her eyes to the table. The confession comes quietly: “Sometimes, it feels like he’s still here. Like everything good is going to be ripped from me any second.”

Nojiko’s soft voice forces her eyes up to her face. “Good thing you’re stuck with me. Those new friends of yours seem pretty stubborn, too. I don’t think someone could rip them from you very easily.”

It is as earnest as they can get before things get awkward and stilted between them. The years do not become nothing over one meal. Still, Nami takes her first bite of duck, which is fatty and sweet, and hopes Nojiko can feel that Nami is grateful to have a sister like her. 

—

Nami finds Sanji in the aquarium.

She expects it, knowing he likes to watch the fish when he feels troubled. It’s a fitting thinking spot for him; he seems to melt into the luxurious velvet seats, in his fancy black suit, with a gloomy look on his face. Nami would laugh at how typical this is, if it were not for the profound sadness of Sanji and the pounding of her heart in anticipation.

“Hey,” she greets.

Sanji, whom Nami realizes has been staring at her, swivels his head away and squints at the fish in the tank. The reflections of the passing fish dance across his face.

“Hey,” Sanji says, in a voice Nami thinks is supposed to come off as ineffectual. To fill the uncomfortable silence, he continues, “Did you know sharks don’t have bones?”

Nami bites back a smile. “Really? But I’d rather not think about that.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Nami fidgets. “So. About yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Let me apologize,” Sanji starts.

“No, you’re… I mean you didn’t—or, what I’m trying to say is…”

Nami lets out a frustrated huff of breath. She searches Sanji’s eyes, where there is still so much to be found. 

“What if I’m making the wrong choice?”

“How can you know until you try?”

“You know, Usopp, somewhere along the line, you got pretty brave.”

“Nami,” says Sanji, more as a question than a calling.

“Can you come somewhere with me?” Nami asks.

The walk to the beach is not harrowing, just a short pace from the plank and onto a stone path. The moon is a sliver in the full sky, as if Sanji himself sliced it up and laid it on a bed of lush, fat clouds. Warm sand floods Nami’s toes when she kicks her shoes off and steps forward. She breathes in deeply. The air is stunningly clear.

Sanji follows soon after, shedding his jacket. They make it to the shoreline together, pacing side-by-side along the seashells on a quieter side of the sea. Sanji talks about the last time he was at the beach and his meal plans for the week. Nami listens and occasionally offers a question or thought, but remains distant as Sanji slowly pulls ahead of her. He drifts toward the water, letting the waves crash onto his ankles, and then recedes slightly to sit on the sand. 

There is a moment of quiet, of waves against the shore. Nami watches him closely now. The tide has risen higher before him, but Sanji holds himself steadfastly. The world ahead disappears from Nami’s vision for a moment. Like this, Sanji becomes a humbling thing, a delicate and brutal shape of glass melted from the pale sand. Just as the ground scrapes roughly against her skin, the setting sun settles on Sanji so gently that if Nami tried, she could reach out and gather the colors in her arms. 

It is a moment, heavy-breathed but silent otherwise, before Sanji leans back, lights a cigarette from his shirt pocket, and sighs into the smoke. His intense gaze fixates on the churning offing, as if trying to pin the thing whipping the water back and forth towards their legs. It takes every old thing with it back into the sea; each break of the waves is a beginning.

“Bellemere used to smoke.”

Sanji glances at her and lingers briefly before reaching to tap out his cigarette.

Nami stops him. ”It’s alright. It just reminds me of her. It’s not a bad thing.”

“I don’t feel it's completely appropriate to smoke while you talk about something like this.”

Nami smiles bitterly. She knows Sanji is being considerate, trying to turn the blame back on himself. The past few months have also made her aware of how he always props the kitchen door open when she comes by, as if to signal the safety of an escape route. He must have figured out what runs through her mind every time she walks into a room, even one like the galley, which should have become familiar and comfortable to her by now. 

It’s been instinctual for both of them. Nami’s vigilance was a lifeline for years, and if she knows anything about Sanji’s priorities, her safety is at the top of his list. Even when she knows, deeply and sincerely, that he wants nothing more than for her to stay, Nami always finds herself pulling away to somewhere cold and far-off. Sanji is almost an unwilling accomplice in this, whether his tethers take the form of chivalry or heartache. For a long time, Nami even thought that maintaining this comfortable facade of distance, in avoidance of what waited for them in the space between, would be enough to prevent the inevitable. 

Ultimately, it is a bad habit to encourage her affinity for running away, but it is worse for Nami to keep taking up the offer. 

“Honestly, I like it when you smoke, because it smells like home. I did hate it at first, I’ll admit. It made me homesick, so I couldn’t stand it. I already wanted to run away from the Merry.” Nami pauses, but knowing Sanji, who would probably jump to an apology, she continues quickly, “Eventually, I figured out the smells honestly aren’t that similar. Bellemere dusted dried orange leaves on her cigarettes—or she just smelled like them and the orchard all the time—so it lingered. I don’t know, but I know that eventually, your smoking made me homesick in a good way. It’s not the exact same smell, so it reminds me of her without being… too close to home. So don’t worry about smoking in front of me. Don’t even think about it.”

Nami finishes lamely, feeling heat creep up her cheeks. She is going against years of survival instinct, pushing down the voice that whispers, Run. She tries to ground herself in the sounds of Sanji next to her: the rustle of his crinkly dress shirt as he adjusts his posture, an exhale of cigarette smoke, his silence for a long moment. The quiet is only somewhat tolerable because she knows he must be thinking deeply about what to say.

“I’m happy that I can bring you even a little bit of comfort,” Sanji finally replies. “I hope you know I don’t take it lightly, so I’ll do what you ask.” 

His words feel as though he has just stripped her confessions down to their bones. Run. 

You’re so good with it, she wants to say, but she can only seem to think it, as if the words are precious and volatile. You’re so careful with my heart.

Nami, for one, has little experience tending to her heart. For a child in Arlong’s hand, pressure was a cruel teacher, and brutality the pedagogy. To go from surviving to living—learning how to nurture a life—was itself a feat of transformation, of struggle. 

But from the moment she boarded the Merry, Nami found herself longing for something even greater than the liberation of the sea. Even when she had nothing to hold her down anymore, her disobedient heart called for a freedom richer than treasure. 

Then came Sanji and the not-so-subtle indents where he had chewed through his cigarette, staring at Nami for the first time at the Baratie. The moment she burst into laughter, she felt the familiar rake of his eyes on her. It was novel, however, to have a man look for her voice instead of her face, and to exchange such strange chivalry for his own life. 

Sanji, who infuriatingly got Nami’s heart on something akin to crashing. Sanji, his hand grazing hers for the first time in her study, resting his head in the crook of her shoulder so that he could turn that current tumultuous. Letting her believe she could ever escape this, while he made her soft-edged.

Next to Sanji—hard to place but a man of his word, a terrifying flavor of permanence—Nami had sought this kind of freedom. She thought she needed to breathe when his heavens and oceans had become like drowning. More than that, Nami has long wanted the morning breeze, the brush of Sanji’s lashes on her cheek. She has come to realize the depth of her desire to swallow Sanji’s laugh in her throat when she kisses it down, missing the feathered edge of every word. 

His earnestness shakes her heart in a way she has never been able to understand. Somehow, every time Nami looks into Sanji’s eyes and considers the offer of his inquiring gaze, she cannot help but wonder what else freedom might look like.

This time, the feeling, which has already hit her a few times before, comes upon her so swiftly that it cannot be overlooked. 

“And, honestly, I don’t have a favorite tea,” Nami continues. “We couldn’t afford it often enough growing up. My favorite tea is whatever you make me, because you make it best.”

“Nami,” Sanji says slowly, as if he is finally putting the pieces together.

“My favorite food is roast duck with orange sauce. My favorite color is orange. I really am selfish, because I think I could’ve figured this out a while ago, but I just couldn’t admit it without you.”

Nami draws closer and closer to Sanji like the moon to the waves, a string between them now unraveled. She watches his eyes dilate as if there is no space in this universe for color, but somehow, she can still see the vast blue. The feeling in her chest must be of the same origin as this impossible case: happenstance, instinctual, inevitable. 

Under the same sky, just like the first time he spoke to her about trust and dreams, Nami feels this truth again: in defiance, Sanji has forged life through gentle, unshakeable kindness. Forever the warm part of the water and the coastline’s sparkling edge. 

Robin’s voice from last night echoes in Nami’s head: “A saying from the East Blue has been around for centuries: love is always a hurricane. Even if you try to avoid it, love finds a way to become very human.” 

“Sanji, I’m in love with you.”

When Sanji smiles at her, radiant, the universe speaks through him: Love has always been here waiting for you.

”Nami, don’t you know it already? I’ve been in love with you since the first time I heard you laugh.”

Nami’s heart is certain it must be kismet, the way the tide crashes towards them and pushes her even further into him. She gathers her legs underneath her and leans her forehead against his, in an act of muscle memory she surely inherited from a past life. It is just as natural to ask for her wish, with no time before Sanji grants it, pressing his lips against hers, gentle, solid.

Nami allows herself blind faith in the depth of Sanji’s touch, as infinite as the sea. She lets herself sink. She takes and takes, and sighs into her treasure like he is a gift.

They stay on the beach for hours, talking until low tide. Nami is learning to be honest. Entreaty, need. That assumption of courage is un-Herculean.

By the time dawn is just shy of greeting them, the sky a rich, brilliant blue, Sanji has relaxed into her. Freedom kisses the side of Nami’s hand, blonde hair falling into her lap.

—

present-day

“Nami, ya coming?”

Already ahead, Usopp glances back at her. Sanji squeezes Nami’s side comfortingly when Luffy and Zoro cast them the same curious look, already on the shore.

“Yeah, just need a second, Usopp. Gotta handle something first.”

“Nami’s too busy kissing the cook,” Zoro drawls. 

A hand appears to pinch Zoro’s cheek, making him yelp, before disappearing into a flourish of cherry blossoms. Luffy cackles.

“Go with me, please,” Nami says to Sanji.

The plank lowers as everybody shuffles off the Sunny, one by one. Nami trains her eyes on the ground. She knows the sand will not rush her. The world is so much bigger than this. 

Now, it’s their turn. Sanji’s legs float into her vision as he patiently waits a few steps in front of her. He sinks slightly into the sand. 

“No jellyfish or sea kings?” Nami jokes, her hands digging into her upper arms until they hurt.

When she finally looks at him, he is undeniably gorgeous. With sea salt skin and the early morning breeze between his clothes, he burns white-hot in the glaring sun behind him. His body melts into the horizon this way, into a single, bright expanse that stretches across every inch of Nami’s vision.

Sanji’s voice is gentle as he gestures for her and says, “Just me. I’ve got you.”

With a deep breath, Nami takes his hand and steps forward. The cry of seagulls overhead is so loud that they might as well be at her side. She imagines it, and then sees it, witnessing. Sanji pulls her through a group of seabirds, who, instead of scattering into the sky, begin to fly after them. It is an impossible miracle. At first, she shrieks and latches desperately onto his fingers.

But as the rest of the crew join them, like a flock of fledglings or a host of angels, a great burst of laughter wafts from within Nami’s chest, as if propelled by the air upon the birds’ wings, brought in like a hurricane. The seabirds cry out with her. 

Even with all of it—the sea and the horizon, the current and the storm, the face of defiance and the restless quiet—in ebb and flow, Nami wonders if she would have ever found this if she had not looked right at the sky in front of her. This infinite, electric blue smiles at her.

Nami has a suspicion—and it is only a suspicion, though it feels solid in her hands—that she already knows the answer. Laughing, she lets the feeling pull her forward into the horizon.