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It began with a broken blender.
Sanji glared at the cheap equipment he had bargained off a merchant in Loguetown. Every time he used it, he longed for the sleek machinery he had gotten accustomed to on the Baratie. The blender rejected anything larger than a peanut and forced Sanji to chop everything to size before tossing it into its maw. Most of the time, it sluggishly worked for a few seconds before needing a breather as it emitted a foul-smelling smoke.
Today, after Sanji hit it a few times, the blender gained a second wind, flying into action and sending its lid and its contents shooting up into Sanji’s face.
As Sanji contemplated whether he could technically murder an inanimate object, the door to the kitchen opened.
“Oh, is it a bad time?” Usopp asked, staring at the bits of fruit that clung to Sanji’s hair and face.
“It’s fine,” Sanji sighed, “Do you need anything?”
“I was going to ask for some salt, but I can come back at a better time,” Usopp stammered.
“What do you need salt for?”
“Demons,” Usopp quipped, then froze when Sanji arched an eyebrow at him, “Um, I’m making a really nasty bomb.”
“Well, good luck with your demons and your bombs,” Sanji said, rummaging through the cupboards and tossing him a small jar of salt.
Usopp didn’t leave immediately, fidgeting as he looked between Sanji and his arch nemesis, the blender.
“Do you mind if I try fixing it?” he asked, pointing at the root of all evil, the blender.
Sanji stared at him, “You can fix it?”
“I can try,” Usopp shrugged, “I like to fiddle with stuff. No guarantees.” He looked nervously at the downfall of humanity, the blender. “If I can’t fix it and end up breaking it, you won’t throw me to the sharks, will you?”
Despite being covered in mushy strawberries and bananas, Sanji began laughing, “I’ll cut off your fingers and toes first and make you walk the gangplank.”
Usopp looked down sheepishly. He had very long eyelashes, Sanji noted. He realized very suddenly that he didn’t know much about Usopp. The sniper spent most of his time in his workshop or with Luffy. Sanji had seen him tiptoe around Nami and Zoro, sweating when Nami glared at him, jumping when Zoro dropped his stupid weights on the ground after a set of reps. Was Usopp nervous around Sanji as well?
“Let me get this cleaned up and also get myself cleaned up,” Sanji said, “I’ll bring it over to your workshop and we can try to figure out how to fix this particular demon together.”
“Okay,” Usopp said, face brightening, “I can show you my new bomb too, guaranteed to send an entire fleet of marines to the ocean floor in .05 seconds."
“I look forward to it,” Sanji smiled.
Usopp’s workshop was surprisingly neat. Sanji had expected a bit more of a mad scientist vibe, having heard tiny explosions and curses coming from the small room on more than one occasion. Usopp had his tools tidily arranged on a workbench. Jars of powders lined a shelf, each of them clearly labeled and spaced equidistance from each other. Sanji snorted, the sniper was just as obsessive about his workshop as Sanji was with his kitchen.
“Is this the patient?” Usopp asked, face serious, “I’ll need to wash my hands before operation.”
Sanji chuckled, “Please save him, doc, he has a family.”
“I’ll do my best,” Usopp nodded, theatrically putting on gloves.
Sanji sat down on a nearby chair and watched Usopp take the blender apart, placing each of the bits and bobs on the table. He worked mostly silently, though he made little humming noises whenever he appeared to discover something interesting about the device. Sanji covered his mouth to stifle his giggles when Usopp stuck his tongue out in concentration, face scrunching up cutely.
“I’ve got it,” Usopp said suddenly. He held up a frayed wire, squinting at it in the light. He opened a nearby drawer, full of similar-looking wires. Sanji stood and peered into the drawer, watching as Usopp pushed wires aside and picked one that looked no different than the rest.
“How can you tell which one is the right one?” Sanji asked, “They all look the same to me.”
“Oh,” Usopp said, “I guess… It’s probably similar to you in the kitchen. All your spices and salts and ingredients all look the same to me, but you’ve worked with them for so long, it’s just second nature now finding the one you want, isn’t it?”
“I guess… I guess that makes sense,” Sanji said, sitting back down. Usopp returned to work, his deft fingers replacing the wire and slowly putting the blender back together. He had nice hands, Sanji thought, watching Usopp’s skillful and precise motions.
Usopp patted the blender when he finished, treating it like an old friend, and Sanji unexpectedly felt bad for thinking poorly of it.
“Shall we go give this bad boy a whirl?” Usopp asked.
“Let’s,” Sanji smiled. Usopp followed him to the kitchen, cradling the blender in his arms. Sanji plugged it in and added water and soap. “Ready for blast-off?” he asked. Usopp mimicked strapping himself in with a seatbelt. Sanji pressed the On button, and the blender hummed to life, its blades turning smoothly and consistently, no foul smell. Sanji turned to Usopp and gave him a one-armed hug, “You’ve done it. You genius, Usopp.”
“I’m not, it was just a loose wire, anybody could have done it,” Usopp said, ducking his head.
“If I gave the blender to the mosshead, it would come back sliced in half,” Sanji laughed, “You brought it back to life. Thank you.”
“Any time,” Usopp said, fidgeting nervously under Sanji’s arm. Sanji let go of him and went to dump out the soapy water.
“Thank you for the salt,” he heard and before he could offer Usopp a blended beverage of his choice, the sniper disappeared. Sanji turned back to the blender, a smile on his face, and vowed to be kinder to Usopp from then on.
---
It grew with the introduction of large beetles.
Sanji hated Jaya. On the Merry, he obsessively controlled for bugs, always prepared with the equivalent of weapons-grade plutonium for bugs in a spray bottle. He wasn’t a child anymore, huddling in a dark cell and listening to the sounds of scurrying and scratching around him, unable to make the terrors go away. He was older now, he could control his space.
This, however. This jungle. This infested space with centipedes longer than he was tall, spiders that had eyes the size of dinner plates. He felt something on his neck and shrieked, sprinting forward and crashing into Usopp’s back.
“You okay, Sanji?” Usopp asked, a steady hand on Sanji’s shoulder.
“There’s something on my neck, there’s something on my neck, there’s something on my neck,” Sanji moaned. Usopp peered behind him and plucked a leaf out of Sanji’s collar.
“Oh, I thought it was a bug,” Sanji said, heart rate calming down as he looked at the inoffensive object. He felt embarrassment crawling up his back now, certain that Usopp would make fun of him for his weakness. His father and brothers would. The Baratie chefs would. Zoro would.
Instead, Usopp sighed and nodded, “I hate Jaya. The wind when it’s going through the trees sounds like ghouls. I swear we’re being haunted.”
“Ghouls,” Sanji said, “You’re worried about ghouls when there are bugs that could kill you on accident by stepping on you.”
“Eh, I like bugs. They won’t hurt you if you don’t bother them,” Usopp shrugged. Sanji shuddered, and Usopp gave him a sympathetic pat on the back.
“Stick with me, the Greatest Enemy of Bugs, Sanji,” Usopp said cheerfully, “I’ll take care of them for you. You know, on Gecko Islands, there were tarantulas the size of buildings. I was the number one hunter from my village, I once killed a hundred in one day and roasted them for a village feast.”
Sanji laughed, feeling better about Jaya with Usopp by his side. As they looked for the Southbird in the dense undergrowth, the sniper would throw out an arm to stop Sanji in his tracks, then scurry forward to clear a bug on the path, picking up all manner of creepy-crawlies and jettisoning them into the forest or carefully shooing them away if they were too large. Never did he try to shove one in Sanji’s face to scare him. Never did he jeer or tease.
“Why aren’t you making fun of me for being scared of these little guys?” Sanji asked finally, watching Usopp carefully pick up a beetle and place it on a nearby tree.
“Well, you know, glass houses, shouldn’t throw stones and all that,” Usopp said sheepishly, “I guess I know what it’s like to be irrationally afraid of something.” He froze, eyes widening, “Not that your fear is irrational, it’s very rational, some bugs have deadly poison, and one bite will cause you to die in agony. Wait, no, sorry, I shouldn’t say that to you. Forget that, bugs are kind and sweet and harmless—” Sanji put a hand over Usopp’s mouth to stop his babbling and realized that he had very soft lips. He removed his hand quickly and beckoned for Usopp to continue forward, the two of them falling into companionable silence as they continued the search for the elusive Southbird.
Later, high in the sky, Sanji thought of kind words and soft lips and moved unconsciously, sending his sniper flying towards Nami, towards safety, and turned to face down a god and his lightning.
“Thanks, I needed a light,” he managed to say to Enel, feeling the tiny sparks of electricity skittering through his body. Usopp would have liked that line, he thought, as he collapsed forward.
---
It crystallized with the threat of departure.
Sanji’s blood boiled when he heard his captain tell Usopp that he could leave their crew, striking forward quickly to prevent Luffy from continuing to say something he would regret. But it was too late. He stood by watching helplessly as Luffy and Usopp, best of friends, Merry’s goofy brothers, fought until Usopp lay crumpled on the ground.
Steeling his heart against sorrow, Sanji turned away from Usopp, trying to forget the sniper’s words. “In the future, I will probably get you into even more trouble. There’s no doubt that you don’t want a useless crew member like me.” Useless. Useless. Useless. The words were a familiar dirge, a harkening back to a time when Sanji thought that to be useful meant to be inhuman. Sanji wanted to scream. “You’re not useless. You can hit a newspaper fluttering in the wind from a mile away. You can make potions that grant sleep or death, and you’ll never make a mistake with that difference. You can make everybody on the crew smile. You can fix anything under the sun. Maybe you can even fix me. I’m useless for not being able to show you that.”
When the man named Sogeking returned to save Robin, Sanji felt the world right itself and begin spinning properly on its axis. When he took Usopp’s place facing down Jabra, the words he wanted to say stuck in his throat. Instead, he simply managed, “Everyone has things they can and cannot do. I’ll do what you can’t do, and you do what I can’t do,” and prayed that Usopp would understand all that he meant to their crew.
Usopp came to find him in the kitchen when they were miles away from Enies Lobby. Sanji was still getting used to their new ship, full of fancy equipment including a new blender, but without the feeling of home that Merry gave him.
“Sanji,” Usopp said quietly, fiddling with a wrench in his hand, “I wanted to… I wanted to apologize for what I did. Leaving the crew and everything.”
“Sit,” Sanji replied, pointing to the kitchen table. He poured Usopp a cup of tea, placed a bag full of pistachios on the table, and sat down next to him. Without needing to be asked, Usopp began shelling the pistachios with him, making a small pile of green kernels on the table.
“I’m making fried pike with a pistachio aioli for dinner today,” Sanji said.
“My favorite,” Usopp said, stopping his work to stare at Sanji.
“Your favorite,” Sanji nodded.
Tears began welling up in Usopp’s eyes.
“I don’t deserve it,” he said, voice broken, “You should make something else, Sanji, I don’t des—”
In a swift movement, Sanji pulled Usopp toward him, muffling his words against his chest. Usopp froze, then melted into Sanji’s hold, shoulders shaking as he cried.
This felt right, Sanji thought, looking up at the ceiling of the kitchen with Usopp’s head tucked under his chin. He rubbed Usopp’s back until his sobs turned into light hiccups.
“I got your shirt wet,” Usopp said quietly.
“Unlike other people on this crew, I have more than one shirt,” Sanji replied.
“I’m okay now,” Usopp said, “Thank you, Sanji.”
Sanji didn’t let go, clutching Usopp even tighter.
“You hold us together,” he said quietly, “In your wonderful, unassuming way, you hold us together. You deserve everything, Usopp. I’m glad you’re back, and you don’t need to apologize to me.”
Usopp didn’t say anything in response, but wrapped his arms around Sanji’s waist, gentle hands on the small of his back.
“Are you comfortable?” Sanji asked after a while, feeling a twinge in his side at the awkward twist he had contorted his body into to be able to hug Usopp sitting next to him.
“Honestly, not really,” Usopp replied, “But I wasn’t going to say anything until you did.”
Laughing, Sanji let him go, reaching to wipe an errant tear from under Usopp’s eye with a thumb. The sniper gazed back at him, equal parts confused and hopeful, matching the same feelings in Sanji’s chest. Could this be something.
The sound of Luffy yelling outside made Sanji retreat back to the fish he needed to finish fileting and chill. Usopp returned to the pistachios, the methodic crack crack crack a constant comforting presence behind him as Sanji worked. When Sanji snuck a glance at the sniper, he smiled at the sight of Usopp, neck craning down, tongue sticking out as he concentrated on each nut.
“I’m finished, Sanji,” Usopp said eventually. Sanji nodded gratefully at him and scooped the nuts into a bowl, looking around for where he had placed the food processor.
“The new machines are cool,” Usopp said.
“They are. Though I miss Merry and the blender you fixed for me,” Sanji admitted.
“If you need me to fix anything, just let me know,” Usopp said, then shook his head, “Actually, Franky is the one you should go to, my bad, you don’t need me.”
“I’ll come to you,” Sanji said, “Franky will try to turn my food processor into a cannon.”
“That would be really cool though,” Usopp sighed.
“I’d rather not have projectile-based devices in my kitchen, thank you.”
“What about a little catapult that cracks eggs and flings them into your frying pan?” Usopp mused.
“If you make something like that, I’ll never let you back in here.”
Usopp laughed, gathering the pistachio shells and dumping them in the trash, making Sanji’s kitchen neat before bidding him goodbye.
---
It came to be with a painting.
Sanji spent hours moping after meeting Duval, reminded again of his ridiculous bounty poster.
“You okay, Sanji?” Usopp asked, finding Sanji staring at his poster, wondering who could have drawn such a travesty and whether they were currently suffering in Impel Down for the blight they cast on the world.
“Do I really look like this?” Sanji moaned.
“Of course not,” Usopp said, “I mean, this artist was probably just trying their best, but it doesn’t look like you at all.”
“Promise?” Sanji asked pathetically.
“Promise. You… you are much more handsome."
“Well that’s not saying much,” Sanji muttered, nevertheless preening at the compliment. He stood, determined to no longer sulk about something he could not control, “Can I make you something, Usopp?”
“I came to look for any dried peppers you might be able to spare,” Usopp said.
“Another bomb?”
“A great one,” Usopp grinned, “Permanent blindness for anybody in a half mile radius.”
“You’ll be careful when you set it off, right?” Sanji said, hand hesitating on his bag of peppers.
“I wouldn’t hurt our crew,” Usopp said, putting his hand over his heart, “I might make a tiny one for when Luffy and I play battle ships.”
“Good luck,” Sanji smiled, handing him the bag and delighting when their fingers brushed upon transfer.
Later that evening, when Sanji was cleaning up after dinner, Usopp came to find him again.
“How’s your bomb coming along?” Sanji asked.
“I, um, I got distracted from working on it,” Usopp said, fiddling with something in his hand.
“What’ve you got there?” Sanji asked, curious.
“Figured since I see you every day, I would be better at painting a bounty poster. Wanted to show you first. I might send it anonymously to the Marine headquarters and see if they’ll use it instead of that weird one.”
Heart racing, Sanji accepted the paper from Usopp and turned it around. He gasped. It was him, actually faithful in its depiction, standing by the rail of the Thousand Sunny, gazing at the ocean. His hair blew in the wind, exposing both eyebrows. A small smile played on his face, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his lips.
“I’m more of a sketcher than a painter,” Usopp said, shifting from foot to foot, “So I had some trouble with the color. The blue doesn’t quite capture your eyes, but I ran out of azurite. I hope it’s okay. It’s not a professional job, but hopefully you like it better than your other bounty poster—”
Sanji leaned forward, praying that he had read the signs correctly. He touched his lips to Usopp’s and felt him gasp, then sigh, then press forward ever so slightly. Sanji reached for Usopp’s face, cupping it in his hand as he continued the kiss, then moved his lips to Usopp’s cheeks, his forehead, his nose, took Usopp’s hand and kissed the top of his knuckles.
“Thank you, Usopp,” Sanji said, “You painted me too handsome.”
“I painted what I see,” Usopp said simply.
Sanji kissed him again for that horribly wonderful thing to say. Kissed him until Usopp asked him “why me?” and then held him and whispered to him and explained why him. Because you are kind and thoughtful to a fault. Because you can do anything in the world with those hands and that mind. Because with you I feel safe and happy and known.
And for those reasons, when he saw Usopp disappear after Kuma swung one huge arm in his direction, Sanji lost control, sprinting toward the Shichibukai, channeling all his anger and fear for his friend, his lover, his sniper into a kick that resulted in nothing but a sudden journey hundreds of miles away.
He woke up on Momoiro Island, resolving to believe that Usopp was still alive, and trained for two years to become strong enough to protect him the next time they were together again.
---
It bloomed when they reunited. It being love. It being a relationship that was comfort coupled with the understanding that the other needed constant comfort. It being a companionship underlined by gifts, small touches, reminders of adoration.
Sanji smiled at the tea he had made. It had taken him some time to come up with this brew, spicy and strong, a mixture of chili and lime and coconut and toasted green tea. Usopp said everything that he made was good, was his new favorite, but Sanji could now recognize the signs of when Usopp really enjoyed something, a cute scrunch of his nose, a glance toward the sky as if thanking the heavens, a subtle shiver. Sanji kept a careful record of Usopp’s Actual Favorite Things.
He wandered out of the kitchen, the teacup balanced on his tray. He managed to dodge Luffy, lying to him that the cup held medicine, apologized as he scooted by Nami and Robin who looked at him with knowing eyes, and spotted his partner on the top deck, playing around with a machine, back hunched, tongue sticking out. Sanji looked around stealthily, before moving forward to kiss Usopp on the cheek, cradling his head with a hand and holding aloft the tray with the other. Usopp laughed, reaching up for Sanji and placing gentle fingers on his cheek.
“Hey there handsome,” Sanji said, sitting down next to Usopp and planting one more kiss on his lips. He offered the teacup to Usopp, who put his tools down and wiped his hands on his overalls before carefully taking the cup.
“Thank you,” he said with a shy smile before taking a sip. Sanji sprawled out, propping his head on his hand, and watched Usopp drink. He saw the scrunch of his nose, the glance upwards, the slight shiver of happiness. A success.
“Good?” he asked.
“My new favorite,” Usopp replied.
Sanji launched into the ingredients and the preparation method, knowing Usopp cared just as much as he did about intricate processes that turned many simple things into one complex product. Usopp asked questions about the chili used, the caramelization from toasted coconuts dipped in sugar, what temperature worked best for the precious Wano green tea Sanji used sparingly, ever curious. Sanji marveled at how they could talk about limes for an hour, settling closer and closer to each other as they chatted until Usopp was resting against his chest.
“What are you working on?” Sanji asked, when Usopp put the cup down and intertwined their fingers.
“It’s a foot massager,” Usopp said sheepishly, “You said your feet have been getting sore when you stand since all that freezing cold nonsense on Punk Hazard. It doubles as a mat so you can stand on it in the kitchen when you’re cooking. I’m trying to figure out the intensity levels, might need to ask Franky for help, but I wanted to try and do it all myself first.”
“Is it for my birthday?” Sanji teased, warmth like a noon sun in his chest. Usopp looked up at him, “N-no, it’s just… it’s just for you. I have other things for your birthday.”
“Tell me how it works,” Sanji said, gathering Usopp even tighter in his arms, prepared to fall in love even more as Usopp’s eyes lit up, a wide smile grew on his face, and he launched into his explanation.
It… was everything he wanted and more.