name your courage now

x

When Usopp was seventeen, he met a man who made him feel small. 

It wasn’t the first time in his life someone looked at him and found him wanting. But it was the first time elevator eyes and a sneer had caused a deep pang of uneasiness to take up residence in his gut.

“This guy?” the stranger had said to Luffy, incredulous. “Come on, you can tell just by looking between us that I have more to offer than he ever could.”

He was trying to cozy up to the rookie captain already making a name for himself across the blues. He wanted to tag along, take the easy street to adventure and infamy. He couldn’t seem to understand why Usopp, of all people, had a spot, while he didn’t. 

Until that point, Usopp had never had any compunctions about his own physicality. He had a runner’s body, lithe muscle that got him from Point A to Point B swiftly, and the excellent cardio required to scream every step of the way. He would never try to go toe-to-toe with someone like this man—a little taller than Zoro, a little broader in the shoulders, more muscled than the nineteen-year-old former pirate hunter by virtue of being about a decade older. 

But Luffy’s first mate had a devil in him that made him an actual walking natural disaster. This stranger just seemed like the type of bully who was used to using his size to get what he wanted, and his handsome, chiseled face when brute force failed him. 

Luffy had looked at the man the way Usopp imagined the sun might look at a satellite, a glancing interest in this tiny, inconsequential thing that decided to cut boldly across his view. 

Then he looked at Usopp and the shape of that regard changed completely, all warmth and light and safekeeping—the sun looking at one of its planets, Luffy looking at someone who was his. 

Usopp knew how special it was to have that sunlight in his life. He knew better than to think, even for a second, that the special one was him. 

x

Luffy’s head lolls off of Zoro’s arm, limp and unaware, at an angle that surely would have been uncomfortable for anyone who’s neck wasn’t rubber. Zoro tucks a hand beneath his captain’s chin and turns his head back so that he’s tucked properly against his shoulder. 

But the damage is done. Usopp can’t unsee it. Luffy looked like he was dead. 

Chopper is crying silently, brow furrowed with fear and frustration and more than a little secondhand hurt. He wipes the blood from the corner of Luffy’s mouth silently, and when he shuts his medical bag with a crisp click, his nakama know without being told that it’s as much as he can do for Luffy until they get him home. 

“That one,” Nami says suddenly, pointing at one of the terrified men cowering against the churned up earth. 

The second he’s singled out, he lurches into motion and tries to flee. If god had given him any good sense, he would have tried running much earlier. Brook’s sword sings through the air and pins him to the ground like a beetle to a corkboard, driven clean through his arm. 

He wails and the raw animal sound of pain and fear should do something, shouldn’t it? It should wake up their better nature, their humanity, the thing that separates them from monsters. At the very least, it should make them feel pity. 

But when Nami goes on, “That’s the one that stabbed Luffy in the back,” all Usopp feels is angry. 

“I have just the thing for a guy like that,” he says, and reaches into his satchel, where there is a whole arsenal at his disposal. In particular, there is a pop green he has never used before, because it has a voracious appetite and digests its food so slowly. 

Now, he thinks, it will have plenty of time to eat. 

all that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing

wild heart au

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x

Sanji has known Sabo for much less than a month, but he’s already become one of the very last people on earth that Sanji could imagine crying. He’s too big for that, too tough—the kind of boy Sanji’s brothers would admire, probably, one who isn’t afraid to dig in with his heels and fight dirty and use his teeth to win. Nothing like the weak-willed, tender-hearted, soft-skinned failure of the Germas. 

But Sabo’s eyes are red and puffy, for the split second Sanji gets a glimpse of them, and it’s shocking. The older boy turns his back on the rest of them, crouching by the fire and prodding it viciously with a stick. Ace, who saw where Sanji’s gaze got stuck, folds his face into an impressive scowl. 

“Don’t ask,” he says, in a tone that implies it is not a suggestion. 

“I won’t,” Sanji says quickly, hands clutching on the strap of his bag anxiously. Ace clocks it with a flick of his dark eyes and scoffs, but before Sanji can decide how he feels about it one way or another, Luffy’s arm stretches past him to give Ace a solid shove.

“We can only have one sad brother at a time!” Luffy declares. It seems like he can’t decide if he should whisper or shout, but Sanji secretly doesn’t think Luffy would know how to keep his voice down if someone held a gun to his head, so the result is a normal talking voice in a weird pitch. “Don’t make Sanji feel bad, too, or I’ll hit you!”

“You wanna die?” Ace grumps back, bearing his teeth like one of the animals they hunt for dinner, but he capitulates surprisingly easily. Sabo’s mood seems to have knocked him off-kilter. That’s probably why he doesn’t argue the brother comment. 

Sanji is pretty sure the older boys don’t like him very much, but Luffy makes up for it. Luffy isn’t quiet or shy about the things he hates or the things he likes, and Sanji would have to be deaf and blind to miss how much Luffy likes him. 

It makes him willing to put up with Ace and Sabo’s bad attitudes—willing to spend his free time climbing a mountain, picking his way carefully to the edge of the dense, looming rainforest, and cook meals for a group that is two-thirds suspicious and ungrateful—because then he’ll get to see Luffy’s big, silly smile. 

Sanji is quickly learning that he would do almost anything to see that. 

“His family is stupid,” Luffy pipes up. “They have all these weird ideas that Sabo should be like them , even though he’s already like somebody—he’s like Sabo. And they do mean things when he doesn’t pretend the way they want him to—today they forgot his birthday on purpose.”

He’s not being quiet enough; Sanji can see Sabo hearing every word. But Ace doesn’t shut him up, and Sanji can guess why. The tension in Sabo’s shoulders is unwinding, until he doesn’t look so much like a creature curled up to defend itself against a kick. Suddenly he’s just Luffy’s smart-aleck big brother again, who’s sitting slouched by the fire because he’s a little tired, or a little sad. And he’s listening to the inane ramblings of a scrawny seven-year-old boy as if they mean something very important to him. 

Luffy lifts his hand to cup the side of his mouth, inviting Sanji in on a secret, because he still thinks he’s being sneaky. Sanji feels a burst of fondness in his chest that he can’t help, like his insides are nestled in a warm stove, and leans in agreeably. 

“I don’t know why anybody who was lucky enough to have a Sabo would want him to be anything but Sabo. Sabo’s the best! Don’t tell Ace, though.”

Ace’s hackles go up. He doesn’t actually have porcupine quills but he might as well since he bristles just like one and makes it painful for anybody who sticks their hand too close to him. But then Sabo makes a smothered sound, shoulders shaking with laughter that he’s trying to keep behind his hand, and it defangs Ace instantly. 

He still calls Luffy a brat and cuffs him on the head as he walks by. It’s gentle by their standards, and Luffy’s skull just bounces with the motion like a volleyball, but Sanji pats him gently in the same spot just to be sure. 

Luffy reaches up to cling to his hand and beams up at him, this little pocket-sized star. 

“What are you going to cook for us today?” he asks enthusiastically, and the mention of food has his brothers looking over, too. Sabo is still a little pale and quiet, but his icy blue eyes aren’t flinching away from the rest of them anymore. 

every high and every low

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x

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Feel that?” Sanji asks.

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

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

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

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

“I felt that!”

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

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

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

where nothing hurts and nothing breaks

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x

“Remember,” the pretty girl with tangerine-colored hair says for the fifth time, her smile a fixed, gritted thing on her face, “Sanji is very small right now. The Devil’s Fruit effect isn’t going to wear off for another week at least. If you try to roughhouse with him the way you usually do, he will get hurt, and I will kill you with my hands. Understood?”

“You could try,” the green-haired man replies mildly. 

“Why are we leaving Zoro in charge of babysitting again?” the man with the long nose says, to no one in particular. “I mean, we can all agree that this is going to be an absolute disaster, right?”

Zoro scowls, but the skeleton says, “Right,” at the same time the man with the long white hair and bright orange horns says, “I mean, yeah,” and everyone else nods along. 

Yonji would have been furious to be made fun of in any capacity. Sanji holds his breath and waits for Zoro to snap at the rest of them, to use his size against everyone smaller than he is, but all he does is lean back against the railing and cross his arms. He looks unbothered to the point of falling asleep standing up.

It’s weird. 

“I’m not a baby,” Sanji thinks it’s important to point out. He’s eight years old, which is a lot of years. He thinks his years are longer than most people’s, because he hasn’t felt like the little kid he used to be in ages. That little kid grew up when mama died.

“We know,” the tall woman tells him, her eyes very gentle. She always looks at Sanji like she understands him completely. It’s nice, even if it makes him feel kind of sad. He wonders if she had big brothers who hated her, too, or if it was just her dad. He thinks it wouldn’t be polite to ask, so he doesn’t. “You’re practically a gentleman.” 

“Sanji can come shopping with us if he wants!” the reindeer says eagerly. He’s sitting on the robot’s broad shoulder and pats it like he’s inviting Sanji up there, too. They’re both small enough that Sanji could probably fit even without asking the rabbit-girl on the robot’s other shoulder to get down to make room. 

Weathered yellow fills his vision as the brim of a worn straw hat slips over his eyes. 

“Nope, it’s Zoro’s turn!” the captain replies brightly. That’s Luffy, with a scar under his eye that curves like a smile, and arms that don’t really look strong but can hold Sanji forever without getting tired. Sanji tips the hat back in time to look up at Luffy’s grinning face. “He and Sanji will have fun today and tonight they can tell us all about it!” 

a song to bring you home

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x

“Again?” Sabo whispers, trying to sound mad. Whether he sounds that way or not doesn’t actually matter, since he’s already lifting his blanket in silent invitation.

“Sorry, ‘Bo,” Luffy mumbles thickly. He wastes no time crawling onto Sabo’s thin mattress, and Sabo pulls the blanket back down around them both, tucking it tight to keep the chill away. 

Luffy attaches himself to Sabo’s side like a barnacle, tiny fists curled in his brother’s shirt as if he’s afraid something is going to swoop down and try to wrench them apart. Sabo huffs out a breath that fogs in the air and lets him. 

“Nightmare?” he asks after a moment. He keeps his voice quiet in case Ace is still asleep, even though his twin is the lightest sleeper on the planet. 

Luffy nods once, face buried against Sabo’s shoulder. He’s not trembling, but the way he’s holding himself completely still and silent is its own red flag. 

It’s easy to forget that Luffy is not actually as spoiled as he acts. He whines and cries and pouts like any other privileged little master, he’s bossy and clingy and demands to go where his brothers go even though they all know he won’t be able to keep up, and sometimes—oftentimes—it grates on Sabo’s very last nerve. 

But holding someone like Stelly up to someone like Luffy is like holding an orange up to the sun. There’s literally no comparison. 

If Ace were actually as annoyed by Luffy as he pretends to be, then he wouldn’t be the first one to roll his eyes and throw up his hands and stomp back to collect their youngest when he falls behind. If Sabo actually meant all the mean things he says when they have to waste precious daylight dealing with a stupid scrape on Luffy’s stupid knee, then he wouldn’t suggest the pilgrimage down to Makino’s bar because she has those colorful bandages that always make Luffy smile. 

Luffy is as much an orphan as Ace is—as Sabo pretends to be—and he was so desperate not to be alone that he was willing to die for their reluctant, backhanded friendship. He would run after them until his arms and legs gave out, and then at that point he would probably crawl, just so they don’t leave him behind. 

Stubborn, selfish, stupid Luffy. The unwanted little kid that Ace and Sabo have begun to shape all their days around. 

Something in Sabo’s chest hurts to know that Luffy is afraid. He tips his head and adjusts his arms so that the smaller boy is tucked more securely under his chin. Stars pinwheel slowly across the sky, winter constellations that Sabo will teach his brothers how to find once they manage to get their hands on a halfway decent telescope. There are clouds forming to the east, low and gray, that promise snow. 

“Sing,” Luffy mumbles petulantly. 

“You’re such a brat,” Sabo complains. But he doesn’t make Luffy go away, and it’s only another moment before he starts humming. 

Sabo doesn’t know a lot of music, having successfully dodged his piano tutor for the last two years straight, but there’s a song he overheard on the docks a few months ago that stuck. Some sailors were singing it while they worked. Sabo didn’t catch all the words, so he made up the rest.

He made the mistake of singing it within his little brother’s earshot only once, but once was enough. Now he may as well be a performing monkey, because for every birthday and campfire and boring afternoon and bad dream, Luffy requests the same thing. 

“Now you've got the chance to travel oceans,” Sabo half-says, half-sings, letting it settle somewhere between a story and a lullaby. “I hope the world’s as wide as you were hoping…” 

Luffy sighs, a slow, satisfied thing. The fear-frozen shape of him softens with every word. He’s asleep again within one verse. Sabo sings two more, just in case. 

x

The Orbit docks at Dawn Island. 

It’s a little farther out of the way than they usually sail, but there were very well-paying guests on board at what would have been the end of the cruise who wanted to be taken all the way to their home of Goa Kingdom. 

Captain Chas strikes up a conversation with the harbormaster, one seasoned sailor to another, and the harbormaster divulges that it might do him well to stay in port. The people of High Town love an excuse to spend their money on a good day, and with an upcoming visit from a Celestial Dragon, they’re even more inclined than usual to flaunt their wealth. Once word gets around that there is a luxury cruise ship at the wharf that offers fine dining and a cocktail lounge, they’ll show up in droves. 

“Make yourself scarce for dinner service,” the head chef warned Sanji very clearly. “These people will take offense as easy as breathing, and I don’t want to lose my best kitchen boy because some middle-aged noblewoman didn’t like the way his uniform was pressed.”

So once all the food was prepped and ready for service, and the staff was taking their last break of the evening before the rush, Sanji was shooed away by the grown-ups and told to entertain himself for the night. He goes easily enough, stopping by the bunkroom to change out of his white service uniform and into secondhand trousers and canvas shirt and boots. 

He doesn’t always get the chance to explore when The Orbit is at port, and he was warned to stay clear of High Town—but Sanji isn’t even looking toward the kingdom walls. He heads in the opposite direction, running down the pier toward the beautiful beach that stretches out of sight around the natural bend of the island. 

The waters are so clear. There are tropical flowers blooming along the coastline that add something fragrant to the sea-salt in the air. A gull cries overhead and Sanji imagines, just for a moment, what it would be like to find All Blue. 

Then he collides with someone hard enough that he goes sprawling backwards.

“Ow!” someone whines from right in front of Sanji. He lifts his head in time to look right into big brown eyes, all watery with hurt, as the little boy he ran into says petulantly, “You made me drop my fish!”

Bewildered, Sanji looks down. Sure enough, there are a handful of huge, colorful fish flopping weakly in the sand between them. They look too big to have fit in the kid’s scrawny arms in the first place.

“Sorry,” he says, for lack of a better thing to say. “The sand will come off easy when you scale them.”

The boy blinks. He rubs the rest of his crocodile tears away, smearing grubby fingers across a pencil-mark scar that curves beneath one of his eyes like a smile.

“Scale them?” he asks curiously. “They already have those.”

“No, you know, de-scale,” Sanji explains. “When you get the skin and scales off to cook them?”

He feels a little too big for his skin under the other child’s undivided inattention. Attention is usually a bad thing. Sanji has always been safer when no one knew he was there. He’s just barely gotten used to his kitchen supervisor hovering at his shoulder, reaching in to guide his hands away from a mistake. 

This boy is smaller than Sanji, though. Most of the people who want to hurt him are bigger. That makes it easier to talk to him.

“We just roast them on the fire and spit out all the yucky stuff!” the boy declares. 

Sanji thinks that’s the worst thing he’s ever heard. “What about the bones?” he says, not sure he’s ready for the answer.

“They’re crunchy but not big enough to choke on or anything.” 

Standing up abruptly, Sanji picks up two of the fish. They’re heavy, someone’s very lucky catch. The younger boy scrambles up, too, face contorted into a scowl and mouth opening around what is probably a very loud protest, but Sanji beats him to it. 

“Let me cook these for you properly,” he says firmly. “I’ll show you what fish is supposed to taste like.”

He watches wonder take over the boy’s face. He’s expressive, bouncing from one feeling to the next like he wouldn’t know the first thing about sitting still—not like the way Sanji’s brothers’ faces would always clutch onto anger or derision or mean-spirited glee for days, the way his father’s face was always chiseled into a displeased frown. 

This kid has cycled through half a dozen emotions in half as many minutes, and now he’s already moving onto something new. He smiles brightly, sand in his hair and tear tracks on his face and a gap in his smile from a missing tooth. 

“You’re a cook?”

Sanji nods, because that’s what he’s always wanted to be in his heart—but something in him that still shies away  from lying, even after weeks of pretending to be a displaced orphan to the kind people who took him in on The Orbit, makes him add, “Almost. I’m still learning. My name is Sanji.” 

“Sanji! I’m Luffy!” 

Luffy’s hands come up and catch on Sanji’s sleeve, sticky and stubborn, already tugging him in the direction Luffy wants him to go. Sanji has no idea, in that moment, that those hands are never, ever going to let him go. 

(If he did have any idea, he might have prayed again for the first time since mama died, just to say thank you.)

“Come meet my brothers,” Luffy demands, equal parts spoiled and sunny in a way that manages to just be charming. “But just remember, I found you first!” 

thank you for pulling me through

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x

skuuuullj0ke  Anyone know what this is?

gremlin energy✨✨ @ skuuuullj0ke check his pinned

existential dread but make it cute  @ skuuuullj0ke probably an apology

A handful of angry bees @ existential dread but make it cute Apology for what?? 

A handful of angry bees There was a loss in his family

A handful of angry bees Get some perspective maybe??

existential dread but make it cute  @ A handful of angry bees i paid like 200 dollars for my ticket and he canceled a week before the show

👻SOUL PARADE👻 @ existential dread but make it cute Literally his brother died whats wrong with you?

👻SOUL PARADE👻 @ existential dread but make it cute Also his team worked with all the event organizers to get everyone refunded asap so idk why youd choose to cry about money you already got back.

5924874392607 imagine spending 200 usd on soul king tix lmao 

gremlin energy✨✨ @ 5924874392607 i think you’re in the wrong place actually

skuuuullj0ke  Yikes