Chapter 1
The sea was the color of a held breath, flat and bright, the kind of afternoon that the Grand Line produced rarely enough that everyone on board stopped what they were doing and noticed it.
Usopp noticed it first, which meant he started talking immediately.
"I've seen this exact color of water before," he announced to nobody in particular, but loudly enough for Luffy, who was spread-eagle on the lawn, to hear. "Three years before you all met me. I was sailing solo — you wouldn't know the ship, she was legendary, the Red Fang—"
"She's never been a legend before," said Nami without looking up from her charts.
"She was legendary to me."
"That's not what legendary means."
"I was on the Red Fang," Usopp continued serenely, "and I encountered a stretch of ocean exactly this color, which the locals call the Sea of Held Breath, because any creature that swims through it has to hold its breath or—"
"Fish don't hold their breath," Chopper said.
Usopp pivoted without breaking stride. "These fish did. Evolutionary adaptation. Because the water was so peaceful that exhaling disturbed the atmosphere. Scientifically documented."
"By who?"
"By me. I'm a sniper. I have good eyes."
Chopper considered this. "That's actually not how science works," he said, but he looked uncertain enough that Usopp counted it as a partial victory.
From the kitchen, the smell of something good drifted across the deck — garlic, olive oil, something bright and herbed underneath. Sanji had been at it since early afternoon, which usually meant he was cooking for the pleasure of it rather than the schedule. These were, in Zoro's private assessment, the best meals. Not because the food was better — it was always good — but because Sanji in a good mood cooked the way Zoro liked to spar: deliberately, with full attention, with something that wasn't quite showing off but was adjacent to it.
Zoro had not said this out loud and would not.
He was currently asleep against the mast, or performing sleep with enough commitment to make the distinction academic.
"SANJI!" Luffy had somehow appeared in the kitchen doorway, rubber neck stretched to examine the stovetop. "What is that."
"If you touch it I'll kick you into the ocean."
"It smells AMAZING."
"Thank you. Don't touch it."
"Can I have some?"
"At dinner. Which is in three hours."
"That's so far away."
"That's when dinner is."
Luffy's neck retracted. He stood in the doorway for a moment with the expression of a man grappling with a philosophical problem that had no solution. Then he turned and went to bother Usopp, which was the correct choice, because Usopp was always good for a solid forty minutes of entertainment and didn't threaten to kick him overboard more than twice in a sitting.
Sanji turned back to the pan.
The truth, which he would not say because it would be embarrassing and he had a reputation to maintain, was that he liked cooking on the Sunny more than he'd liked cooking almost anywhere else. Not because the kitchen was better than the Baratie's — it wasn't — but because here he cooked for people he knew. He knew that Luffy would eat anything and love it with complete sincerity. He knew that Nami appreciated delicate acid. He knew that Robin drank her coffee black and once, when she'd thought no one was watching, had held a piece of chocolate he'd left on the chart table up to the porthole light and looked at it for a long moment before eating it.
You learned people through feeding them. That was one thing the Baratie had taught him before everything else. All the rest of it — the technique, the heat management, the balance — that was craft. Feeding people was something else. He'd never found a word for what it was.
On deck, Usopp's voice had risen to the register it used when the lie had escalated past its original scope and he was improvising.
"—and the island was THREE MILES WIDE and I was the only one who had ever mapped it, so naturally the king asked me to stay on as Royal Cartographer, which is a real job—"
"Is it?" Chopper asked.
"It was there."
"Captain Usopp would know," Luffy said with complete seriousness, and Usopp made a sound that was almost gratitude.
Nami gave up on the charts and came to lean against the railing in the sun, eyes closed. A minute later Franky appeared from below with an enormous sandwich that he had apparently constructed himself, which was fine; nobody policed the Sunny's kitchen except Sanji, and the sandwich was outside Sanji's jurisdiction. Robin brought her book topside. Chopper found the highest accessible point on the rigging and sat up there, watching the water, which he still found remarkable in the way that people who'd grown up landlocked found the sea remarkable, which was: completely and without getting used to it.
Zoro opened one eye. Closed it again.
The afternoon stretched. The sea stayed flat.
"SANJI," Luffy yelled, from closer than expected, "it's been at least an hour."
"It has not been an hour."
"It feels like an hour."
"I know it does. Go sit down."
Luffy came and sat on the kitchen floor, just outside the threshold, hands around his knees, looking up at Sanji with the patience of a man who had decided proximity to the food was better than nothing.
Sanji looked down at him. This was, he thought, probably the strangest crew on the Grand Line.
He got a piece of bread and threw it. Luffy caught it without looking, stretched-hand grab from three meters, and ate it in one bite.
"Two hours and fifty-eight minutes," Sanji said.
"Okay," Luffy said, fully contented, and stayed on the floor in the afternoon light.