Chapter Text
He wakes with a headache in a bed that's not his own, in a room full of sunlight. The bed he's in is warm and firm and much bigger than his own. As he pushes himself up, the covers fall away and he's - oh. Damn.
He went home with someone, then. To their ship, by the gentle swaying of the room, and he hopes they're still moored at the Baratie, or they aren't too far away for him to swim it. The old man's going to have his hide already - his internal clock tells him, unerringly, that he's slept through the morning bakery prep, and is well into missing ship chores.
It'd be worth it if he could just remember. Was she beautiful? Of course, as all women are, but what kind? Curling ringlets of dark hair, maybe, with the kind of warm, brown eyes that go honeyed in the light. Ooh, or a redhead in braids, freckled and strong and smelling like sunlight in the hollow of her belly. Or a blonde, pixie-short hair and green eyes, wild as a dandelion flower-- he sighs, dreamy, and thinks, it's not too late to make her breakfast.
When he rolls out of the bed, though, he can't find his clothes. He'd expect they'd be on the floor, or maybe hung over the end of the bed, some sign of undressing in a new space, but there's nothing. Not even an errant sock on the floor.
The whole room is tidy and well-kept, with built-ins all over the walls - drawers, a wardrobe, bookshelves, photos in frames bolted to the cupboards so they don't come down in storms. Little signs of seasoned sailors.
The window above the bed is open and outside the water is dark as wine against a stark, clear sky. He can smell salt on the air, but not, as he'd hoped, the scents of the Baratie nearby - fry oil, fish, smoke.
He climbs up onto the bed to lean out the window, the muscles in his back bunching with apprehension.
No matter where he looks, the horizon is a line: perfect, flat, empty.
"Fuck," he says, sitting back on his heels to take stock.
He's in a room, on a boat, somewhere on the ocean, without his clothes or any memory as to how he got there, and his cigarettes are gone.
It's probably not as bad as it seems, when it's all laid out like that, right? It's fine, he just -- went home with someone, and she forgot about him and left. Or she's really nice, and maybe his clothes are in the laundry, and the Baratie isn't actually far at all. Or he's dreaming!
He scrubs one hand tightly through his hair and opens the wardrobe - there's got to be a bathrobe or something he can put on, just to not be naked.
It's tidy, well-kept, and full of men's clothes. His stomach drops.
No-- no. No time to panic, he's not going to get distracted, this just means he can throw on some of this guy's stuff and wow, do they have similar taste in clothes. About a quarter of the wardrobe is taken by fine suits in black, collared shirts, quality neckties. He fingers the cuff of one of the suit jackets, tracing the silk lining, smelling smoke and cologne as the fabric rubs.
He couldn't afford something like this in a hundred years. The longer he stands there gawking, the less attainable it feels.
He slams the wardrobe shut and goes for a drawer. He finds striped swim trunks to step into and a white t-shirt to pull over his head. There. There.
Out the window, over the head of the bed, the waves roll on. The sky is clear and empty. He thinks, keep it together.
He opens the door and pads, barefoot, into the main room of a small ship. It’s lived-in, the smells of tobacco and grilled fish and cologne, bench seats with pillows. Pale yellow walls with scrapes in the paint, a woven rug with a dull spot. More windows that look out onto the flat plane outside. One is open -- not open, broken, the glass cleared away but the splintered wood still fraying at the base of the frame.
There's a galley across from him, gleaming and perfect and clean, and he'd step into it if not for the sounds from the other open door, the one off to his left, the quiet noise of a person in the next room.
He thinks, here we go.
He steps into the doorway, and there's a man at a desk, facing away from the door. That's understatement, he's hunched over it, his head almost below the level of his shoulders, one hand holding his head up and the other flipping through a book. There's a small flock of mugs and cups forgotten at one end of the desk, a precarious stack of papers and books on the other. The window above the desk is levered open, and outside the water is dark and the sky is empty.
The man says, "Took you long enough. You really slept in."
He swallows. There are no clues anywhere that ... that there's anyone other than him here. He can't even recall the man's name.
"How late is it?" he asks, trying to be casual and failing spectacularly. His voice is rough and cracked with sleep and nerves. This man is huge and-- are those tattoos on his hands?!
The man turns. And for a second, just a second, he thinks, I'm screwed, because the man is beautiful in a way that reminds him of hunger, and this is why, this must be why he went home with him. Stupid, he thinks. Stupid.
But the man stares for a long moment, his jaw working on nothing. Until finally, he ventures, "...Sanji?"
Oh, that's embarrassing - the guy remembers his name, even if it took him a while to do it. That means it was him, and he's got to try and reach back for something, anything to cue his memory. But the harder he tries to examine his own memory, the more he realizes the last thing he can touch is -- is standing alone, catching a post-shift smoke on the Baratie's back deck, watching her yellow light dance on the water.
He holds the side of his neck, sheepish, tugging at the hair at the nape of his neck. Nothing hurts but his head, like his brain's swimming in a dull ache.
He says, "Yes. Ah, forgive me, I've... forgotten yours."
Tension rolls down the man's body, from the set of his brow, the way his jaw clenches, to the shift of muscle in his forearm and hand where it's wrapped over the back of the chair. Where he grips it, his fingers go yellow-white.
The man grits out, "Trafalgar Law," and his hindbrain tells him that this response, coupled with the gap in his memory, means he's like as not to be in real danger here. Trafalgar's whole body radiates tense, suppressed emotion. The curl of his lip, just-so, telegraphs it, like mooring ropes creaking against their bollards in a storm.
He's certain he can best Trafalgar in a fight, even barefoot. Even though Trafalgar's hands have DEATH inked into them. Still. He needs information before acting, and maybe... maybe Trafalgar liked him enough to be soothed.
"I'm sorry," he says, holding his hand up, placating. He tugs harder on the hair at the back of his head, wishes he had a cigarette. To hide behind, to calm his nerves. "Let me make it up to you? Might surprise you to know, I'm a chef."
“I know,” says Trafalgar, stiffly. A beat, then, “How old are you?"
"Little late to be asking that, isn't it?" he says, irritation prickling at his spine. He turns on his heel, padding through the main room toward that perfect galley. He doesn't have time for Trafalgar's sudden, insulting fit of conscience. Or whatever it is. (He can't un-sleep with him, and if he plans to sell him he's not going to make it easy by filling out a slaver's questionnaire.)
He can hear, behind him, the chair scraping across the floor, as Trafalgar gets up and follows.
It matters less when he's truly in the galley proper. This place is phenomenal. The drawers are arrayed neatly with exact precision, dozens of gorgeous, well-maintained tools and supplies exactly where he'd put them if he could. When he finds the knives, he about cries - he can see his reflection in every finely-honed blade. Like that suit, they are more expensive than he can ever afford.
He doesn't tuck a knife on his person, and it's not just because Trafalgar has fetched up in the entry to the galley to watch him with pale eyes. Knives are kitchen tools, not weapons.
He opens a cabinet near the stove and - yes, there's the pan he'd want to cook breakfast-lunch. And, in the drawer above it, he finds a heavy, golden lighter and a few packs of cigarettes. The lighter looks like a lady, maybe a mermaid, her head tucked down. He lifts it, turns it over in his fingers, and thinks, fuck it. He opens a pack, finds it half-empty, takes a cigarette for himself and lights it.
Trafalgar says, "Sanji."
He takes a long, slow draw, and flicks the vent hood on to blow smoke into it.
Trafalgar says, "Sanji. How old are you?"
"Calm down," he drawls, his blood running more comfortably in his veins with every puff. "I'm nineteen."
Trafalgar huffs a slow breath out of his nose. “You said you don’t remember me. What’s the last thing you do remember?"
The question makes him pause, re-evaluating. The reasoning for Trafalgar's stiffness he'd attributed to one of two factors: dismay or disgust at not being remembered, or... fuck, the prisoner woke up too soon stress. But now, a third option rears its head, one he's not able to define yet. His stomach twists with not knowing.
He stalls, opening the refrigerator, and nearly swallows his cigarette. The fridge is stocked with glistening produce and more gorgeous cuts of fish than he can identify on sight. They're all trimmed already, nary a bone or loose scale, wrapped and sealed and resting, waiting, full of possibility.
Oh, he shouldn't be doing this. It feels more illicit than touching the suits in the wardrobe, taking these ingredients. But when his eyes slide toward Trafalgar Law, it's clear the man isn't seeing the refrigerator at all.
"Sanji," he prompts.
Next to the fridge is a rice cooker. He flips the lid open - day-old rice, perfect. There's a pantry just past it, big enough to walk into, with neatly labeled dry goods and herbs hanging to dry and the handwriting on the labels makes the space behind his eyes hurt.
If he were stupid, if he were crazy, he'd jump to a new kind of conclusion. The suits, just his taste but too big. The galley, arrayed beautifully. The food storage. The labels. The way Trafalgar looks at him like he's holding onto his cool with the fingernails of his big, tattooed hands.
He bites through the filter of the cigarette, swears as the cherry drops off and lands on his bare foot.
"Shit," he says, acid in his mouth.
There's a heavy step, Trafalgar coming to stand an arm's length away. When he looks, Trafalgar's face is stricken, frozen. There's something terribly awkward about Trafalgar, for all that he's muscled and tawny and tattooed.
"How did I get here?" he says, with barely an uptick. That it answers Trafalgar's question is incidental.
Trafalgar's shoulders rise, almost to the level of his scruffy sideburns. He swears, too, in the percussive dialect of the North Blue.
He hasn’t heard Northern in years. It dumps ice water down his spine.
In one swift movement, he steps back into the walk-in pantry and slams the door shut. It's an action born from panic, sudden and animal. I won’t let them take me back.
Maybe he'd be better at dissecting what parts of that reaction are rational if he hadn't had such a fucking intense morning, but he's busy trying to stand on legs that shake, knives in his guts. He should kick a wall out, swim for it, no matter where he is. Maybe the floor, or the ceiling, he could reach the ceiling just fine with one good jump. If he could just breathe -- if he could get his hands out of his hair, if he could stop his teeth from chattering, if his heart would calm down.
He's on the floor, the sound of his hair tearing under his nails, his nose pressed hard between his knees. He’s gotta get out of here. He’s made a tremendous mistake, series of mistakes, and he can’t even remember the good time he ought to have had--
The pantry has no lock, why would it?
The door swings open, and there he is, Trafalgar Law, saying something he can't hear over the rush of blood in his ears.
Much as he'd love to scramble away, there's nowhere to go. He draws in tighter, too far gone for shame.
Nothing else happens.
Truly, nothing happens. Trafalgar is there, but doesn't do anything to try and touch him, or talk to him.
The first thing he hears, when he comes to himself, is the pressure-change rush of a bilge pump going off underneath him, water on water. Below that, the sound of waves lapping against the boat. Distant, outside sounds, impersonal.
The walk-in smells like dry rice and straw and hemp, like dried plants, like spices. Warm yellow curry, red-brown cinnamon. Trafalgar, who smells like soap and body and coffee breath. The ashes of his cigarette, stomped out before they could do damage.
He lifts his head.
Trafalgar is just outside the door to the pantry, sitting cross-legged on the floor, his elbows on his knees. His severe brow doesn't soften when their eyes meet.
Quietly, Trafalgar says, "Whoever you're thinking of, that's not me."
He swallows thickly. His face aches, tacky with salt. "Who are you, then?"
Trafalgar doesn't tense up this time. He looks resigned, scrubbing the heel of his hand over his cheekbone. "There's not a good way to explain it."
"Fuck you" explodes out of him. Anger feels good, after fear.
"Not while you're like this," says Trafalgar, dryly.
He sees red, aims a kick at Trafalgar's head without even thinking. Stops, as a tomato stops when hitting a brick wall, when Trafalgar catches his ankle.
Trafalgar's hand is warm and immovable, coated elbow to fingertip in shining black like a beetle's shell.
He gasps for air, less from exertion and more from the sudden knowledge that he's utterly outclassed. He yanks back, and Trafalgar lets him go.
"I have a hypothesis," Trafalgar says, his hand returning to a normal color.
His ankle throbs with awareness. Weakly, he says, "Sure. Go on."
"Well. Last I checked," says Trafalgar, with an absent nod behind himself, "you were…significantly older than nineteen. Given where we are, it's vanishingly unlikely the Devil Fruit user that got you is here."
The ache in his head, muffled under panic and ire, knocks insistently at the backs of his eyes. He tries to swallow, realizes his jaw's hanging open. He shakes his head, but it doesn't clear. The suits, the galley, the pantry, the labels.
"Say," he croaks, and tries again. "Say I believe you. Where is here?"
Trafalgar looks into the galley for a long moment, his jaw tight. Finally, he sighs. "On the Grand Line."
He frowns. "No way," he says, knee-jerk. And if he'd traveled the normal way, that would be true - a single night's sailing wouldn't be enough to get from the Baratie to the Grand Line, not in any way that wouldn't just chum the water for sea kings.
"Take a minute," says Trafalgar, and unfolds out of his sitting position to step away. There's the sound of running water, drawers opening and closing.
"Douche," he says under his breath, because fuck Trafalgar's condescension. Or pity. Whichever. Trafalgar didn't wake up naked in a stranger's bed. He'd love to see Trafalgar try.
Trafalgar returns, sliding a pack of cigarettes and the gold lighter across the floor. Trafalgar reaches into the space between them long enough to set a glass of water within reach, then withdraws to sit again.
He thinks, inanely, about how clean Trafalgar's feet are, free of ink. Trafalgar watches him until he picks up the cup and has a sip. The water cuts down his throat and drags him back to life with it. The cup's empty by the time he sets it back down.
"I should have asked before," says Trafalgar. "If you're hurt."
"I'm not," he says. "Who are you?"
Trafalgar looks impossibly tired. It's not just the shadows under his eyes, it's writ in every gesture. "I'm surprised you were so comfortable with the idea that we'd had sex," he says instead.
He doesn't wing the empty cup at him, but only just. His ears burn. He grabs the pack of cigarettes and lights a new one for himself. He's going to ruin this beautiful pantry with smoke, but Trafalgar isn't crossing the barrier of the threshold and he wants that separation, still.
"In... your future, I guess," Trafalgar continues, "I'm your... someone. But as long as I've known you, I've been the exception."
He takes a moment to parse that. A moment longer to run his tongue over his lips, finding the cracks. "Always been picky."
Like he's said something funny, like he's surprised him, Trafalgar smiles. It's tiny, just a flash of teeth on a silent huff. He thinks, someone, my someone. Mine. No way.
Trafalgar’s eyes are trained on his hand, the movement of his cigarette. “What’s the last thing you remember before waking up?” he presses.
He considers, over another long draw. He runs it over in his head.
"I remember... I remember going out back to have a smoke. Think I got a little ways into it, but. But I was the only one who went out. They were startin' to mop, I knew they'd be out with the mats in a second to hose 'em, so I was getting out of the way." He looks over, watching the way Trafalgar's watching him. Intent, like he's not wasting time with his words.
He's not, is the thing, but it's unusual to be listened to as hard as this.
"I say so because that means there'd be someone coming out that back door pretty soon. I wasn't far from the hoses. You been to the Baratie?"
Something in Trafalgar's face shutters, like a tiny wince. Trafalgar says, "No."
He takes another pause, another puff of smoke. "It's pretty far from here," he guesses, and watches as Trafalgar's shoulders drop - not relaxed, but forced downward. In quiet, Trafalgar is as easy to read as letters on a page, if only he knew the language.
"I'm just trying to say that the back, it's far from anywhere a customer would be. They can't even stumble on it, there's a gate that blocks off the back deck since the old man found someone poking around in the shipments once." He sighs. "So anybody back there is a man I know, or... for whatever reason they hopped a fence, or swam around on purpose."
Trafalgar rubs his chin in thought, scratching his fingertips through his facial hair. His fingers read EAT upside-down and there's something about it that's just a little funny. Trafalgar says, "Was there?"
"I piss people off every day," he drawls, "but it's usual business. Kicking people out when they're rowdy, backing up the maitre'd when people don't get their reservations in. Breaking up fights at the bar-- hm."
He pauses, the scenario surfacing in his head.
"Hm?" Trafalgar prompts when he's quiet a beat too long.
"There was-- you said you think it was a Devil Fruit."
"Is there anything else you know of that'd do this?" asks Trafalgar, like people ask when they know the answer.
He clicks his tongue against his teeth. "There was a Marine, obviously just got his new pips and wanted to show 'em off. Tried to bribe the maitre’d, hit on women in front of their dates, just made an ass of himself. When I kicked him into the water, all his toadies flipped out."
Just the hint of Trafalgar's teeth show in his smile. "Violent."
"He put his hands on me first." He runs his palm over his chest, remembering the way his necktie had gone lethally tight. The guy knew what he was doing when he grabbed on. "And they pulled him out. It's not like he died."
Trafalgar huffs another small laugh. It's arresting, Trafalgar's regard, for the sheer reason that by this point, he'd expect someone would reprimand him. But Trafalgar has stayed on his side through the retelling.
He thinks, my someone. That's as good a reason as any, isn't it? And the crinkles around Trafalgar's eyes, the softening of the severity around his mouth give him a boyishness that feels... attainable. Dangerously present. Touchable, like the dip in the other half of the bed. Not his, but his.
Trafalgar says, "Do you know what kind of Devil Fruit he had?"
"No," he admits, "just saw him sink like he'd had one." He raises one hand above his head, pinches two fingers together, then drops them hard to the floor, miming it. "Whew-psh."
Trafalgar shakes his head a little but it doesn't stop his smile. Trafalgar's got fucking dimples. He wants to bite them.
"A candidate, then," says Trafalgar. "If it was some kind of switch, we're unprepared to do anything about it. It'll be up to Sanji."
He doesn't miss the distinction, the unsaid my Sanji. He huffs smoke and stubs out the cigarette. "I'm Sanji," he says, stubbornly, because that's a stupid way to go about talking about him. Not-him. Trafalgar rears back a little, but he presses on: "And if you're saying your working theory is that I -- that old me is gonna be running around the Baratie in a position to do something about it, then... then what?"
Trafalgar rubs his hand over his face. "Dunno," he says into his palm. "Other hypotheses include a permanent age change and attendant amnesia, or a side effect of mad science."
He grits his teeth against the way his stomach drops. Trafalgar knows? Trafalgar was pretty calm about the way he shat kittens in the pantry over a little regional swearing.
"Don't get hung up on it," Trafalgar says, noticing the way he goes skittish. "We're problem solving, right?"
"Easy for you to say--" he begins, his lip curling.
Trafalgar says, "I'm not going to avoid potential causes and cures because of those Germa shitstains."
His throat clicks as he stops. That tomato-to-a-brick wall feeling echoes through him again. The radical nakedness he feels is leagues barer than the way he woke.
In the same tone, the same cadence, like he’s not clinically rawdogging all of Sanji’s deepest and darkest sore spots, Trafalgar continues, "And we can do a far sight better than asking them for help. But you're gonna have to get used to the idea that I know at least some of your secrets."
"Why that one?" he asks, hating how it whines through his nose.
"Just lucky I guess," Trafalgar says.
He does his best to catch his breath, fails miserably. Maybe he oughta quit smoking if his lungs are already giving up on him.
With his fingers steepled before his chest, Trafalgar takes a slow, deep breath, letting the air out through his nose. "Sanji."
He waits, fighting the urge to light up again. It churns his guts, the knowledge that Trafalgar's a stranger that knows him, might know him better than anyone.
Finally, Trafalgar says, “I know who your real family is. That’s what matters. Right?”