"I have no need
for a sea view
for a sea view
I have no need
I have my little
pleasures
this wall being one of these"
–Tori Amos
Several winter storms had come and gone by the time the big one hit. Icy winds brought even icier rain in torrents to the tiny island, doubtless an impressive blizzard over places with a cooler natural climate. There was usually one storm like this every few years, one that ripped a few roofs off, did some minor structural damage, maybe even uprooted a few trees. Which was exactly what Nami was afraid of as she made her way through the late morning streets of Cocoyashi Village.
The restaurant wouldn't be open that day, not with so many people, employees and patrons alike, staying home to repair damage and be with their loved ones. Honestly, Nami was a little grateful for the chance to get away from the ledger for a while, especially if it meant escaping Sanji's nagging her to do so. She slept in, took her time eating her breakfast, and best of all, got to wear something comfortable and fun; jeans and fitted tee shirts with snappy logos didn't exactly convey the sort of professional ambiance she insisted on at work.
But at the moment her mind wasn't on the restaurant or her wardrobe, it was on the tiny house just outside the town and its single occupant.
Finding her sister bent over a section of dirt under a row of trees out back, Nami saw that some of the drainage trenches had collapsed in the rain. The knees of Nojiko's pants were stained with mud and grass and she had smudges of dirt up her arms and face so it seemed pretty likely that she'd been at this task for several hours already with who knew how many left ahead of her.
"So, where's that useless apprentice of yours?"
Nojiko turned to see her sister slipping her sandals off and kneeling down in the mud the next row over, getting right to work. Smiling, she returned to her own row.
"He's helping Mrs Turner with her leaky roof right now, he'll be back in a bit. What are you doing out today? Shouldn't you be chained to your accounts book in a dingy room somewhere?"
Nami laughed a little under her breath, remembering how many times she'd performed this task on this exact patch of land over the years. "Probably. I decided to come see how you were doing instead."
Now it was Nojiko's turn to laugh a little. "Well thanks for the thought. Hope you didn't have plans for later."
---
Shadows were long by the time they had undone nature's damage, and both sisters were covered in dried mud and sweat as they trudged into the tiny house. Nami flopped into a chair and rested her head on the table while Nojiko filled her worn kettle with water and set it on the burner.
"I can't believe I used to do that every year," came a muffled voice from the recesses of Nami's folded arms, "I'm exhausted."
"You got soft sitting behind a desk the past few years," came her sister's response. "Green or chamomile?"
"Chamomile. That restaurant... I swear, sometimes I don't know which one of us is really running things. I don't even know how long it's been since I spent that much time outside." Her head lifted and she regarded one of her mud-encrusted hands thoughtfully. "It felt good."
The clinking of ceramic mugs signaled that the tea was almost ready and Nami hoisted herself up and walked to the bathroom to wash her hands and face.
"Well you're more than welcome to help out more often," her sister's voice wafted in from the other room, "though I doubt Chabo'd appreciate you taking his job."
Nami snickered as she re-entered the main room. "Don't think because you're family I'll give you a discount, my time's expensive."
The tanned woman smirked as she handed her sister a mug of tea. "I'd expect my money's worth, then. Just because you're family, don't expect me to go easy on you."
"It seems our negotiations have reached a standstill, then." Sipping from her mug, Nami took her usual seat at the table. What was it about chamomile that took the knots out of her arms and the tension out of her back just like that? She'd meant to ask Chopper what went into the stuff years ago, back on the Merry, but it had never seemed as important as the chaos that passed for everyday life at the time and she'd always figured she'd ask later. One of many things she'd always figured she'd have time for later. Maybe she should include it in her next correspondence to the little doc--
Her eyes opened from her nostalgic reverie to find her sister contemplating her with that scrutinizing look of hers, the one that always seemed a little suspicious.
"So how's the boy with the floppy hair these days?"
"Sanji's fine, getting back into dating, I guess, so that's good. Speaking of which, that businessman from the Red Line's back again and getting more persistent about dinner."
"My sister the heartbreaker."
"Well I am quite a catch."
"And modest as always," her sister smirked over the rim of her mug.
"Ha! I'm just honest." She'd never understood the bizarre mating ritual engaged in by most of her gender where they pretended not to know they were attractive when someone pointed it out. Fishing for compliments was hardly a sport she cared to waste any time on and false modesty just raised her hackles. Why should she have to put on a show for the sake of making her date feel good?
"You going to take him up on it?" And milk him for everything he was worth in the bargain, as had been Nami's standard for years.
Nami made a disinterested noise and looked out the window. "Money I have on my own. Time is something I can't get back and I prefer to spend it on people I like." The bark of laughter from the other side of the table brought her attention back to her sister and she raised an eyebrow at the unexpected reaction. "What's so funny about that?"
"Nothing," Nojiko said, smiling, "you just sounded so much like her right then, all you needed was a cigarette hanging out of your mouth to complete the effect."
Nami laughed at that and sipped her tea. Strange how the memory of a person could fade and then be brought back so abruptly with a phrase or a smell or even a gesture, and then it was as though no time at all had passed. For a split second, she imagined that if she were to turn around, she'd see her there at the stove, apron tied loosely around her waist, the smell of cooking food and cigarette smoke hanging in the air, humming something under her breath. Then the moment passed, leaving only a bittersweet aftertaste and the dull ache of an old wound.
"We should do this more often."
"Yeah." She'd always meant to come over more, she just never seemed to have the time.
Nami ran her fingers over the old scars on the tabletop, so familiar she didn't need to look down to know what they were anymore. That compass icon was over twenty years old now, the letters of her name etched with fingers still relatively new to them. Funny how one so rarely looked up from the present to notice the passage of time, and what a shocking sight it was when you found that first gray hair or noticed your favorite pair of pants didn't fit the way they used to or realized how much the people around you had changed when they said something like 'we should go our separate ways' or 'I have a date'.
"You're miles away today, you know that?"
Nami looked over at her sister, jolted out of her thoughts. "Sorry, I guess I'm a little more preoccupied than I thought."
"I noticed," Nojiko smirked. "Mal and I are going out with some friends later, did you want to come along? Maybe have some fun, take your mind off things?"
She considered it briefly. "No, that's all right, thanks, I don't think I'm very good company tonight. Probably just catch up on a little paperwork at the restaurant tonight." There was too much to let go for a whole day, she'd just wind up staying extra late the next night if she skipped entirely.
"Well all right, but you're always more than welcome to come along, you know."
"I know, thanks." She also knew that Nojiko and Genzo worried about her not having many friends or much of a social life outside of work, and it was sweet, but she wasn't really unhappy with her life.
---
It was sometime after midnight, she knew, and the room was completely dark. Her back hurt from being slumped over the desk, the papers her head had been resting on were now slightly damp under her cheek, her pen was still in her fingers, and now her lamp wick had burned down sometime while she'd slept. She really had been doing this too often, that wick was only about two weeks old and only the third one she'd had to put in that lamp since the restaurant had opened. So much for keeping expenses down.
Unsticking her face from the top report and digging her emergency candles out of her desk drawer, she decided it was time to stop working for the night and go home to her soft, comfortable bed. And empty refrigerator, her stomach reminded her, and a bathroom she hadn't had time to really clean in two weeks, and big empty rooms, and long empty hallways, and too many mementoes from years gone by to keep her company and make her remember a time when she longed for quiet and solitude to get her work done. Now that was all she had.
Oh well, she thought, gathering her things up and putting them away. No use crying for the past– she'd learned long ago it didn't do any good. Best to just keep marching forward and eventually good things would come again.
Nature rewarded her optimism by unleashing a thunderclap so loud it literally rattled the building. Taking a candle and going to the front room, she peered out into the gloom outside the large picture windows to see rain pouring down in buckets. Her cozy bed seemed almost like a quest to get to now, fraught with peril and challenges to tax the most stalwart of heroes, and she just didn't have the energy to deal with one of those that night. Fortunately for her, she had an alternative.
---
The first thing he became aware of was there was a noise coming from somewhere. The longer he lay in bed, staring blearily at the wall of his room, the more sounds he heard, though none of them were what had woken him. Just when he was convinced he'd imagined it and was falling back to sleep, he heard it again. It took him very little time to identify it as knocking, and even less for him to realize that it was coming from his front door. It did not, however, take him any time at all to realize that it was very early in the morning and he was extremely tired.
Managing to climb out of his nice, warm covers without too much difficulty, Sanji decided that since whoever it was at the door was paying a visit at such an uncouth hour they could wait a few more seconds for him to get his bathrobe on. He also decided that if they didn't have a damn good reason for getting him out of bed he'd kick them off his staircase landing and sort the rest of it out in the morning.
While he was stumbling through his dark livingroom, a huge peal of thunder sounded outside and he realized for the first time that the sounds he'd been hearing under the knocking was rain. From the sounds of things there was the makings of a good sized storm outside, making this visitation slightly more concerning. Who would brave this weather at this hour to talk to him instead of simply waiting for a better time? He closed the distance between himself and the door with considerably more speed than before.
"Who is it?" he asked through the heavy wood. He wasn't concerned about the outcome of a possible fight, should there be trouble standing outside, but it never hurt to know who was on the other side of a door before you opened it.
"Sanji, it's me," came an all too familiar voice through a staccato of chattering teeth. Suddenly his fingers couldn't find the lock fast enough and he cursed his lazy pace from earlier. What the hell was she doing out on a night like this? Despite himself, he felt an uneasy twinge in his stomach that something bad had happened and she had been the first one to find out... but no, that was silly. Everyone was fine, everything was fine, and there was an entirely more harmless reason Nami was standing in front of his door in the pouring rain before dawn. His heart still leapt in his chest as he flung the door open and gestured her emphatically inside.
"Wha– Na–" His brain couldn't pick what question to ask first as she shrugged out of her coat, still looking for all the world like a half-drowned cat in her soaking clothing. "Here," he said, putting his robe over her shoulders like a jacket and rushing to his linen closet for some towels. He could ask why she was here after she was warm and dry. "How long were you out there?" He returned with his fluffiest towels and tossed one around her shoulders, rubbing her arms to warm her up.
"Just a few minutes," she chattered through her teeth, "it's really coming down."
As if to punctuate her statement the room was lit spectacularly by lightning from outside and the accompanying jolt of thunder actually vibrated through the floor for a second.
"So what– Why are you here?" he tried again with more success this time.
"Working late, got caught in the rain on the way home."
"That's not like you," was all he could think of to say.
She laughed a little through her shivering. "I know." An uncharacteristically uncomfortable look crossed her features then. "I hope I'm not interrupting something."
Confused, he waited for her to elaborate until he realized all he was wearing was a pair of pajama bottoms and he'd been speaking rather quietly.
"Oh, no no, no one's here," he hastily said, feeling her shiver underneath the towel. "Do you want to take a shower?" It'd been a while since he'd gotten a look quite that blistering from her and it took embarrassingly long for him to figure out why he deserved it. "Oh, no, just to warm up. I'd stay out here," he added to be on the safe side before his sense of humor reared its head and he found himself adding, "unless you wanted me to–"
"I'll go myself, thanks." To his immense relief he did see a smile trying to hide on her face, so he knew he couldn't be in too much hot water. Figuratively speaking, of course.
Sighing in contentment, Nami emerged from the bathroom on a cloud of steam, toweling one side of her hair dry and reveling in the feeling of being warm again. Sanji had left her a spare pair of pajamas, the pants of which she'd had to cuff up several times to keep from dragging on the floor, and had taken her sopping clothing in exchange to dry. She had to admit, even when it swam on her there was nothing quite like the feel of warm, clean clothing after being cold and wet for even a little while. As relaxed and content as she felt at the moment, however, she was still apprehensive about her decision to stop there instead of just going straight home and Sanji's little joke about sharing a shower hadn't helped matters any. Sure, he'd calmed down now that he had a little more experience with women to help keep the hormonally-charged bellows of adoration to a minimum, but underneath he was still the same old Sanji.
Case in point, she thought as she took a moment to really look at his decorating choices; only Sanji would have what looked to be a very expensive vase made from Water 7 blown glass, painted with a high carat gold, no less, sitting beneath a velvet painting of cats playing pool. Granted, the instances of chintz were pretty few and far between, and honestly, he somehow managed to make them work. Like the occasional hideous shirt he would show up wearing out of the blue, something horrible with polka dots or clashing colors or obnoxious patterns that he managed to pull off. Something in the sheer hideousness of the piece and the relaxed confidence with which he displayed it combined to somehow make it kind of... attractive. She'd never understand it and had given up trying to a long time ago.
Besides, right now there was a fireplace lit up like a bonfire a few feet away, silhouetting the couch in front of it and the back of the head she saw over the side. Same old Sanji, all right. Still, the fire was nice on a night like tonight, she admitted grudgingly, padding over to the sofa for a warmer view. She stopped at the scene that greeted her, a smile tugging firmly at the corners of her mouth; her head chef sat, reclining against the corner, one arm dangling over the back, the elbow of the other leaning on the armrest, his head resting on that hand and a soft snore escaping his mouth now and again. While she'd been showering, it seemed he'd put on a t-shirt, hung her wet clothes to dry on a chair in front of the fireplace, and made her a cup of cocoa which sat on the coffee table in front of him, steam still rising from the mug.
Sitting gingerly, hoping not to wake him, she listened to the sound of the wind and the rain and the cheery crackling of the fire while she sipped from her mug. She'd missed his cocoa; he always made everything from scratch, shaved the chocolate, melted it down, heated the milk, the works. All the years sailing with him had ruined her tastes for anything less, unfortunately, and now she rarely had the stuff. It was by her own stipulation, of course, but that didn't mean she couldn't still miss it on nights like this.
Another small snore from Sanji distracted her from her thoughts momentarily and she looked over at his slumped form. She couldn't help but smile; he looked about ten years old like that. The poor guy was really out, too, though that wasn't too surprising, considering how late it was. She felt badly about that, waking him up in the middle of the night for something so trivial. If he'd done the same thing to her she wouldn't have let him hear the end of it, and she certainly wouldn't have made cocoa from scratch or let him borrow something dry while his clothes dried, at least not without expecting anything for compensation. Of course, the odds of Sanji showing up on her doorstep at some ungodly hour of the morning in the pouring rain because he didn't have an umbrella were slim to none, anyway, so she supposed it didn't really matter.
The wind outside rattled the windows and Nami felt herself shiver in sympathy. Even as bad as it was out there right then, she knew the storm would blow itself out by morning. In not too much longer her clothes would be dry and she could brave the distance home for what little sleep she could still get that night. By no means looking forward to her impending journey, she burrowed into a blanket she found nearby, most likely left there for her anyway, tucked her feet underneath her and savored the diminishing fire, her cocoa, and the unconscious company at the other end of the couch.
---
Consciousness came reluctantly, bringing protests from stiff joints and a couple of very cold feet with it and Sanji found himself temporarily blinded by sunlight once he managed to pry his eyes open. Fishing a hand out of the blanket to shade them until they could adjust, his brain sluggishly tried to work out why he was on the couch and why he felt so profoundly disappointed that the chair next to the fireplace was empty. Little pieces of the previous night filtered in as he gingerly worked the stiffness from his protesting limbs and by the time he was alert enough to make himself some breakfast he remembered most of everything. The one thing he didn't remember, he mused over as he sipped his coffee and stirred the contents of a large skillet, was getting himself a blanket.
