Usopp and Brook hadn't come up to the kitchen for the evening tea, and Sanji was in a shitty mood; it was just the way their crew worked that on a day when he'd completed a new, wonderful dish, someone would miss the meal. Two pieces of the delicious salty pie he'd been entertaining the idea of for more than a year lay neglected on the table. He'd saved them from Luffy, who would have eaten everyone's share if he could've, but it'd be against his policies to take food to the people who'd been too lazy to come to the kitchen when everybody was supposed to gather to enjoy the tea together.

Still, knowing the two skippers, they'd probably be spacing off somewhere, having forgotten that time could move on; they weren't the type to miss a chance to eat or spend time with people, and they'd be disappointed as hell when they returned from their dream-worlds. Sighing deep, the cook gathered a smaller version of the evening snack on a tray and went to look for the musician and the sniper.

Finding Brook was easy as usual, since he rarely was silent. He was sitting by the rear mast, humming vaguely, violin on the floor but the bow still in his right hand.

"Oi, Brook! You missed the tea", Sanji called. The skeleton's emotionless face somehow conveyed startlement when he came back from his daydreams.

"Ah, Sanji-san! ...It seems I dozed off for a while." Judging from his voice, his dream had been closer to a nightmare. Brook shook his head, making the dial clatter inside his skull. "Excuse me for not showing up. That was rude of me."

"Just rememer to eat from now on. If that even affects your health. Here." Sanji handed Brook the pie and a mug of tea and left him to recover from whatever bad dreams he'd been having. Hopefully the musician wouldn't develop a habit of humming in his sleep. He headed for Usopp's workroom, smirking at Brook's shouts of "delicious!" from behind.

Usopp was sleeping too, with an idiotic smile on his dirty face. He'd been repairing his weapons and was gripping his trusted slingshot's handle tight. Sanji smiled at his idiotic sleeping position and the dark circles around his eyes; the liar was the only Strawhat from whom one could see what a hard week they'd once again had (except for Chopper, whose muscles were sore, and Nami-swan, but she was always lovely and graceful). He left the tea and food on the table and snuck out quietly.

Still, Usopp really had been a bit listless lately, as Chopper had noted, and it hadn't ended when they'd sailed on from the bad news of an island they'd last been on. Sanji couldn't help paying attention to it anymore, and he felt like he ought to do something, but couldn't pinpoint the cause for the sharpshooter's bad mood. He'd tried making Usopp's favourite dishes and asking what was wrong, but the longnose would just look at him weirdly, as if trying to not be happy.

A thought had been bothering Sanji for a long time, stuck in his head like a stubborn coffee stain line on a cup, not necessarily bad, but nevertheless making the cup different from a new one, and never coming off.

What if he was in love with Usopp?

He had no idea where the idea had come from; it seemed to have slowly spread into his mind until he somehow just knew it was there. There was no moment of realization or denial that he remembered. He just thought he might like the longnose.

But that was the problem: he might. Sanji couldn't, surely and straight away, say that he loved Usopp. What he felt was very much different from what he felt for the lovely ladies, and he wasn't quite sure it was different from a very strong friendship, but sometimes he would, while washing the dishes or waiting for water to boil, end up imagining things like kissing the sniper. And this did nothing to his confusion, since when he was with Usopp, he could be quite comfortable and relaxed, nothing like the electric current that women seemed to cause inside him.

Maybe the sniper had somehow noticed it from his behaviour and was therefore trying to avoid him. Or maybe he was just planning a new project that didn't go well, and besides, they had had a rough week. This was making him think too much.

Oh, screw it. If you don't try, you'll never know. They were good friends, so it wasn't probable that their relationship would be ruined even if the love was actually one-sided or if they dated and it would go wrong. For now, he allowed himself to think that he was in love with the longnose