A/N: This chapter was… awful. Completely awful. No excuses, I just suck at writing Sanji. Sorry…
Sanji was used to being abandoned.
When his father had died, he had screamed his lungs out and cried until his tears were all dried up. The offered words of comfort had no meaning to a three year old who would soon forget he had ever had a father, and for a long time he had sat with the thought, Why couldn't he have brought me with him?
When his mother had finally broken down and confessed that she couldn't keep him anymore because of the costs it took to raise him, it felt like his world was made out of glass, and had shattered. As he was offered a job as a cabin boy on a ship, he had wondered, Was it my fault? If I had been different, would she have kept me?
When the ship he worked for deemed him unfit and had passed him on to one of it's smaller ship companies, he felt so hollow that his only reaction was quiet acceptance. He didn't make a sound, despite the fact that for some reason his chest hurt at the thought that he wasn't good enough. Is there something wrong with me?
So when Zeff had saved his life, it was something that felt new… different… but a good kind of different. Sanji was awestruck. He didn't just want to repay Zeff for saving his life… but for accepting him despite all his flaws.
Sanji poured his all into helping the old man. His time, his thoughts, everything. He panicked whenever he thought of himself, and quickly shoved that selfishness away, because even though he knew it was irrational, he felt scared that if he was useless for even a second he's be thrown away again, like those scraps of food nobody ever ate. Food was important, and Sanji was too. Or at least, he'd try his best to be.
Zeff handled him gruffly, but after a while Sanji had realized that the reason Zeff acted like that wasn't because he disliked Sanji, but merely because the old man wasn't the mushy type.
Sanji had realized a long time ago that getting too attached to people wasn't good, and that if you opened up to them it was easier to get attached, so he, too, acted cold.
When he noticed the way that his ability to act kind and thoughtful… to act human… was slipping away, he could feel panic. His mask was beginning to shatter, and he could barely salvage the pieces, scared that everyone would see how scared of everything he was, scared that he'd be deemed weak and useless all over again.
So he replaced his cold mask with one of a shallow idiot, and eventually, he became what he pretended to be, and didn't need to pretend anymore. His fear was washed away by the fickle way that he approached every woman, abandoning them in a way that didn't hurt them.
Women, he told himself, were kind and gentle. They smiled at him in a way that vaguely stirred up memories of his mother, and despite the fact the he knew it was stupid, he drank up their attention.
It was hard to keep people's eyes on him, though, and his stupid fears kept popping up like balloons.
Then Luffy had seen him.
And Luffy, even when he wasn't looking, always seemed to be assuring Sanji that he was important, that he was needed. Sanji kept convincing himself he was being stupid, and desperate.
He had to pay back the old man, for taking him in despite the fact that Sanji felt worthless.
But Luffy had persisted. You're important to me. The straw hatted boy insisted. I need you.
So Sanji had taken a chance.
And he knew that Luffy would never abandon him.