This chapter was bloody difficult to write! But I wanted to introduce the idea of Sanji beginning to question his sexuality without laying it on with a trowel.

Sanji, meanwhile, had been just as busy, if noticeably less promiscuous. He had thought about Ace only in scattered moments of peace, and then only in passing. And he certainly did not give Ace's love life another thought; that is, until he overheard a rather strange conversation in a bar ina smalltown, where they stopped off shortly before they reached Water 7.

It was the sort of bar that catered for pirates. The sort of place where people of both genders hung around in skimpy clothes, hoping to attract pirate lovers. Sanji was standing at the bar, trying to catch the attention of the bar staff, waiting to buy drinks for Nami-san and Robin-chan, and trying to ignore the two young men who were whispering about him and evidently thought he couldn't hear.

"Do you think he's in here on the pull?" asked the darker-skinned one.

"I don't know," giggled the one with blue hair. "But if he is, I reckon his luck's in. He's gorgeous."

"Pity Fire Fist Ace has gone away again," replied his friend. Sanji's ears pricked up. "He looks right up his street."

"Yeah… blond, skinny, sharply dressed. Smokes too. What d'you reckon is Fire Fist's thing about smokers?"

"They say he's fallen in love with a guy who won't have him, don't they?" Intrigued, Sanji decided to stall for time so he could continue eavesdropping by pretending to tie his shoelaces. Then he remembered he was wearing loafers, so he deliberately dropped his change all over the floor instead. "…and he's going around screwing guys who look kinda like him instead."

"You morons!" hissed a well-endowed girl who had just joined them, Sanji had to strain to catch what she was saying.. "That's him."

"Who?"

"The guy Fire Fist Ace is in love with!"

"How the Hell do you know that?"

"Look: when Fire Fist was here, he slept with Max, didn't he? Max told me Fire Fist told him that this legendary cutie sails with Straw Hat Luffy. Well, who's over there…?" She indicated the table at which Sanji's nakama sat. "And besides, how many guys have you seen with a curly eyebrow?"

By this time, Sanji had collected his change and bought the drinks.

"Think he heard us?"

"Nah…"

Rather shaken, he returned to the table, presenting the drinks to the ladies without the usual accompanying compliment.

"Took your time," commented Nami. Sanji mumbled something about a queue at the bar.

"I just heard some guys saying Ace was here a few days ago," Usopp spoke up. "Shame we missed him, huh?"

Sanji was thankful that Luffy simultaneously stealing Usopp and Zoro's dinners prevented him having to respond to this.

When they returned to the Going Merry that night, the Straw hat pirates went straight to bed. Judging by the snores that soon came wafting through the door of the men's quarters, Sanji's male nakama were sleeping soundly but he lay awake thinking about what he had overheard in the bar. Ace in love with him… he wished he could just dismiss the idea as absurd, but it actually would explain a lot of Ace's weird behaviour in Alabasta. He knew it was stupid, but he felt guilty. He knew what it felt like to long for someone and not have them, and he just couldn't bear to think that he was causing anyone – let alone Ace, who he liked so much – to feel the same misery that he sometimes felt concerning his Nami-san. But what could he do about it, even if it were true? Best to just try and forget about it – think about something else. Like… Nami-san. All right so, maybe in the circumstances romance wasn't the best thing for taking his mind off the Ace situation – but he already was thinking about her, so… checking that the door was firmly locked, Sanji pulled a suitcase out from under the bed. This suitcase was also firmly locked and contained Sanji's most secret possessions: his Maerchen Ero Eros. All 930 of them. These flimsy volumes, printed on cheap paper and made as small and slim as possible to make them easier for their furtive readers to hide; Sanji would probably have died of shame had any of his nakama discovered them. He knew they were tacky, he knew they were cheap, but there was just something about these X-rated manga retellings of fairy tales that he got a kick out of. He reached out for his favourite one –Sleeping Beauty– and climbed back into bed with it. It had not always been his favourite, but for some reason the artist had chosen to draw the princess with red hair, which now made him think of his Nami-san. With the ease born of long practice, Sanji turned the pages with one hand while his other hand began to stray beneath the blankets…

A little later, just as he was beginning to enjoy himself, he stopped suddenly in horror. He was no longer concentrating on the pages of the Maerchen, and he was definitely not thinking about Nami-san. But he couldn't really be thinking about Ace, could he? Not while he was touching his… Sanji put the book aside and sat up. That couldn't have just happened. It just couldn't have. Probably he'd been thinking so much about Ace earlier that it had put thoughts into his head that weren't really there. He loved women, loved everything about them. And he'd certainly never found a man physically attractive. Then again, he'd never let himself think about it before, and there was no denying that Ace was beautiful- no! Not beautiful! Where was that coming from? No, no… wait. Sanji mentally calmed himself. Just being able to see that another man was good-looking didn't mean he was attracted to him. Because he wasn't. The sexualities of some of his nakama might be a bit suspect, but he was heterosexual. And his heart belonged to Nami-san. At that moment he was just tired, feeling a bit lonely, and thinking far too much about what that girl had said about Ace. If he just tried to forget about it and get some sleep, he'd probably feel fine tomorrow. Resolutely, he locked away his Maerchen, blew out the candle, and rolled himself up in the blanket. Yes, tomorrow he could forget all about this and just continue trying to win over his Nami-san.

Wel, there you have it. As usual, I'm not entirely happy with it. Sorry if some of it reads a bit coy, but I didn't want to raise the rating just for this chapter. And please forgive Sanji for being a little bit gross, he is a teenage bloke after all!

A/N 11/07: In response to helpful comments from Larunya I a)changed the name of the Maerchen (can't believe I didn't spot the dodgy connotations myself, shows how tired I was when I wrote it!) and b) am attempting to explain where the Maerchen Ero Ero idea actually came from. Well, it came from Oda-sensei, in fact. So I've put the link to my source in my profile. (As it wouldn't come up when I typed it in here).