Notes: Written for the livejournal community 30kisses, theme #6 "The space between dream and reality". All of the fics written for this comm. will be Sanji/Nami, but I kind of don't want to make a separate story for these since I don't yet know how far I'll get with this challenge and if I'll manage to complete it. Also, I'll do my best to keep the sap to a minimum :P
This chapter contains spoilers for the Thriller Bark arc.
"Fence-edge"
What makes a fantasy so pleasant?
Consider the golden-haired man-boy - Sanji, who teeters on the fence edge between gentle maturity and pure, testosterone-driven boyhood - running along the rubble, fueled by righteous outrage and hormones and the kind of giddiness particular to a night without sleep: he is caught up in a fantasy.
That his darling, darling Nami should be forced into a sham wedding against her will is cause for wrathful vengeance, to be sure, but he knows without ever admitting it to himself that the thought is also thrilling. He skids around a corner of the castle, just managing to avoid putting a hand on the damp, surely disease-infested stone, and kicks almost absently at a couple of the zombies that seem to spring up like weeds as he passes. One of them he grabs by the scruff of the neck to serve as a guide, hardly paying attention to the zombie's howls and groans as it is dragged over the rougher parts of the terrain. How does Nami look in her wedding dress, Sanji wonders...
Beautiful, of course. Rapturous. The gown will be white, as innocently white as a virgin; a pure, white silk gown to complement Nami's cream-and-pink skin and cling shyly to to the ripeness of her curves. She will be standing at the altar - face averted to avoid the slavering lech creeping ever nearer for that unholy kiss - he will burst through the double doors of the chapel (he can see them already; they are just as huge and the thick wood as rotted as he imagined) - she will turn towards the booming sound in a rustle of silk - the fiend will curse and swear - she will run to him, and throw her arms around his neck, and press her warm, soft body against his until he can feel the sweet swelling of her bosom against his breast as she breathes through slightly parted lips into his ear, "Thank you, thank you for coming."
Oh, God.
But there is the matter of the fiend, who is still advancing but with a snarl now distorting his grotesque features in place of a leer. Sanji will, with the tenderest of touches, place his hands on her back - no, her cheek - no, her hips - no, absolutely not, that's moving much too fast - her waist, yes, he will place his hands on her waist and gently disentangle her fingers from his hair, and step out of the folds of the silk gown which have wrapped themselves persuasively around his legs.
In a church there must be rows of pews; Sanji will lead Nami to one and bid her sit down, and then turn just as the lech bears down upon them. There will be a fight, a brief one which Sanji will win, although not before the fiend delivers a blow that will hit the pews and knock Nami to the ground, and this heinous act will not doubt spur Sanji into kicking the fiend into a final, definite insensibility. In any case, the fiend is quickly disposed of and just as quickly forgotten. And then Sanji will run to Nami's side. She will be unharmed but partly covered under the debris - her face will be turned downward into the crook of one elbow - she will be dazed, perhaps even unconscious. But the soft touch of Sanji's hand on her cheek will make her lashes flutter like thick, dark feathers, and as he gathers her into his arms she will smile faintly, ethereally. So dazzled will he be by her beauty, which in his mind's eye reaches almost angelic heights, that it will be some moments after he has already stood up that he will notice that all the discord has crumpled the smooth perfection of her gown: the skirt, disturbed by his arm at the small of her knees, has slid down the pink, round smoothness of her thighs to collect in a silken puddle in the valley of her - her -
With an effort, Sanji pulls himself together. The chapel doors are very close now. The fantasy simply skips a beat and continues on.
Nami is too pure! too innocent! He must not sully her lips after such an ordeal, even though her neck arches so invitingly and the flesh of her bosom quivers under his fingertips. He must preserve her honor. So, unheeding of their desolate surroundings and the fresh crop of zombies crowding at the door, he will bend down his head and - after a moment of agonizing hesitation - plant fervent, reverent kisses along her thighs to help cover their nakedness, and as he moves closer towards that silken puddle she will thrust her neck up and her head back and let out a single, low moan - "Aan" - to give voice to her pleasure.
Oh, God.
Hormones and lack of sleep have combined to make a heady brew that sends Sanji into feverish intoxication; he feels almost as if he is on fire as he reaches the chapel doors at last. They are already open, disappointingly, robbing him the pleasure of kicking them down himself, but no matter. He drops the zombie, who crawls away on hands and knees as soon as it hits the ground, and dashes into the room. "Nami, my love!" he cries. "I've come to rescue you!"
To his relief, she is standing in front of the altar and is even wearing a pure white wedding dress, just as he imagined. And the pews are gratifyingly empty. But what is that zombie doing, holding her by the arms? Why are her eyes closed and her head slumping to the side? Why does her body droop downwards when the zombie shifts away?
In fantasies one never feels fear.
There is a fight, and it is a short one. The emotion driving his actions, making him connect his foot to the beast-man's face again and again is no longer lust; it is anger. Lust belongs to the fantasy, discarded at the door. Anger belongs to reality, which is a stripping away not of fantasy but of expectation - despite his posturing Sanji is no fool and never confuses the two. The Nami who presses her body against his exists only in imagination, born out of his desire for the Nami who resides in reality - fierce; short-tempered; impatient; kind; unflaggingly awake to the world around her. That this beast-faced monster could replace her with this sleeping nymph - this angel - this goddess who in her perfect, still beauty makes for a false Nami with no place in either fantasy or reality is a crime Sanji cannot forgive.
The moment that fantasy dissipates like fog into irrelevance, one has to step off the fence-edge onto the ground of one side or the other.
He wins for a good while, even when the beast-faced monster is raining invisible blows upon his body, because Nami is safe in his arms and visible. Until the knife plunges into his back he wins, and the moment the knife sinks in instinct wrests control of his body to make his arms thrust outwards and his fingers unfurl so that Nami in her pure, white silk dress travels through the air and then falls. He cannot avoid hearing the soft thud of her body hitting the stone floor. He cannot avoid seeing her face turned downwards into the crook of one elbow. The only small consolation he can take is that he threw her as gently as possible, that her cream-and-pink skin will not be covered in bruises when she wakes - and he is sure she will wake up at any moment now, even as one moment bleeds without interruption into the next.
--end—
notes: Some scenes also based on the One Piece parody of Sayonara Zetusbou Sensei video on YouTube.