AN: This one was for shinysoroka on Tumblr who wanted Sanji in a modern AU as a sole survivor of a shipwreck.
His oxygen was cutting out. His lungs burned like fire in his chest and his legs, snagged in a tangle of rope and chain, prevented him from fighting back against the water. The saltiness burned his eyes as the dark shapes of fragmented ship sunk around him, falling languidly to the sea bed meters below in the pitch black.
This wasn't how it was supposed to end. He hadn't found All Blue yet. He hadn't opened his own restaurant. He hadn't even said goodbye to Zeff nor repaid the old geezer for that old debt. It was quite ironic really that his actual death would be the one Zeff had saved him from all those years ago.
He was blacking out now. Good. At least it was going to be painless. He didn't fancy being incinerated like some of the others on the once-been ship. He didn't even know why he was bothering to hold his breath anymore. It wasn't as though anyone was going to bother saving him. He was going to drown, die, and eventually become fodder for the fish. Not exactly a soothing thought but hey, he had to be realistic here.
"There's one still alive..?"
The voice that somehow reached his ears was clear, a rich, deep voice- gruff and manly. But how could he hear it so clearly, wouldn't it be muffled and distorted by the water? Perhaps the lack of oxygen was making him hear things.
A dark shape swam past his vision in the green, murky salt water. It darted, swam closer, and got clearer inch by inch. It was a guy. Tanned and muscled with cropped hair, three earrings in his left ear and four gills slicing through each side of his neck. Wait. Gills?! The man pulled up so that the whole of him was visible and Sanji had to fight himself to keep the last bit of air he had and not scream. The man had a body but it ended at his hips where the tanned skin flowed down and down in a greyish tone to resemble the tail of a shark. The man looked Sanji up and down with his one eye, the scar where the other one should be was now visible, and the blond noticed the hideous scar that ran from left shoulder to right hip on the man... no... shark man?
"How come you're not dead yet?" The shark man mused. His eye narrowed, "The others are dead..."
His voice was coming through crystal clear, as though Sanji were on dry land and was being spoken to.
The shark man sighed, a stream of bubbles gushing out of his mouth in a way that made Sanji want oxygen more than ever. The shark man slunk up to him, grey tail coiling behind his trapped legs and tugging him closer into the shark man's grasp. Two strong, tanned hands held his arms securely and Sanji felt the almost soothing heat seep through to them.
"You need air," The shark man said simply and before Sanji could even nod a pair of lips slid over his own. He bucked in surprise and one of the shark man's hands slid up to hold his jaw and kept him close, applying enough pressure so that against his will his mouth opened. A rush of air forced itself into his crippled lungs and he pulled back with a gasp, stunned when no water entered his mouth and drowned him. He sucked in another breath, the water evaporating into cool air in his mouth every time he breathed in. He remembered the kids stories of mermaids who'd save drowning sailors with one of their kisses and whisk them away to their underwater palaces to live out their happily ever afters. Sanji looked the shark guy, whom was looking at him intensely, up and down. Well... merman, he supposed, and this guy was certainly not going to be whisking him off anywhere fancy and beautiful any time soon.
"You need to go back to the shore." The shark guy scowled, "Back where you belong."
The shark man unwound his tail and dived down to the tangled of rope and chain where he bared his teeth and Sanji saw a row of jagged shark canines before they bit through, cracking the links and slicing the rope like a hot knife through butter. Sanji wriggled his legs free as the shark guy pushed him up and pointed upwards with a webbed finger.
"Head for the surface. Humans will be here soon." He said and twisted, lashing with his powerful tail and darting away into the murky depths below.
Sanji finally broke the surface, clawing desperately at a piece of fractured ship and found his voice enough to yell out as the emergency services finally came for him, but his mind remained truly focused on the merman who still lurked below.
The road to recovery hadn't been an easy one. Physiotherapy for one of his legs which had apparently broken when the tangled rope and chain pulled taut on him had been a gruelling experience he had no wish to encounter ever again. He'd been all over the news as the sole survivor of that wreck and had been diagnosed with PTSD because of course telling your therapist that you'd seen a half man half shark with scars and green hair would get you diagnosed like that.
He'd stopped taking his tablets a while ago and he never brought up that merman ever again. Even Zeff, his cranky old man, looked at him strangely most days like he wanted to say something but wouldn't. He wished he'd never spoken about that damn shark man in the first place. He should've just left it as an hallucination from oxygen starvation. But it had felt so real.
Most nights he woke to the sensation of that cool tail sliding around his calves and the hand on his jaw holding him to a pair of soft lips. It had spooked him the first time he'd dreamed about the mysterious shark man who'd saved him from what would have been certain death because it was the first time in a long time that he had dreamed about something without at least one woman in it. Now it had been a long time since he'd dreamed of anything but the merman with his long tail and sharp teeth. Every night he felt the touch of those strong webbed fingers on his jaw and the forcing open of his mouth. He rarely dreamed of much else.
He'd tried to find the merman again. He'd made a trip to the place he'd nearly drowned in the hope that the shark man would be there but he hadn't been. After that he'd given up the idea of possibly meeting the creature who had saved him but he hadn't forgotten him. Dark eyes, scarred skin, and that bizarre green hair was something that didn't leave the mind easily after all.
Hearing the door to the restaurant ping, Sanji sighed and smoothed out his suit jacket. He was craving a cigarette but he'd promised his old man he would take Patty's shift considering the other cook was off sick so that was out of the question for at least another hour. Anyway, it wasn't like he was doing anything particularly difficult, he was only manning the drinks bar after all and that was much better than spending an extra few hours over a cooker especially in hot summer weather like this.
"Umm... hello?"
Sanji froze, his back facing the customer at the counter and his hand stilled on moving the damp cloth over the surface before him as the deep, rough voice met him. He knew that voice. He knew that voice anywhere. The one that had cut through the water that day, told him to go to the surface to be saved, and belonged to a smooth set of lips that had closed over his. He swallowed and turned.
The face that met him was the one he'd wanted to see for so long, the green hair and the scarred left eye that had been forced closed. But where the gills had been was a smooth, flawlessly tanned neck and the three earrings hung from the left ear still. And where the shark tail should have been was a pair of human legs that Sanji could see through the glass panels beneath the bar top.
The apparently once been shark man was looking at him with a stunned expression and a wide dark eye. Sanji blinked, the shark man recognised him, "You..." The blond breathed before chuckling a little hysterically, "You have a lot to answer for you bastard." He whispered.
The green haired man stepped away from the counter, "I'm not thirsty after all." He said.
Sanji slammed the cloth down, "Oh no you don't, get back here!"
The man turned and bolted, shouldering the door open. Sanji grit his teeth and followed suit, ignoring Zeff's furious yelling to get his ass back behind the counter before he kicked it there. This man wasn't going to get away again and Sanji was going to get his answers.