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After setting him back on the bed, Usopp leaves him to fetch Chopper, claiming that Chopper had told him to get him when Sanji next woke. Naturally this means that the next person he sees is not Chopper. At least he has some warning.
He hears Luffy yell loudly over the entire deck, "SANJI'S AWAKE???!!!!" And the sounds of his captain sling-shotting himself around the ship.
There's a clamor of voices in the background, mostly yelling some variation of "Luffy wait!!"
Sanji braces himself as best as he could.
The door to the infirmary slams open with enough force that Sanji actually feels sorry for it. Luffy looms in the doorway, limned by sunlight, face lighting up in a grin that's brighter than anything Sanji has ever seen. He feels simultaneously like he is choked up and like he can breathe properly for the first time.
"SANJI!!!" Luffy shouts in pure glee and dashes inside. Sanji, expecting to be pounced upon, is quite surprised when Luffy comes to a screeching halt at the edge of the bed.
Instead, he reaches out and cradles his cook's face in both of his hands, those eyes that feel like they can move the very tides, looking searchingly into his own. Sanji doesn't know what he is looking for, doesn't know what he can give him now. But he lets him look, lets him see. It's stupid how his walls don't exist when it's his captain. It's stupid how much he will do for Luffy.
It's not stupid at all.
Whatever he is looking for, Sanji thinks he finds it. Because Luffy nods, and then leans forward and gently presses his forehead into his.
'What a feral creature,' Sanji thinks, closing his eyes and absorbing the strength offered to him.
"I missed Sanji," Luffy says, head still pressed against his. And Sanji hears the rest of it even without his captain speaking the words. So don't do that again.
He swallows hard.
Luffy won't tell him that he shouldn't have. He would never tell Sanji to betray him or his confidences. He knows that that is an order that Sanji cannot follow. Not even to save his life. Not even to save his dreams.
But this also cannot happen again. Luffy will not allow it. He will change the very fabric of the world to make it so and Sanji will help him.
Maybe that is contradictory. Sanji doesn't know. But it is Luffy. And he will follow his captain's orders.
"If you can stop hogging him…." a pleasantly amused voice says from the doorway.
Luffy leans back and scowls at Nami standing in the doorway with a tray. "No," he says, hands still cupping Sanji's face, proprietary and mulish.
"Nami-san!" Sanji says, honestly delighted to see her. Her beautiful smile is like a balm.
"Sanji-kun!" she says. "Are you hungry? I have soup." A warmth spreads through his chest.
"Did Nami-san make soup for me?"
"Well, I can't trust anyone else on this ship to do it now can I?" she says but she is smiling, so warm and bright and happy. He can't help but smile back.
But…
"I'm not sure how hungry I am right now Nami-san," he confesses. The pain is starting to spike and honestly every part of him feels out of sorts.
"We'll go slow," she assures him, stepping into the room properly. "Chopper wants something in your stomach before the next round of meds."
It makes sense. He's literally used that exact same argument to get his nakama to eat when they're injured.
"I'll, I'll try," he says. He will for Nami-san. He can't let her cooking go to waste after all.
She sets the tray on the little side table and tries to shoo Luffy out of the way.
"He needs to sit up," she tells him. Luffy tilts his head in the way that says he has an idea. Sanji has exactly one second to get alarmed before Luffy is lifting him up into a sitting position gently. Sanji catches his eyes going dark for a second as he handles what's left of his arm before the look is gone again. Luffy maneuvers himself behind Sanji, using his bulk in place of the pillows to keep Sanji upright. Clearly, he is not getting out of his shitty captain's rubber grip anytime soon.
Nami watches this with fond exasperation and doesn't even bother to try to get Luffy to move. She pulls up a chair, settles in the bowl in her lap, and holds out a spoon of soup to him.
Sanji blinks at her, a slow swirl of mortification growing inside of him.
"I…I can do that Nami-san," he stutters, ears growing pink. He does not need anyone to feed him, not even the lovely Nami-san. Maybe especially the lovely Nami-san. He was supposed to take care of them, not the other way around. And besides the last time anyone had had to feed him, he was nine and suffering from refeeding syndrome. The mortification is almost paralyzing now.
She and Luffy both look at his heavily bandaged right arm. Neither of them says anything but he can hear the entire lecture in surround sound.
Nami sighs. "Take the win Sanji-kun," she says resignedly, "I'm not even charging you for this."
He takes this in, what it means coming from Nami, and then says delightedly, "Nami-san really does love me!"
She stuffs the whole spoon into his mouth.
Sanji falls right back asleep after he eats, a combination of warm soup and Chopper giving him a new dose of pain meds through his IV, taking him out with ease.
He sleeps straight through lunch, his body clearly overruling him and taking whatever amount of rest it deems necessary.
He wakes up in time for dinner though, which for him was soup again. Apparently, the others are having sandwiches, which eases his mind a little. Even they can't mess up sandwiches too badly.
There seemed to have been a furious game of rock, paper, scissors outside of the infirmary, after which Brook trotted in with the dinner tray in a distinctly smug strut. Outside Usopp curses after him. Luffy slips in right after his musician, and Sanji allows himself to be manhandled as his Captain resumes his previous spot behind him.
He really isn't going to get out of Luffy's grip for a while. That's going to get old fast. But right now, it's a little endearing.
Brook waits until they are settled before stirring the soup and lifting a spoonful to his mouth. Sanji isn't any less mortified but considering that Luffy has a not-so-subtle grip on his right wrist and he doesn't have a freaking left arm, he endures.
He's sure they both pick up on his sour mood but neither say anything. Brook hums something, gentle and easy. Luffy hums along with him, his captain's wreck of a voice a direct counterpoint to Brooks smooth one. But the soft huffs of breath on his neck, Luffy's fingers around his wrist, are all grounding him, holding back the rising panic, the sheer ball of emotion that grows and grows inside his chest, every minute they do something for him that he should have been able to do himself.
He doesn't eat much, though he tries to finish the bowl. Some of the antibiotics he's on, suppresses his appetite a little. He doesn't get much of a chance to freak out about wasting the food though, because two seconds after he declares that he's done, Luffy snatches the bowl and tips the remainder into the void that is his stomach.
Brook leaves them then, with an affectionate brush of his fingerbones against Sanji's cheek which makes him blush furiously and then hate himself for it.
He expects Luffy to leave then too, but he doesn't. He shifts so that Sanji's head is pillowed on his lap instead. Sanji swallows, not looking up at those dark eyes. He does not want to broach this topic but he has to say it. So, he scrapes up what is left of his tattered courage and says, "Luffy."
He doesn't get anything else out because Luffy leans over him, dark eyes locked onto his, unusually serious, and says, "Uh-Uh."
"Wha…?"
"No," Luffy says again. He pokes Sanji in the forehead. "No take backs."
"But," Sanji continues stubbornly.
"You are not leaving," Luffy says and he almost looks angry.
"My job is to cook for you," Sanji snaps. "And yeah, I can cook one-handed but it won't be the same. I won't be as fast. And…And I can't make the same kinds of shit I used to. There are simply some things that need both hands!"
"I'll wait," Luffy says, entirely unconcerned. "For however long Sanji needs to cook. And I don't care if we don't get all the fancy stuff again. I want Sanji's food. I can't get Sanji's food without Sanji. So Sanji," he stresses his name pointedly, "is going to stay. Besides. Sanji said he'd be mine. No takebacks."
He leans back apparently done with this entire conversation. Sanji doesn't know if to kick him or cry. He doesn't want to leave of course. How could he? But he can't be useless.
He can't go against the captain's orders either though. And Luffy seems hellbent on keeping him here, even as a defective cook.
He knows well enough that nothing changes his captain's mind when he's set on something. He wants to keep arguing, but he doesn't. He will have to try. For Luffy's sake he will have to try. And if after, Luffy sees that it can't be done, then he will take his leave with grace.
But he will have tried and that will satisfy his captain's mind.
Sanji wakes in the night, not quite sure what it was that had caused him to rise from slumber. He listens for a moment, trying to determine if there was any threat, but fails to detect anything. The Sunny must have simply lurched under a particularly hard wave. It happens sometimes. The sea is never truly predictable after all.
He lies in the darkness, blinking back sleep. He can hear Chopper snoring lightly, the littler doctor, no doubt slumped over his desk, most likely over a book. He can't see him; Chopper has pulled the little screen between his desk and the rest of the room; its purpose is to give them both a little privacy while not remaining too far out of reach.
After a moment, Sanji braces himself and sits up a little. He bites back a groan. The beatings he'd taken on his torso were healing up, fairly well, though slower than he was used to. The same with his legs. Chopper said that his body had a lot more to heal this time so he wouldn't be healing as fast as he normally would. Frankly, Sanji thought that was bullshit. But Chopper was in full mother-hen mode and, more to the point, so was Luffy. Which was a little terrifying, so Sanji was trying to be good, no matter how much it chafed at him.
And maybe…maybe he was a little scared too.
He uses his right hand to stuff a pillow behind his back for support and leans back on it with a little sigh. There's not much light in the room, Chopper's lamp having guttered out sometime before, but there's enough for this.
He looks down at his arm, really looks. He's been trying not to. Trying to pretend it didn't exist. No that's not true. He knew it existed, he knew it was there, but he hadn't wanted to think about it. But he has to.
He traces it from his shoulder going down past his elbow until his gaze finally lands on the stump. It looks ungainly and that's not taking into consideration the bulk of bandages at the end. His hands have always been elegant, maybe even a little delicate looking, his fingers long. To have it look fat and short feels wrong. To not be able to wiggle his fingers, feels wrong. He tries and the sheer lack of sensation instead of his sensitive fingertips jolts him. His stomach roils. He swallows hard.
He…he has to do this. He has to get used to this.
He can't help but think it'd be easier if he'd lost a leg. Zeff had. He could have lived with that. This feels like it might break him. He swallows hard again, closing his eyes.
If only. If only. If only.
Sometimes it feels like his life is a string of if-onlys with the worst outcomes happening.
He shakes his head. He can't think like that. He can't.
He got Zeff. He got this stupid crew.
"Come on you coward," he mutters to himself in the darkness. He opens his eyes again and forces himself once more to look at his arm. His reach is tentative, his fingers hovering over the stump for a long moment before he gently rests one finger on it, dragging it along the bandages slowly.
He sucks in a breath at the feeling. It's…it's not what he'd expected. He'd expected it to feel like if he'd stroked along his forearm and it does, but the touch also lights up nerve endings he's pretty sure had not been exposed to the outside world before either.
It feels…. weird. His brain isn't quite sure what to make of the sensation. He strokes again, tracing a fingertip around the stump face itself, and winces. He's still on the pain meds, though Chopper had stepped him down from the really good stuff, to the good stuff. Sanji is not looking forward to being off them completely which is honestly a first for him.
He leaves off the stump face but continues to trace around the edges, trying to get the shape imprinted in his mind, trying to get his mind to accept that this is what he has here, instead of the arm he'd had for all of his life. Trying to fit his body awareness into this new and sucky normal.
He doesn't realize that he is crying until the tears drip off his face and onto the bandages. He doesn't want to be doing this. He doesn't want to see this. He doesn't want to have to get used to this. His fingers spasm over the bandages digging into the stump and for a second, he wishes he can rip the whole thing off and throw it far away so that he doesn't have to see it.
He buries his face in his one remaining hand and sobs. He hates this. He hates this. He hates this!!! Why? Why…?
He is caught up suddenly, Chopper's heavy point scooping him right up off the bed and tucking him close against his chest.
"I hate this Chopper!" he sobs into his nakama's fur.
"Me too," Chopper says, voice breaking a little.
They stay like that until Sanji falls into an exhausted sleep.
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