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Sometimes Sanji catches on to the fact that at least some of his relation to Usopp is about the game of it. Back on Baratie, the game of it was a vital part of his life, seeing how far he could go and how much he could get away with before the guest he was flirting with inevitably left.
He misses the game of it a lot; onboard, it is not really an option, the value of what he would be playing with is far too grand and the continued presence of any potential playmates means that there is consequence to it. Loathe to admit it as he is, that consequence was not a factor on Baratie, which for many years suited him perfectly. Anyway, it was always obvious to him that either Nami or Robin would never be an option anyway, for a whole host of reasons. Together the two women have instead tamed his impulses into a reliable and trustworthy dynamic of allowing him to adore them. The premise is that he understands that there is a line drawn in the sand. It is a fair compromise, Sanji finds, but he does miss the game of it and its eternally unspoken and unfulfilled potential.
The game of holding eye contact, of finding excuses for touching, of putting ideas into each other’s heads. The game of saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud -chicken.
He still gets his chances, of course, because everyone knows that if a pirate is decent he makes for one hell of a good party and so they make sure to be decent to the people they meet along the way and in exchange they get a fair few good parties.
Maybe it is because that is not enough for Sanji. Maybe it is because Usopp makes such a perfectly responsive playmate. Maybe it is just pure instinct. Nonetheless, Usopp triggers it in him, subtly but reliably.
Most of the time, even Sanji himself is oblivious to the fact. They just get along. They get close. They share time and work and when the morning is chilly and Sanji is waiting for the bread to finish before he wakes the rest of the crew for breakfast, Usopp is right there, steady on the wheel or on the lookout and always with a story to swap. True or not. The unassuming closeness of their bodies is just a consequence.
But sometimes the game of it comes out.
Sometimes he catches himself watching the rough, scarred, slender hands maneuvering tools with ease. Sometimes he takes note of the tense muscles of arms hanging onto the rig while working. Sometimes, in the moonlight, Usopp’s dark skin seems to glow as blue as the ocean.
One night, the crew take a late dinner together, under the stars. A little buzzed, they pass a guitar around, trying to find which one among them has the most musical prowess and then – once Franky is the clear winner – tossing out requests and challenges and songs and cheers. Sanji runs on instinct when he shifts his position on Franky’s weirdly decent ship-lawn and his hands move behind him and, by extension, behind Usopp. Usopp, who moves to accommodate him, but only so much that Sanji becomes intently aware of his presence. Only so much that, with the slightest shifting of weight, he would be leaning into Sanji. When Sanji catches himself thinking that following such a move, the obvious next step would be to let his arm and hand find their way over Usopp’s back, the game reveals itself.
The notion is as terrifying as any bad guy they might encounter. If the way their bodies brush past each other when Usopp is helping in the kitchen is not an unremarkable incident, but strategy, then what does that say about either of them? Sanji has seen how Usopp reacts to positive attention. He is getting better at hiding it but the breathy excitement or baffled wordlessness lies just below the surface. Sanji’s mind conjures images of helpless rabbits in the maws of wolves, the moth obliviously seeking out the light, his younger self loosing all his saved up allowance in a game of poker with the head waiter and not knowing what hit him.
“Sanji?” He is frozen in the process of figuring out ways in which this is not actually the game. If nothing else, he thinks, it obviously is not the game because the game requires intent and there is none here. Never did he seriously consider Usopp as a goalpost for his these silly little challenges. Maybe he is simply acting on instinct, but intent matters, really. Probably. “Mind if I...?”
He points at the cigarette. Sanji’s train of thought is slowed down and he offers it to Usopp, as he has done so many times before, a ritual between the two of them as obvious and personal as his ritual of offering Chopper to lick the bowls in which he has made sweet baked goods or desserts.
What happens is that Usopp leans in a little, easily transfers the glowing cigarette from Sanji’s hand to his own and sucks down on it, still closer than he really has to be and it makes something click.
Usopp breathes out the smoke. Closes his eyes. Turns his head up, away from the warmly lit deck, towards the dark sky. Inhales again, savours the taste, breathes out. Takes a third drag. Turns back to Sanji, offers him the cigarette back while the rest of the crew loudly eggs on Nami and Zolo to chug! Chug! Chug!, then… blows out. So needlessly close that almost by instinct, in the same motion as he receives the cigarette, Sanji breathes the thin pillar of smoke back into his own mouth.
Then Usopp pulls his hand back, the touch breaks, the shared breath ends. Usopp joins in the cheering. Sanji’s head spins.
Of course the games Sanji plays are not really games, if they were, the other party would know. They obviously do not and in fact should not and in the event that they do catch on, you have probably lost, which is so inevitable that it might be the first rule. There is no actual game. To assume that anyone is playing is to do both them and yourself a great disservice. And yet.
On the Merry Go had been a set of Go, now long lost since sometime during their adventures in Alabasta, at which Sanji had been brutally defeated by Usopp. Absolutely caught off guard by this lying fools victory, Sanji had demanded an explanation: Well, Usopp had laughed, being a chronic overthinker does eventually set you up to be a pretty decent strategist.
It is not a game. But if it was (and truly even if it is not), Sanji realizes, he has a formidable sparring partner.
Seduction is not a two way street, Sanji is learning, but a plaza.
They are quite deep into the night. Crew members with better judgement than him and Usopp have already gone to bed. Then again, who knows what tomorrow holds, certainly something far more intense than tonight’s welcome party at this small atoll, so they might as well savour it. They wingman each other so well, really, who knows the next time they will get the chance?
It is a classic game of seduction, where the two of them make the case that they are excellent company and that the night is still young, while the two island women make them work for it by way of offering all the reasons they perhaps should not be staying much longer (though they of course have no intentions of leaving). Sanji and Usopp debunk every reason offered to them, each sillier than the other, as these things go.
“Even so,” the younger woman laughs as she refills first her own cup, then the cup of Usopp right next to her. “I don’t know.”
“It’s just a kiss,” Sanji protests, “you said it yourself; East Blue is the only one missing from your kissing-pirates-bingo card.” Her friend is quieter, but her hand is covering Sanji’s, keeping it in place on her waist.
“That’s alright, Sanji,” says Usopp. “Maybe she’s saving it for someone special?”
“It just seems a bit difficult,” she continues, “don’t take it personally but… Your nose- No, hear me out, it’s very handsome but-” Laughter in the night. “It just seems like it’d get in the way is all.”
Usopp seems equal parts humoured and offended.
“Nonsense!” Sanji calls out, a bit too loud, when Usopp is pushing the cut-off for a good comeback. He has decided he wants this for Usopp. Sanji does not care much for his own destiny, really (wanting is unavoidably preferable to having but he will not confront this just yet), but Usopp? Usopp should have this.
He turns to his right, puts a hand on the side of Usopp’s jaw, which gives just enough of a moment for Usopp to catch on to what is happening. Then he tilt his head and lean in to kiss him. Warm lips, gently parted, his own tongue darting out to taste them as the girl under Sanj’s arm calls out in surprise. When they separate, the woman’s eyes are big and bright, her hand covering her mouth.
“Well,” she says, eventually. “I’m sorry I was so presumptuous.”
Usopp laughs, a subtle blush over his cheeks, already warm and lively in the light of the lanterns. “Well,” he replies, then flicks the tip of his nose. “It’s clearly intimidating. I can’t blame you.”
Sanji beams.
It is the pale dawn of morning as Usopp climbs back aboard Thousand Sunny. The exhaustion and dehydration of a long night is kicking in and, though he tries his best to be quiet, the ladder hanging off the side of the ship clatters a little against her hull as he climbs. When he missteps, wood against wood sounds with a loud thunk, Usopp fumbling to not slip off the ladder. “Shit-”
“Good morning.”
Sanji is looking down over the side of the ship. There is a steaming enamel mug in his hand, dark bags under his eyes, a hint of a smirk. Usopp feels himself blush. “Morning.”
The final steps of the ladder and he drops down on deck. Sanji is in pyjama shorts and a stained and tattered Marine sweatshirt that usually hangs in the kitchen. He is smoking his first of the day and as he looks Usopp over, his face takes a tone of smugness, making Usopp instinctually reach up to his hair. “Slept well?”
“...No thanks to you.”
Sanji grins. “Oh, I am so, so sorry that I put you in such a precarious situation. I figured that no new adventure was too grand for the great sniper ki-”
“Shut up,” Usopp punches Sanji’s shoulder, tries not to grin too much himself. “Can I help with breakfast?”
Sanji brushes him off and shakes his head. “Just waiting for the rice to finish. If you want to do me a favour you can help me after dinner. Or just consider it my treat.”
“Oh, please, like you were the deciding factor.”
There is something in the way that he looks so awfully pleased with himself that makes Usopp feel… Well. No matter who he had met here, he would probably feel a bit undressed, caught in a ruse perhaps. As if that is such a bad thing. As if he would not try and find ways to get Sanji especially to ask him for details anyway. Yet, because it is Sanji, the situation feels off to him in a way he is unsure if he actually is enjoying.
“...And you?” He asks.
Sanji shrugs. Takes a sip from the mug. “I had breakfast to make.”
Right. “Uh-huh?”
“She wasn’t that kind of girl anyway, obviously, which was just as well.”
Usopp pauses. Looks him over. That kind of girl, huh?
It took a while for the two of them to get along, not the least because Sanji seemed so much like everything Usopp was not, of course. Blond and effortlessly, elegantly, boyishly handsome. Wise to the world, capable, presenting and carrying himself like a fully grown man. His poise restrained and his movements precise. Usopps own body still feels jaunty and uncoordinated. Boyish in all the wrong ways. Although the two of them soon found a mutual respect for (and delight in) the other’s creativity and grand dreams, the contrast remains undeniable, the comparison difficult for him to avoid.
And yet.
He can still smell some part of her on his own body. She had had a gap between her front teeth and she had called him funny and cute, had inspected his coarse and gnarly hands with attention and affection, more than a little bit of attraction.
There are many things in Usopp’s life that he cannot really access as proper memories. Especially since he left the small world of home. Often it seems more to him like someone who was actually there has told him such a vivid story he can almost picture himself in it. The experience of this Grand Line atoll girl, however, feels unequivocally real and his own. As the sun rises through the fog it is impossible for him not to see Sanji in a different way. Without the suit as he is, there is not so much separating them now. Suddenly, his usual polish strikes Usopp as that of something new and only carefully used, a bright thing still in its box and waiting to be worn until the surface shine wears off and the deeper luster of a lived life comes through.
The vision lasts for just a moment and something about it embarrasses him, deeply, equally makes his pulse kick up a notch with nameless excitement. Sanji still looks kind of smug.
“I’ll go get dressed and wake the others,” he says, “you can set the table.”
“I don’t kiss and tell-”
“No gentleman does.”
Morning light. There is something about the morning light. About blond hair at dawn. It looks best at dawn, light and airy, not overwhelmed by golden hours or flickering lanterns. Usopp flusters. Is struck with the thought that any blush must show so much brighter on Sanji. Blushes yet deeper at the thought. Sanji disappears into the ship.
The image of her is fading quickly now. Usopp drags it back to the forefront of his mind to recall it while it is still true. It is unremarkable and absolutely astonishing all at once. His head pounds with dehydration and exhaustion. He wants to inspect Sanjis hands as she had his. In his mind, Sanjis hands suddenly exist in two separate states, he cannot remember what is true but in a sense they both seem equally correct. Last night they seemed so soft and light on his jaw, pure with the absence of fighting, but then they are also the working hands of a chef. Fingers right at the edge of a furiously fast kitchen knife, ready by hot pots and pans and ovens, plunging into the guts of a fish.
He sleeps right through lunch that day.
The sniper king mask is a plain but beautiful piece of work. Now damaged to the point of structural failure, the paint flaking where Usopp has cut a hole for the nose, but nonetheless beautiful. It makes Sanji wonder that maybe it was a mistake becoming a pirate. Maybe he could have seen the world without having the government on his heels. Maybe he could have come to Water Seven to work, stay for the festivals a while, hitch his way up the Grand Line on trading vessels and Marine ships.
Carefully, he turns the mask in his hands, runs his fingers along the rays coming out from it. “I’ve been thinking about Thriller Bark, actually, do you really feel like that all the time?” he asks. Usopp makes a confused sound. “The ghosts,” Sanji continues, “they made me feel like diving into the sea wearing concrete shoes with a shark buffet tied to my neck but you barely even acknowledged them.”
Usopp puts the glass of grog to his lips. Looks away. Sanji puts the mask back into its drawer. “Not all the time,” he eventually replies, “if it was all the time I don’t think I’d still… But I recognize the feeling. I know it’s not going to be forever. Even when it seems like it will. The feeling is real, but the causes are not, or maybe the causes are real but… I don’t know. Sometimes you just have to run like hell and hope it doesn’t catch up with you. I’ve gotten pretty good at that.”
He leans back in the chair that originally had wheels, but which have since been removed, on account of seafaring. Crosses his legs in front of him at the ankles. Seems to savour the thought for a bit. “So like training wearing weights,” Sanji says, “but for your soul.”
“Except I am always training and I can’t take them off.”
“That’s ass.”
Usopp shrugs. Smiles meekly. “It’s getting better.”
Without really thinking about it, Sanji has turned to stand in front of Usopp, a comfortable silence between them as they both come to a sort of quiet acknowledgement of mutually allowing one to observe the other. It happens more and more frequently, as their shared fondness of playing the game has earned them new, uncontested territory. Territory which is place out of place, time out of time, where and when Sanji is learning the patterns of Usopps curls and the angles of his eyebrows and the angles of his limbs and where all his scars are. He has to assume Usopp is learning something about him as well. “Still,” Sanji eventually says, emptying his glass. He takes a step in, sets it down on the desk behind Usopp, lingers. “It’s impressive.”
Usopp idly reaches out to toy with the end of Sanjis tie.
“We wouldn’t have made it out of there without you.”
“Oh, shut up, it’s always you guys saving my ass. I better be useful for something.”
“You’re plenty useful,” Sanji says, buying time for his racing mind: The levels are wrong, he thinks, we need an excuse to level. He runs the gamut in his mind; seeks reasons to kneel, reasons to get Usopp on his feet, reasons he might lean down or Usopp up (though that specifically seems much too far-fetched). “But, also, who cares about being useful. It’s not a business. You’re not here to be useful.” The placement is good, he notes of the way they have allowed the desk and the chair to make their shared space in the room smaller and the way I might easily stay close even if I found an excuse to move in the room, which might make Usopp move as well. Then he would-
Usopp wraps the tie around his knuckles, tugs on it, pulls Sanji’s face down towards his own in a single and steady motion.
The kiss is such a flagrant, intentional violation of the rules of the game, it brings Sanji completely off his keel. There is just the taste of grog as filtered through the mouth of another. The warm breath. His body caught awkwardly leaning down. Warm lips. Body heat against the skin of his face. The gentle and steady pressure from his tie keeping him down. A second hand combs through his hair and settles on the back of his head. The ever present sound of the ship rocking gently through the waves. Tongue. The part of his mind still partially occupied with strategy notes that this is a very strange and somewhat undignified position and the hand not resting on the desk grabs Usopp by the shirt. For some reason. Whatever. Who cares. He lets the tie drag him in closer, the hand on the back of his head egg him on, there is a nose squashing a little against his cheekbone.
Then the awkward bend of his leg against the chair drags him back into the real world. Or the less real world. He still has a hand in Usopps shirt. Usopps hand in his tie is lifted as he straightens out. His mind spins. Whatever the expression on Usopps face is, he cannot read it, whether that is the fault of the grog or of Usopp or of his own ability.
He can’t just do that. Can he?
Usopp clears his throat. His tongue darts out over his lips. Sanji feels the slight weight of his hand in the tie pressing on the back of his neck. Lets go of the shirt. Lets his hand rest on Usopps pectoral while his strategical mind scrambles.
“Hey,” Usopps voice is almost-a-murmur -low, the weight on the tie loosens and instead there is the warmth of a hand through the shirt along the side of Sanjis chest. “Do you want to…?”
But the game is over, Sanji concludes, there is no path from here he can follow without leaping into a different process entirely and… And he is not sure why that matters, but it does matter, not because he does not want to but maybe specifically because he does. As he straightens his back, his fingertips remain on Usopps body, even as the weight of his palm moves away. “I-”
Dark eyes transparently darting over his face like Usopp assumes he will not notice. Scarred hand sliding down to his waist. In Sanjis mind are forces he cannot – and would in any case prefer not to – name, clashing so that the sparks blind him completely. He shakes his head.
“Oh.”
Sanji drags his fingers along Usopps outstretched arm as he takes a step back. Finally breaks the touch between them as he lifts his fingertips away from the back of the other’s hand. “Not… right now.”
Usopp looks at him. His brows furrow a little. Sanji is struck with relief, that the fear about Usopp taking rejection visibly poorly turned out not to be accurate, a fear he only then realizes is vivid in his body.
“Sorry.”
“Hey,” he shrugs, reaching out to take his glass of grog from the desk by their side. The sentence is left hanging in the air. Sanji wants desperately to dive back into that scent he is just now realizing he craves. Then again, maybe it is just the grog, the miles and miles of ocean and the kicks thrown for one another.
When Sanji leaves the workshop, he glances over his shoulder, Usopp still in his place by the desk and his face a mystery. Watching him.
If there was an unspoken “next time” in Sanjis rejection, they never find out, because suddenly they are confronted with the Red Line and then all hell breaks lose.