#whirlywrites

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When Luffy is six, alone and abandoned in a small village by the sea that he could never leave, he asks Shanks a question. 

It is a question that had been lingering in the dredges of his mind, ever since these pirates had barged through the door with songs on their lips and adventures in their minds, with not that word that he didn’t have leaving their mouths but rather tales of ships and voyages and seas.

“Shanks? Where’s your home?”

Shanks looks down at him, eyebrows quirking upward as he finishes his drink with a flourish before setting it down with a soft clink. His eyes are just as soft, like some how he understands that this is different from when Luffy asked about his favorite battles, when Luffy asked for a sip of his drink or if Shanks really had been at the bottom of the sea when he was Luffy’s age. 

“Home? Easy – it’s the sea, anchor!”

“The sea?” Luffy had never heard something more stupid, and that was saying a lot since all the stupid things he heard of were from Shanks. That wasn’t what Makino had told him, wasn’t what Gramps had explained, wasn’t anything like where your family is or place you stay. It was the sea – endless and vast and full of danger and sea kings and marines that like to give you Fists of Love and don’t come back. The sea didn’t have a place to have belongings or keep yourself safe. It – 

It doesn’t make sense. 

“The sea!” Shanks says with a grin, a sparkle in his eye like he gets before stands on tables and talks about the time he sailed to a land of samurai. “It’s any pirate’s home! It’s where our adventures await, and where our nakama are with us, and every day it bright than the rest, ain’t that right, fellas!”

“Aye, captain!” The crew drunkenly choruses, words already forming on their lips. 

“How does that one chorus go?”

“Which one?”

“Oh, I know! Gather up all the crew – “

“It’s time to ship out Bink’s Brew!” Shanks joins in, holding his hands out to Luffy and not even waiting till he grabs them to snatch him up in a dance. “Pirates, we eternally are challenging the sea.” His voice is joyful and loud with the way men get when the party in in swing, but there’s nothing but happiness in his steps as he guides Luffy onto his feet and twirls him around.

 “With the waves to rest our heads,  ship beneath us as our beds, hoisted high upon the mast, our jolly roger flies! Yohohoho-“

“Oi! Wrong part captain! It goes like this – “

“Dahahaha!” Shanks ignores them, only to bend down to Luffy’s level. “A pirates’ home is where he’s happy, Luffy. My home is with my crew and with some drink – or an adventure – in my hand. That’s the sea for me. Got it?”

Luffy doesn’t, but as Shanks sweeps him up into another round of Bink’s brew, he’s starting to find that the answer doesn’t really matter, not when he’s not alone here, with Shanks and pirates all around him

“Yohohoho, yohohoho!”

-

Luffy is seven, and he’s finally figured out what home is. Home is his brothers, running through the jungle, laughter and adventure and fun is every step. Home is the way Ace smiles when he thinks no one is looking, and the way Sabo is always the first to say Let’s explore! Home is coming home to a tree house, and never being alone. 

Home is Ace and Sabo and Ace and Sabo and – 

Home is burning. 

Home is dead.

Luffy feels hollow, feels like the world is crumbling out from underfoot, because everyone said that home could be a person but they never said that home could burn. That home could die. That home could go away and never, ever come back. 

Maybe that’s why Shanks said home is the sea and why Makino said that home is a place and only sometimes a person – because people leave and burn and never come back, and seas can’t burn or be destroyed. 

Luffy is seven, and he realizes again that he doesn’t want a home, not anymore, because all home does is burn. 

(Then, there’s a promise and a vow and Luffy is never going to lose home again.)

-

Luffy is seventeen, and he’s been alone for three years but not anymore because this time – this time he has a home that won’t burn, that won’t leave, because he is their captain and he will protect them. 

Home is Zoro and his quiet smiles, home is Nami, and her ink-stained hands, home is Usopp and stories that roll off the tongue, home is Sanji and meals made for comfort, home is Vivi and her kindness however far away, home is Chopper and his hugs, home is Robin and her cryptic statements, home is Merry, sturdy and true, home is – 

Ace, and Ace won’t burn because Ace is made of fire. Home can’t burn again. It can’t. 

It can’t.

-

Luffy is seventeen, and home is burning by his own hands. It’s a funeral, the only one worthy of Merry because the bottom of the sea is a dark place and she deserves a sendoff to light her way but – 

It’s fire, non-the-less, reminding Luffy of how Grey Terminal’s fire looked by the shore, and home – Merry, with her black eyes and painted smile, with her strong planks and her determined heart, Merry, home – 

It’s burning.

(He’s starting to think that maybe home isn’t what he’s always called it before – people and places that make you happy, that keep you safe.

Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s something that’s only this way because of him. 

Maybe – )

Sunny won’t burn, will never burn with a hull of Adam’s Wood, but Merry does, and it hurts. 

-

Luffy is seventeen and home is burning. 

This time – 

This time – 

This time – 

It burns it burns it burns it hurts it hurts Ace Ace Ace Ace why no Ace Ace please – 

Home burns in his arms, his big brother who is made of fire, who can’t be burned, burns in his arms, and it drips drips drips down onto Luffy’s chest and he can’t let go because this is home and this home can’t burn but it does and – 

“Thank you for loving me.”

Home burns. 

(It always does.)

“AAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

-

Luffy is eighteen and Ruskaina is sweltering and his chest is burning burning burning but he’s not home. 

He’s not. 

He’s…

He’s not alone. He’s not home. His crew (ZoroNamiUsoppSanjiViviChopperRobinFrankyBrook) is still there, still existing, but they are not home, any longer.

Maybe he is, to them. He’s burned, after all, he fits his own criteria. But they aren’t to him.

On Ruskaina, he makes this decision. He vows it, under the sweltering sun and with bandages wrapped around his chest,  with phantom pains on his finger’s where Ace’s vivre card singed him, with his mind alight with war. His crew is not his home, Sunny is not his home, because Luffy does not have a home. 

He does not want one, he does not have one, because home is a place that burns, and Luffy has been burned too many times to count.

-

Luffy is nineteen and older and stronger than all his moments before. He stands in front of his crew with a smile on his face and a burn across his chest, because he is not home, but his crew – 

His crew tumbles into his open, waiting arms, crashing him down onto to the ground as they come home. 

Luffy burns, and Luffy is home, and he will be King of the Pirates. 

Something in Sanji cracks there, cut raw, just a bit, and his hand raises to Gin’s face. It hovers there, a mimic of a caress, before he drops it, feeling unworthy in the eyes of Gin’s hurt. “I’m sorry,” Sanji says, and it’s sorry for leaving you, not sorry I had to leave, because he loves Gin - little tho he admits it - but he’s a Straw Hat.

He’s a Straw Hat and the government had jailed one of their own, so he had to put his life as Sanji, the man who flirts with the gangsters by way of sharing cigarettes and hot meals, aside to become Black Leg Sanji. He doesn’t regret it.

He regrets hurting Gin. 

Gin, in the face of Sanji’s apology, gives a little shrug. “It’s alright,” it’s not, “Just… come back sooner next time. Or else I won’t have to come in and steal your cookie dough.”

Sanji blinks, and finally looks down at the bowl he’s holding and - shit, it was the batch of cookies he was making for tomorrow’s early run, and there wasn’t any flour in it yet cause Patty had moved everything around, just - “Gin, you bastard!” He kicks the man in the shins. “This is raw cookie dough! Don’t eat that shit, you’ll get sick!”

Gin just gives him a shit eating grin, eyes carefully arcing over Sanji’s face. “What’re you going to do about it?”

“Make you help me finish this batch.” Sanji says shortly, shoving the bowl back into Gin’s arms in search of the flour - which, Gin had so helpfully already set out. Bastard. “Now start stirring.” He orders, and Gin grins and -

It’s late at night, the sound of the city around them, and both of them belong to gangs and have more blood on their shoes than years lived. Yet, here they are, sharing a single cigarette and making cookies in the abandoned light of a 5-star restaurant’s kitchen.

As they stand, side by side, Gin’s hands slips into Sanji’s. And maybe, just maybe - everything doesn’t feel so open and cut raw, not anymore.

“Oi! Stop taste testing.”

“Make me.”

“Why you -“