One Piece Fic: Like Steel for Chocolate, Epilogue
Title: Like Steel for Chocolate
Author: Maldoror
Rating: Up to light R
Pairing: SanZo principally, as well as a secondary Luffy/Usopp (there's no particular significance to the direction of those slashes.) A third pairing crops up briefly, but I'll scar surprise you with that when it appears ^_^
Warning: Big fat massive SPOILERS for various episodes up to manga ep. 440. I also play fast and loose with the OP-verse physics, introducing something that may or may not be alchemy or faint sympathetic magic.



Summary: Sanji's cooking has reached a whole new level. It's almost uncanny. Especially when his thoughts and emotions somehow get into the mix along with the rest of the ingredients.

Fic starts here






Disclaimer: I don't own the characters from One Piece, and I make no money off of this fic.



AN: Back from my weekend, and feeling all sorts of relaxed as a result. As for the fic, here's the epilogue: a very small 'snapshot' piece to finish off the story.



Epilogue: Around the Table



"It’s spicy!" Usopp exclaimed before he’d even tasted it, alarmed by the sauce’s bright red color. Idiot. Sanji might give the guys the slightly overripe pieces of meat, since they did not have the delicate palate of the ladies, but he’d mixed the chili and spices to the sauce as he'd assembled the meal on each plate, the quantity measured to each individual, as would any ship's cook worth his dose of fine-ground rock salt. There should be no grounds for complaint.

For instance, there was no sauce or meat at all for Chopper, who had a double helping of the vegetables instead, and the little ship’s biscuits that Sanji had spent an entire night designing specifically for him when the doctor had first come aboard; a mixture of rough barley flour, fishbone meal, salt, milk, honey and water. It paid to keep their emergency food ration alive and healthy, Sanji had commented when Chopper had tried to thank him the very first time (it had taken two hours to talk Chopper out of the hold). Sanji lived for the prize that was the All Blue, but until then he honed his skills on all the challenges he found upon the Grand Line, like Zeff had. The old man had taunted the young rookie over his inexperience for years, but even Zeff had never ran the gauntlet of feeding a human-reindeer an appropriate and pleasing diet. The crap bastard would be crying in his shitty soup in sheer envy when Sanji returned to the Baratie.

The way Chopper's big eyes would go round, wobbly and full each time he found his special biscuits on his plate was kinda worth the effort as well. The little reindeer seemed to be constitutionally unable to take nice gestures in his regard for granted.

Usopp was prodding his food with his fork as if testing whether the metal would melt on contact, but Sanji had poured on his crewmate’s portion of the salsa sauce before adding any extra seasoning at all, since the guy was an ineffable coward in just about every realm except that of his imagination.

"Yeah, it’s spicy alright," Usopp announced after his first bite, and then beguiled Luffy, Chopper and the rest of the table with the grandiose tale of how he’d once downed a whole bottle of Flaming Hot Lava Delight sauce on a dare, the kind of sauce that could be used in lieu of gunpowder, earning a free meal from the admiring innkeeper for Captain Usopp And His Iron Stomach.

Of course that just made Franky laugh hard enough to choke and mention HIS iron stomach. The real deal, pal! Which it was, of course, not that that made a difference as far as a cook was concerned. No, there was a far better reason why Franky's salsa had plenty of chili seeds, but no other spices worth mentioning. It hadn't taken Sanji long to figure out that their shipwright had lost 90% of his sense of taste along with his nose. He suspected Franky hadn't truly realized it himself; he'd survived a pretty traumatic accident after all, and lived off liquid nutrients and colas for months until he'd rebuilt his jaw. Like a partially deaf man using vibrations and sight to compensate without fully realizing it, Franky used memory and texture cues when eating, so Sanji always made sure Franky got the crunchier veg and gristlier meats and added a few odds and ends to make the dish interesting.

One of these days he'd add a few metal wingnuts and bolts in there too, just to see how their shipwright would react, especially if Franky continued his indecent mentions of that night with Robin-chan. Bawdy bastard.

Luffy’s dish was barely seasoned as well. No point in Sanji wasting his precious hoard of herbs and peppers on his captain, since Luffy lived mainly for meat. Sanji had rolled the vegetables into strips of pounded ship’s jerky to get the guy to absorb at least some vitamins along the way, and there was a large joint of smoked ham on the bone to go with it; Sanji hadn’t needed Chopper’s diagnosis to figure out that protein helped their captain recover from beatings that would kill a dozen men, Devil Fruit or no. These days they were never far from a fight, so Luffy always had plenty of meat at hand; his chef made sure of that.

Luffy dug in like he hadn’t eaten for three days. He was easy to cook for, Sanji thought with a grudging sense of affection. Dinnertime was Luffy’s favorite meal - as were lunchtime and breakfast and snack-time and party-time, or any time that involved food and having his nakama around enjoying themselves.

By contrast to their captain's trough, the plates for the ladies had been delicately spiced to stimulate the appetite, carefully arranged with shavings of the smoked ham to delight the palate and a fine wine to wash it all down. Sanji had the same arrangement on his own plate, though without the flower shapes for the vegetables, just the plain, professional arrangement a chef would expect.

Nami said "Yummmm!" in a way that made Sanji’s blood pressure spike. There were many layers of understanding to Sanji’s relation with Nami-san, but this was where it was at its simplest. She enjoyed being treated like a princess, after years being treated like a clever pet at Arlong Park, and Sanji enjoyed being able to please someone after years trying to impress the crap-geezer. The flirting was just, oh, icing on the cake. He did not have the same onion-layers of meaning with Robin-chan yet; the faint smile as she thanked him was only slightly less mysterious now then the day he’d threatened to shoot her and she’d shoved him over the railing onto his ass. But that was part of her charm!

Then finally came Zoro’s plate, and that had plenty of bite. Since it was the last one prepared, and for an uncultured thug, Sanji had spent no time on it at all; no more than the minimum it would take to do a job that wouldn’t shame him. Certainly no more time than that of the ladies. It was truly a coincidence that the green beans and the long strips of preserved yellow peppers nestled together in layers that were not all that displeasing to the eye, a generous portion of smoked meat heaped to one side, emblazoned like a dare with the hot red sauce. A coincidence everybody pretended not to notice.

Zoro didn't say anything, but these days, instead of being the first to get up from the table, he was always the last.



END


I hope you all enjoyed the fic! I'm all ficced out now (except for that CP9 fic you can expect in a couple of weeks or so). But I'll be answering all the lovely reviews that sure lifted my spirits these last few days ^_^