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The first time Usopp sees it, he doesn’t know what it is, but he knows something is there.
It’s storming and the Merry is pitching on the waves like she’s had too much to drink. They’re all running around the ship, securing this and that under Nami’s bellowed directions. Sanji, the surest sailor among them, is climbing the rungs of the mainmast when a great green wall of churning brine slaps the hull hard enough to rattle the iron bolts in the quarterdeck. It’s not enough to throw the surefooted cook, but he rocks and suddenly there is a hand there, a steadying anchor of muscle and bone behind the knee keeping him from pitching farther back. By the time the ship rights itself the hand is gone, and Usopp wonders if he imagined it.
On a scalding afternoon some days later, Usopp finds the aft deck blanketed by dark, salt-crusted laver. The strips of seaweed are numerous and mysterious the way some curve and others curl like flowers in the heat. Bladderwrack, rust-hued Dulce, and thick blades of kelp. He knows who’s drying them, and he knows who likes them.
The next day, the sea is a calm belt of rolling blue. Everyone is napping or hiding from the dozy heat of the afternoon except for Zoro. Usopp lounges under the citrus-scented shade of Nami’s orange grove and watches him fish for hours, throwing back catch after catch until his line jumps and a goggle-eyed fish with a dusting of red and gold scales appears. This seems to satisfy him, and he marches straight into the kitchen with his prize. Usopp leans over the roof of the galley to peer down into his battered blue tackle bucket. Snarls of fishing line and wriggling bait of all shapes and sizes fill the bottom.
There is something to this, Usopp thinks.
They are fighting pirates when a club-wielding bear of a man nearly hits Sanji and a moment of clarity hits Usopp. From his vantage point in the crow’s nest, he tracks the fractal pattern of fighting men and weapons, looking for openings to fire. Swords are flashing, muskets are smoking, and the tide of bodies ebbs and flows. A smear of green and silver slides in between the combatants, smoothly covering the cook as he clears a space for Nami. The blond head turns to look over his shoulder. Their backs touch and space opens around them in that brief moment of contact, then the pattern of the brawling mass reasserts itself. Usopp shoots down a gap-toothed gunner in the mob with half a mind—his thoughts somewhere between a haramaki and a black suit jacket.
As he looks in those peaceful days that follow, he wonders if anyone else sees what he is seeing. Zoro’s hands press flat against the wood of the dining table when Sanji passes too close behind him. Sanji grows still when Zoro enters the galley. He watches the cook kick the swordsman off the ship one morning and thinks he must be mistaken, but he can’t stop seeing it. And by the time he understands what he is looking at, he has become hopelessly entranced by this dance that they do.
Usopp thinks about saying something sometimes. When they are arguing and cursing at each other and so close that he can feel the shape of it, he wants to throw up his hands and shout, See?! But then they are yelling, and he is cowed by the loudness of their connection. There is noise and there is a sound.
He isn’t afraid to speak up, though. The world’s greatest sniper and savior of the Gongathan pygmies would never be scared to point out the obvious, even to a pair of monsters who use violence like a conversation opener. No. He’s just riveted by this thread he’s picked up and cannot find an end to.
As the Merry slides under a mottled purple sky still aglow with the setting sun, Usopp scratches at the bandage on his cheek and looks on as Zoro gets patched up. Sanji is wrapping the swordsman’s arm while Chopper stitches up the other one, and every time his fingers brush the inside of the wrist, his movements slow, cautiously, wonderingly. Zoro’s head is bowed while they work on him, but he leans towards the lightly moving fingers ever so slightly. Usopp watches this and wonders if they know what he knows. He thinks they might, and if they don’t, they will soon. He picks up his slingshot and leaves them to it.