Work Text:
(1)
On particularly rainy spring days, high tide washes creatures up the crags and nooks of a certain beach in Windmill village and doesn’t let them go. The untamed terrain keeps them caged in among rocks and sand and rubbery red seaweed. Anemones gasp and flutter, petals quivering at the slightest ripple, while starfish sunbathe and bask in the stillness of day. Crabs always scuttle about like they’re trying to get away, tiny enough that the shallow tide pool boundaries seem cliff-like. Luffy’s favorites, the sea slugs, simply crawl along leisurely and let him pet them.
It is as he is playing in one of these tidepools, lying on his stomach on the stone’s ledge, lethargic from boredom and fiercely missing the Red Hair Pirates who just left the village yesterday, that Luffy hears an enraged shout. Strangely enough, it seems to come from inside the tide pool.
Luffy ducks his head into the pool and attempts to look around, eyes burning, vision bleary and unclear. When he comes up for air he shakes his hair out like a dog and splutters.
“Owie,” he mutters, rubbing his eyes.
“Are you stupid?!” The high-pitched voice shouts even louder.
It still sounds like it’s coming from the pool. Luffy frowns and bats a hand through the water, and at the same moment he hits a small, shiny minnow, it screeches.
“Woah!”
“Don’t kill me!”
“A talking fish! I gotta’ show you to Makino!” Luffy attempts to grab the fish to no avail. It’s prepared this time, darting dextrously away from his hands in bright flashes of silver, scales catching the light with each flick of its tail. Now that Luffy’s paying more attention, it looks almost as if… that’s not a fish-head, is it? That’s a teeny tiny person-head.
“Wow! A real life mermaid,” Luffy gasps, starry-eyed. “Why are you so itty-bitty?”
“I am not itty-bitty, and I am not a mermaid! I am a rice fish fishman,” the mermaid exclaims. It might be glaring at Luffy. It’s hard to tell. “I got washed up here with that stupid storm last night. Hey, kid, I need you to get me out of here.”
Luffy points to himself, at the wrinkled anchor on his shirt, and goes, “Huh, me? What am I gonna’ do?”
“Just pick me up and carry me down to sea! Real simple, okay. If you do me this one little favor I’ll give you candy.”
“Really? You sure are nice, Miss Mermaid!”
“It’s Mister Rice Fish Fishman to you, ya’ buffoon.”
“Can you get me meat too?” Luffy asks cheerfully, thrusting his hand into the water with a splash.
“Hey, hey! Careful, not like that, don’t just grab me! Scoop, scoop!”
Scoop? Huh? Like ice cream? Luffy cups his palm and sloshes it towards the mermaid, only for it to dart away again.
“Easy there! Use both hands together, gently okay, just— here, just put your hands in the water and I’ll climb on top, okay?”
Luffy’s not quite sure he understands what the mermaid’s getting at, but he sticks both hands into the water anyway, palms face up, pinkies parallel to each other, and holds still. Seaweed tickles his fingers and so do the mermaid’s fins, when it slowly slithers up from his fingertips to the seam between his palms, curling up in the concave space that Luffy’s hands slowly make, curling protectively around the creature. It steadies itself with two two tight grips onto what it can grasp of his flesh. That’s an odd, prickling feeling, those little imprints sharp on his skin. He’s suddenly aware of how delicate the thing in his hold is.
Before Luffy can get up, the mermaid makes an animal, chittering sound, and more creatures climb up into Luffy’s hold. A seaslug attaches itself to the underside of his hand, suctioned against his knuckles, and a crab scuttles up his wrist. The sudden sensation makes him rear back, overwhelmed, but then the mermaid strokes its hand down his palm like it's soothing a horse. Luffy feels like a bumbling giant.
Slowly, he stands, walking with very careful steps down the black stones, concentrating like he never has before so he doesn’t slip and fall and send all these little creatures crashing to their doom.
When he finally gets to the waterfront, he lowers onto the gritty sand, pebbles digging into his already scratched-up knees, and places his hands in the cold water. Ocean waves wash up his palms, dislodging animals and algae alike. The bright orange crab twirls away into the dark sea. The slug sinks and disappears. The mermaid holds onto Luffy's thumb before the fractal eddies can drag it away and says, “Don’t tell anyone else you saw me here today, okay?” Luffy nods. The mermaid mutters, “Well, even if you did tell anyone, it’s not like they’d believe some little kid.”
“Hey!”
“Thanks, though. I guess humans aren’t so bad when they’re just guppies.”
“Can I have my meat now?” Luffy asks.
“I promised you candy, you little carnivore and uh, no. Sorry ‘bout that. I might’ve lied to you.”
“What?”
The mermaid lets go of his thumb just as a wave rashes onto his palms again, letting the ocean sweep it away. “Hasta la vista!” It yells before it disappears into the dark depths.
Luffy beats the sand with his fists, salt spray splashing everywhere, and shouts, “Give me back my meat!”
(2)
Arlong is a joke to fight, except for the part where his teeth are serrated like knives and his skin is rough like sandpaper. Luffy shakes his fist out, knuckles scraped raw where his punch glanced off the side of the fishman’s face. Bright red blood flicks onto the damp stone tiles, onto the maps lining the walls, written in Nami’s pretty handwriting, and onto Arlong himself.
A webbed hand frantically wipes at his face as Arlong roars in disgust. “You filthy human, how dare you!” His black eye, when he forces it open, is tainted red with not just bloodlust but also Luffy’s own blood. “Fuck.” Luffy would never have expected it, but Alrong actually doubles over and gags at the sensation, or the scent, or the simple thought of what’s gotten into his eyes. For one frightening, startling moment, it seems as though he’ll throw up. “You’ll pay for that,” he heaves, trembling.
“Don’t be such a baby about it,” Luffy shoots back. His blood can’t be that gross.
Arlong stomps forward, the already crumbling building shuddering under the force. He hisses, “Little boy, I once knew a man who chose death rather than be tainted by human blood. Do not speak of things you know nothing about.”
Luffy never does learn what that all was about, because he beats Arlong so thoroughly that he can’t even speak afterwards. It sticks with him, though. That someone could choose to die over something so silly.
He opens his curled fist and turns it over, sunlight dim through the unsettled dust all around him, and watches the way slick red drips down his knuckles. Arlong’s blood, the same color as his own, both of them muddled together on his thin skin.
“Luffy!” Nami calls, rushing to him.
Whatever. Luffy wipes his hand clean on his vest before turning back to Nami, accepting the hug that comes his way.
(3)
Sabaody park is a wakeup call, even before Camie gets kidnapped. Luffy spots a ferris wheel in the distance and yelps in delight, grabbing Camie’s hand to drag her along behind him as he ducks and weaves through the crowd to get to it. She, instead of following, squeals and slips her hand immediately out of his.
“Hey,” Luffy whines. “What, you don’t wanna’ go on it?”
“No, I do, just… I’ve never held a human’s hand before,” Camie whispers. “You’re… dry.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess so. And you’re pretty slimy, aren’t you?”
Camie’s cheeks flush bright pink. She swats at his shoulder and goes, “Wha— hey, no I’m not! I’m well-moisturized, not gross!”
Luffy grins. “I dunno’. All that slime seems pretty gross to me.” Before Camie can splutter out another retort, he grabs her hand again and tugs. “C’mon, let’s just get goin’. We’ll miss the next ride at this rate.”
Despite his words, he still walks her through the park at her own rate, stopping with her whenever something catches her eye, like a stall selling fried food or another with plush sea animals displayed as ring-toss prizes. He’s been to these sorts of festivals a few times before, back when travelling carnivals would stop by Windmill village and set up shop for a week at a time. Camie’s never experienced anything like it, though, nor have Hachi and Papaggu, who’ve both split up from them briefly to find a bathroom. Well, it might not be so brief anymore, considering how far they’ve wandered away now.
“This is so weird,” Camie hums around a bite of soft-serve vanilla ice cream. Luffy, mouth stuffed full of cheesy bread and grilled meat, makes a questioning sound. “Just. This:” She holds up their hands, still linked so they don’t get lost, and rattles them in the air for emphasis.
“I dunno’ what you’re talking about. Dadan and Makino made me hold hands with them all the time when we went places. And now I’m the adult, so I gotta’ make you hold hands with me.”
“I’m not some kid! We’re the same age,” she pouts.
Then she unfurls her fingers from around his hand, keeping her palm still pressed close. Luffy hesitates before cautiously following her lead, fingers slowly unfurling, palm opening up and pressing flat against hers. It’s smaller than his and very soft, not quite slimy like he’d claimed before but still slick with a more viscous sort of moisture than sweat. When he twists his wrist slightly their fingers become offset, stripes of brown and white, long and short, and it reminds him for a second of the petals of sea anemones that bob and sway in tide pools. Luffy wriggles his fingers, imagination flaring, and Camie giggles before copying him.
“You’re the one who’s weird,” Luffy murmurs, gliding his hand around the back of hers to grasp her by the knuckles instead. His thumb and forefinger pinch one of the translucent pink fins between her fingers, the webbing thin but strong.
“I am not!” she insists. Camie twists out of his grip and shakes her hand out, face flushed dark but determined, and darts out to grab his forearm. “Look at this! Why do you have hair growing on your arms!”
“That’s normal. I’ve got hair everywhere. Do you not?”
“Of course not! Hair is for your head!” And then Camie’s gaze drifts to his legs and, as though she’s properly looking at them for the first time, gasps, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you have hair on your legs too! How do you swim?”
“Are you stupid? I ate a devil fruit, idiot, I can’t swim.”
“Oh. Still. I can’t believe humans are all this hairy and weird. Unless that’s just a you thing?”
“It’s not a me thing,” Luffy grouses, going back to his street food.
After a suspiciously long moment of silently staring at his legs, Came shuffles closer to him, shoulders knocking, and points down at them. “Can I touch—”
“No!”
“I’ll let you touch my tail in exchange?”
“I don’t wanna’ touch your tail, don’t be a weirdo!”
“It’s not weird! You’re weird!”
“No, you’re weird—”
(4/5)
Those little mermaids at Cami’s house are sort of adorable. They’re teeny tiny and glimmer in a rainbow of colors, all shouting around each other in high-pitched voices, and it reminds him of a dream he had when he was younger. Of this little silver merman he rescued from a tidepool on the outskirts of Windmill village once, and dropped into the ocean along with a plethora of other teeny tiny ocean creatures. What a pleasant dream.
Now, Luffy sits on the clamshell bed by Sanji’s feet, waiting beside the drip-feed of blood for him to finally wake up again, and swishes his hand through the air. The mermaid quintuplets’ bubble life-rings are slippery against his fingers, their curly hair and shiny tails ticklish as they giggle and dart around his hand like minnows in a tide pool. One slaps her tail fin onto his cheek with a mischievous grin before speeding away. Nika, he thinks, the blonde one. Reflexively, he grabs her tail and yanks her back— shriek!
Her sisters all gasp and start slapping his hand, his cheeks, his eyes, anywhere at all they can reach.
“Hey, you big meanie, how’d you like it if I yanked your toes!”
“Yeah! How’d you like it!”
“I’m gonna’ yank ‘em!”
“Pull ‘em right off!”
“Ow, hey, stop it! I’m sorry, okay, sorry!”
Luffy kicks out his feet and bends over to swat them all away from his toes, the lot of them like swarming mosquitos in a swamp. What’re they all so fierce for? Then he sees the teary-eyed face of the little mermaid he yanked down on instinct and feels a spark of guilt. “Hey, Nika, c’mere. I’m sorry, ‘kay? I didn’t mean to.”
“‘Kay,” she sniffles, and when he holds his palm out beckoning towards her, she swims over and sits on his palm.
Luffy pats the top of her sunshine-yellow curls with one finger, and says, what he thinks is soothingly, “There, there.”
“Are you making fun of her?!” A sister asks.
And he is back to fending them all away from attacking him yet again.
“It’s all fine and good to play like this in here, but don’t do this out in public,” Camie calls out to them from the kitchen. She carries over a tray holding a pink and white porcelain teapot and matching teacups, girlish and flowery, then sets it down at the coffee table beside the couch where Usopp and Chopper are curled up dozing. When she heads back into the kitchen the quintuplets flock to the tea while Luffy hops up and follows her, lured by the scent of something more substantial cooking.
“I know how you get about meat,” Camie says, shooting him a smile as she points to her oven roasting clams.
“You’re the best,” Luffy responds with a smile of his own. “What did you mean by that?”
“By what?”
“That we couldn’t play like that in public.”
Camie flinches, subtle but discernable, and turns around to rummage in her cabinets. “O-oh. You know. People would get weird about seeing a human roughhousing with a fishman like that. Especially a mermaid. Especially yanking on a little girl’s tail.”
“Why are you all like this?” Luffy asks.
“Huh?”
“Why do all of you care so much about dumb stuff like that? None of it matters.”
“It does, though. I don’t mind mingling with humans, but there’s history here. It wasn’t so long ago when all of us would be in shackles—”
“I know that already. That’s not what I’m asking.”
Camie yanks a package of cookies down and slams the cabinet closed with a slam, fingers shaking when she tries to open it. “I don’t know what you want me to say! Humans used to— humans still see a mermaid and her tail and think, oh, she’s so pretty, she’s so strange, I wonder how I could get inside of her, and decide they want to steal her away, or touch her however they want. Our tails are special, okay? It’s scary for someone to grab them out of nowhere like that.”
“But you let me touch your tail.”
“What?” Camie’s hair whips around her face as she looks back up at him, eyes wide and cheeks growing pinker by the second.
“Back at Sabaody, at the park. You said if I let you touch my legs then you’d let me touch your tail.”
“That’s different,” she insists, voice weak.
Luffy scowls. “How is that any different? Would you’ve let me do something you hated just to touch my hairy legs?”
“Gah, no!”
“Well, here! You can touch them now, free of charge!”
Luffy stomps his foot onto the countertop, nearly losing his balance at such an awkward position, and Camie squeaks, pushing his leg back down. Oddly enough, when he lowers his foot, there’s a streak of blood across his knee.
“You’re bleeding,” he accuses, and Camie observes her hand carefully.
“Oh. I guess I am. It must’ve been a papercut from the packaging—” she squeaks again when Luffy grabs her hand crushingly tight. He grips the first knuckle of her finger so hard it nearly turns purple.
“You gotta’ stop the blood flow,” he tells her. Then, delighted at the prospect of sharing knowledge, goes, “Hey, there’s this cool trick where your spit can close a cut faster—” and sticks her fingertip in his mouth.
Camie’s face turns impossibly pinker as she lets out a horrified, strangled, wheezing sound, not strong enough to shriek again. Luffy presses the flat of his tongue up into the pad of her finger. Something about enzymes, or antibacteria, or whatever it was Chopper said that one time, when Nami had complained about Luffy literally licking his wounds after a tumble to wipe away blood from scratches on his arms or shins. Or maybe he’s supposed to suck on it?
He does that instead, suctioning lightly against her finger, and her blood tastes tangy and sharp, all iron and oxygen, that typical blood taste. Just like his own, when he licks his own wounds. The same shade of red; the same taste. It sticks with him. How could someone ever be so silly that they’d rather die, than taste like this?
After a moment, Camie very faintly says, “I have my own saliva. You can stop that.”
It doesn’t matter much to him either way, so Luffy pulls off her finger and lets it out of his clutches, the death-grip he had around it leaving a subtle mark on her pale skin. Grinning, he says, “Guess that thing about not sharing blood with humans wasn’t so taboo after all, huh?”
“W-what?”
“So that tail thing is stupid too then, right?”
“Hey, stop, I don’t wanna’ touch your feet—!”
(+1)
Luffy, for all his goofiness, is not a silly man. Neither is Jimbei.
Later that night at the palace, Jimbei’s blood pumping through his arteries, Luffy eats and drinks his fill, playing with the mermaid children, chasing a red-faced Camie on the few occasions he can see her through the gaps in the crowds, and somehow wandering into a maze of corridors near the kitchens in search of whatever that divine smell is. Turning a corner, he runs directly into Jimbei, bouncing off his belly and falling flat on his back.
“Hi!” Luffy chirps with a grin, and launches up again to give him a massive hug. Jimbei startles. His hesitation to hug back is slight, but still noticeable. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Jimbei responds.
Luffy slinks down to the floor again, frowning, something roiling in his stomach. It’s a sick feeling that’s been building ever since Arlong. Like those eddies dragging away tiny sea creatures into the dark sea, little whirlpools ripping them away from his palms into the churning ocean. Why can things never be still and easy? Sunbathed and rain-brought?
“So you’ll give me your blood but you won’t let me hug you?” Luffy demanded.
“Of course not,” Jimbei exclaims, appalled. His eyes go wide. Bafflement radiates off him in waves. It doesn’t even take observation haki to tell that much.
“Then what is it?”
“You just surprised me, is all. There’s nothing wrong here, Luffy. I’m happy you hugged me at all.”
That doesn’t sound quite right. Luffy’s sick of all these unspoken rules and mind-games, exhausted of them, really, and it’s not something he can punch right through. Maybe if it was a stranger he wouldn’t care, but it’s Jimbei, and Camie, and all the other friends he made here, so now it does matter. Damnit.
“What’s that supposed to mean? ‘At all’? I’ll hug you a million more times right now,” he threatens.
“Then I’d be honored to receive those.”
That doesn’t sound quite right either. Luffy lets out a frustrated growl. “Why? Who cares! It’s just a hug, it doesn’t matter! Why were you surprised, and why are you being weird about it now!”
Jimbei stares him down for a very long, very quiet moment, expression morphing from confusion to solemnity. When he bows his head, all his long dark hair covers his face like a curtain. “You are right. Forgive me, Captain. I was simply surprised because it is the first time a human has hugged me. Given I will be a member of a crew filled with humans in the future, I will be more careful going forward.”
“Good. You better get used to it, too, ‘cuz you’re gonna’ get a whole lot more hugs from our crew in the future!”
“If the others are comfortable with it.”
“There you go, being all dumb again—”
“I know. It is something we will all have to get used to. But it is true that humans do not like touching fishman very much, and especially not shark fishman. Our skin is rough. Look at how your arms are scratched up.”
Luffy crosses his arms over his chest indignantly, the new, shallow, narrow scrapes pressed into his vest. “Camie said humans like touching mermaids too much.”
“As in—”
“I know what that means. I don’t like all this. I don’t like her being scared of me— she isn’t, I know she isn’t now, but it feels like she could be, with the way she talks sometimes— and I don’t like you thinking me or any of my crew wouldn’t want to hug you just because you feel different. I like holding Camie’s slimy hand. I like hugging Chopper’s furry everything and Brook’s bony skeleton, and I like hugging you too, even though you’re slimy and rough and smell like fish. Do you not like hugging me, just ‘cuz I’m dry?”
“It’s not a matter of our physical differences—”
“It’s because humans don’t wanna’ touch you, but they wanna’ touch her?”
“That’s not—” Jimbei cuts himself off. Sighs. He’s exhausted and frustrated too, it’s so easy to discern. They all are. Under the ocean, on this little island, everyone around them might just hate everything around them too. “It’s complicated,” he says, which is something Luffy realized ages ago, and which only becomes more and more true every year.
“It’s stupid,” Luffy tells him simply.
“No human has ever asked me if I do not like hugging them, either. History has never been about how a fishman feels touching a human. It does not matter how we feel about any of this.”
“What’d I just say?”
“Yes,” Jimbei agrees. “It is stupid, and silly, and dumb. Will you listen, then, if I tell you how I feel about it? Will you make history with me?”
Maybe this moment is important. Maybe this is loaded with meaning built up from the first time Luffy punched Arlong, or since he had that dream that might’ve not been a dream about helping that little merman as a child, or from even before he was born, hundreds of years ago, and maybe Luffy should think carefully about his answer, and listen carefully in turn. But that roiling, dark-ocean, dark-whirlpools-crashing feeling is back in his stomach. Luffy says, “Nah. You’re my friend, so I’m gonna’ hug you no matter what, even if you think I’m slimy or dry.”
Jimbei bursts into laughter, a full-bodied guffaw straight from the belly, so loud it might be able to shake the pillars of this palace.
“What’re you laughing for? You already gave me your blood, Jimbei, there’s no way you’re getting outta’ this that easily! Your captain’s gonna’ hug you whether you like it or not!”
“Is he?” Jimbei grins down at him. “I know you did not ask me for my opinion, but as you are so obstinate, I’ve decided I will be too and give it to you anyway. I welcome all your hugs with open arms.”
“What, did you say something? I didn’t hear anything!”
“I said—”
“Nope, can’t hear you!” Luffy turns around, nearly trips, and starts running back down the hall. The scent of meat and palace kitchens guide him. He looks over his shoulder and yells, “Whatever you’re saying, I can’t hear you! Better give up on it!”
Jimbei says something back that he actually can’t hear this time, down a different corridor with fingers plugging his ears, and that’s good enough for him. It’s still frustrating, that an invisible web exists all around him, that everyone else interacts with it like it’s iron and they’re afraid to get cut, and expects him to do the same. He can’t Gum Gum Pistol his way out of Jimbei’s hesitation, but the black armament haki that streaks up his fists is strong enough to destroy anything, cobwebs-included, of iron-make or not, so for as long as he’s here he’ll bust it all away the best he can, the only way he knows how.