eiliem

Title: Out of the Ocean
Characters: Ace and Luffy (from tiny to...not-so-tiny)
Pairings: the OTP of One Piece, Luffy/Beetle; as well as brief mentions of Luffy/Hat and the Ace/Sleep/Food love triangle
Beta:

naye :D

This one was quite unabashedly inspired by

naye's Seadream go read, it is beautiful

Also by my challenge to myself to write fic without Ace angst o_o (it was hard at first...and then the fic wrote itself, lol)

Out of the Ocean

The first time Ace fished Luffy out of the ocean, he was the one who threw the rubber boy in.

They were having their usual sparring session – otherwise known as Luffy-losing-badly-while-Ace-kicked-his-skinny-ass time – and Ace had grabbed the other boy by the wrist and heaved him into the water. Luffy was underwater for a full minute before Ace – beginning to worry – had remembered about Devil Fruits, and the sea, and ohmygod-

“Shit. I’m so sorry – I forgot!”

“Whew, that was scary!” And Luffy had laughed before throwing himself at Ace again.

Later, playing one-man soccer with his new rubber ball on the way home, Ace reflected that he would have to be more careful – Luffy wasn’t quite as indestructible as he seemed.

The second time Ace fished Luffy out of the ocean, the two boys had had a raft-building contest, during the course of which Ace discovered that Luffy’s inability to build anything was only exceeded by his failure to draw coherently.

The third time Ace fished Luffy out of the ocean, he almost didn’t. Ace had fallen asleep face-first in the picnic basket and didn’t see Luffy trip over a tree root into the water. The splash didn’t rouse him, but the sudden absence of Luffy-noises jolted something in his subconscious.

They never ate near water after that.

The fourth time Ace fished Luffy out of the ocean involved a water-beetle.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh times Ace fished Luffy out of the ocean happened shortly after the rubber boy discovered he could launch himself over great distances by stretching his arms like a slingshot.

It was an effective technique, but his aim was abysmal. Worse still, Luffy decided that practice made perfect.

Ace dove after his brother three times in fifteen minutes before he managed to point him in a safe(r) direction.

The number of times Ace fished Luffy out of the ocean after the latter tried to rescue his wind-blown (and on one memorable occasion, bird-borrowed) hat do not bear counting.

The last time Ace fished Luffy out of the ocean, his brother misjudged the distance to his departing boat, crashing into the water a foot shy of safety.

Whenever Ace had imagined his grand departure for adventure, he always sailed away dramatically, without even a glance behind. He definitely didn’t turn around to dump an apologetic Luffy back on dry land. Nor was he soaking wet.

His wounded sense of romance was assuaged slightly, however, when Luffy grinned sheepishly before presenting Ace with the hand-painted wooded bead necklace he made for him. (Which, given what Ace knew about Luffy’s artistic ability, meant that Dadan had picked out, painted, and threaded the beads under Luffy’s careful supervision).

Ace will never fish Luffy out of the ocean again. Neither brother is particularly bothered by this.

Whether their unconcern is extreme carelessness or absolute faith is not something they worry about - and nothing anyone else could understand.