eiliem

Title: When in the Jungle
Characters: Tiny!Ace & Tinier!Luffy
Pairing: Luffy!beetle
Rating: G
Beta:

naye &hearts

So I have been writing a number of Ace & Luffy gen fics and posting here and there but I figured I should get them all together, and therefore I am posting them in my never-before-used journal! Yay me.

When in the Jungle

The old man is trying to kill them.

Not only has he dumped them in some corner of this jungle in the middle of nowhere – he’s left them without food. Luffy, cowed as he is by the recent interaction with their grandfather, wilts when he realizes there is nothing to eat. So Ace, faced with a panicking Luffy, scrounges up a beetle-shaped insect to distract his brother with while he addresses the problem of their empty stomachs. And how to deal with whatever will inevitably try to kill them, here in Garp’s chosen training-grounds.

“Ooooh – Ace! Food!” Ace only has time to turn around before Luffy takes a large chomp out of the mushroom in his left hand, his precious beetle still safe in his right.

“Luffy! NO!” But his brother has already crammed the rest of the mushroom into his mouth and Ace's heart stops as Luffy reaches for a second.

They’re in the middle of nowhere, with no one and no clue of when Garp will return – if he even knows himself. If Luffy just poisoned himself...if he gets sick...Ace doesn’t know anything about medicine, or poison, or mushrooms and his brother could be dead before help arrives.

And then every one of Ace’s worst nightmares comes to life as Luffy drops to the ground convulsing.

It only lasts a second (a horrific, heart-stopping, world-ending second that Ace will never forget) because Luffy starts laughing. Hysterically. And as worried as Ace was before, now he’s furious because god dammit Luffy, that wasn’t funny. And hurt, because he’s never known his brother to be cruel before.

But when Luffy doesn’t stop laughing after Ace yells at him, and only laughs harder when he stuffs the second mushroom – that Ace hadn’t had the foresight to confiscate – into his mouth, his prized beetle now forgotten, Ace starts to feel worried again. But also the first beginnings of...bemusement. Because he’s starting to understand what’s going on here. And when Luffy finally stops laughing, only to start right up again when he eats a third mushroom, Ace’s worry and anger give way completely to familiar exasperation...and amusement.

Because they’re in the middle Garp-knows-where, for who-knows how long, and Luffy is high as a kite

So Ace takes the offered mushroom, sits back, and laughs.
~fin

Cross-posted to