I have no idea where this idea came from. Maybe it's my frustration at Twilight and I wanted a vampire story that wasn't full of emo vampires and dumbass girls who do stupid shit, or vampire babies that aren't even suppose to exist.
Yeah, can you tell I don't like Twilight?
Anyways, this popped into my head at 3 o'clock in the morning, and I really wanted to show you guys and get feedback from it. Might be heavily inspired by Let Me In. I absolutely adore that movie.
I know canonically Nami's a few years older than Luffy, but for the sake of this story, I made them the same age...more or less. :p
He notices her at night, while sitting in his room and snacking on lunch meat because it's the only thing to eat for the night. For the moment, Luffy would rather be in the elsewhere than in the apartment, stuck with a distant father, who prefers drinking over trying to get food so that they can eat.
The girl, who looks to be around his age, moves in late at night with an older man, a guy with blond hair (Luffy assumes it's her father) accompanying her and carrying their things in a black trunk.
He realizes she has no shoes on. Even though it's the middle of winter.
When Luffy leaves for school in the morning, there's cardboard covering the window in the new neighbor's apartment.
xXxXxX
Luffy's hoping he can move quick enough to avoid Damien Crocodile and his two goons after school. And for a while, it seems like it'll work, until a hand grabs him from behind, and pulls it into a headlock.
The raven-haired boy swears at the older boy, trying to get away. For all his trouble, Luffy gets a punch to the face.
If his father sees the black eye now sporting his son's face, he doesn't say anything about it.
xXxXxX
Outside that night, he finally meets her.
He's angrily punching the tree, trying to get some form of frustration out when he hears soft footsteps behind him. He turns to see the girl standing on the jungle gym, wearing a hoodie, with shorts on and bare feet yet again.
"What are you doing?" She asks.
"Nothing," He replies. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"You just moved in, right?" Luffy asks, trying to start a conversation. "I stay next door to you." He points to the window.
She walks closer to him and he can see red hair poking through from under the hood. She stares at him for a moment, before backing away.
"Just so you know," She says as she walks away. "We can't be friends."
"Who said I wanted to be your friend?" He calls after her, annoyed at the immediate rejection of a could-be friendship with someone. "Idiot."
When he returns to his room later that night, he can hear arguing through the paper-thin walls in his room, coming from the apartment next door; the apartment where the red-haired girl lives. One's an angry, loud female voice, the other, a male's voice, is surprisingly, small and soft. He can't hear exactly what they're arguing about; he later hears feet stomping and the apartment door opening and closing with an loud bang.
xXxXxX
The next day at school, he can see other students gathering by the principal's doorway, where a couple of police officers are talking to the teachers. He recognizes one of the officers as Officer Smoker, someone who's dealt with Luffy's father multiple times when the man drinks too much at the pub.
Later that day, at an assembly they tell the students about one of the recent graduate of the school has been found murdered and now they have to be careful of strangers on the way home.
The officer assures they that they will do every thing to protect them and Luffy thinks they should add protection from bullies on this list of Things We Will Save You From.
xXxXxX
Luffy's in the courtyard, trying to solve a Rubik's Cube when he hears the crunch of snow behind him and the girl joins him on the jungle gym. He can hear her stomach growling loudly.
"It's you again, huh?" She says. "You know, I really want to be left alone."
"So? Me too."
"So leave then."
"You leave! I've lived here longer than you." He snaps, not understanding her logic in being here with him if she wants to be alone and he goes back to working on the Rubik's Cube.
"What's that?" The girl asks him.
"This?" He motions to the toy and she nods. "It's called a Rubik's Cube."
"Is it a puzzle?"
"Yeah. You want to try it?" He asks, holding it out to her. "Just give it back to me tomorrow."
"What if I'm not here tomorrow?"
"Then give it back the next day. Just don't keep it that long. It's mine."
Nami looks as if she wants to say something, but she stops, shakes her head. Luffy gives her the toy and she looks it over. "What do you have to do?"
Luffy explains what to do, and watches as she slides around the pieces. Her stomach growls loudly again. If she's embarrassed by it, she doesn't show it.
"You smell kinda funny." He tells her. Which is true, though he can't actually describe the smell, because it's three different scents mixed into one. Something like a metallic smell, body odor and something else he can't quite describe. He looks down at her bare feet. "Aren't you cold?"
"Not really. I don't get cold." The answer is short, clearly saying not to ask anymore questions.
Luffy leaves her to the puzzle and goes home.
While getting ready for bed, he hears the arguing again. Luffy places his ear against the wall to try to hear better, when suddenly there a loud bang in the other side that jolts that wall hard enough to make his ear drums ring.
He hears they're door open and shut. Rushing to the window, he sees the man he thinks is the girl's father, the guy with blond hair, leaving.
xXxXxX
In the morning, on his way going to school, he finds the Rubik's Cube on the top of the jungle gym, completely solved.
Luffy is amazed.
She's there when he enters the courtyard that evening. Her clothes are different too. She has on an warmer clothes and boots are on her feet. She's giving a half-smile when she sees him.
"How'd you do it?" Luffy asks her, holding up the cube. She smiles and shrugs.
"It wasn't that hard." He sits on the bar below her, still amazing that she could solve it so quickly in a day and he's been trying to figure it out for a few weeks now, after his brother gave it to him.
"Do I smell better now?"
"I guess," He looks up at her. "What's your name?"
"Nami. What's yours?" He gives her his name and asks how old she is.
"Twelve." She answers. "More or less. What about you?"
"Twelve years, eight months and nine days." She raises an eyebrow at him and he laughs.
"What do you mean 'more or less?'" He asks. "Don't you know how old you are? When's your birthday?"
Nami shrugs. "I don't know."
"You don't know? Don't you celebrate your birthday?" He presses on when she doesn't answer. "Don't you get any birthday presents?"
"No." It's spoken very matter-of-fact, as if she used to it.
Luffy's quiet for a while, thinking. "Well you have this if you want," He holds out the Rubik's Cube.
Nami shakes her head. "That's okay. It's yours, after all."
His attention goes back to the Rubik's Cube. "I still don't get how you figured it out."
"I can show you," She offers. "If you want me to."
He accepts the offer. They share a smile.
xXxXxX
He's looking through a book, working on something to show to Nami, when Crocodile decides to corner him later that day. When he demands to see what Luffy's been working on, the black-haired boy refuses to show to him.
He gets a cut across the cheek for refusing. But for once, Luffy feels like it's worth it.
His father doesn't bring up the bandage across his cheek at dinner. It's silent and awkward as always, and for the first time, when his dad falls down the crouch in a drunken stupor, Luffy doesn't care.
xXxXxX
"Look what I made. " He shows her the Morse code he copied out of the book in class, while Nami looks curiously at the book, Romeo and Juliet, that fell out of his backpack. He tells her it's stupid and boring, something he has to read for class and he doesn't complain when she wants to borrow it. "We can talk to each other through the wall. Isn't that neat?"
Nami looks worried for a second. "Can you hear me through the wall?"
"Sometimes." He admits.
"Did you hear anything the other night?"
"Only a little. You don't get along with you dad? Is that why's you're always arguing?"
"He's not my dad. He just takes care of me."
Nami looks uncomfortable about talking about it, but he can see a lot of sadness that shows in her eyes when he asks he about her mom. "Where is she-?"
"My mom's dead." She answers curtly.
Luffy looks at the ground. "Sorry." He says. "My mom's gone too. She left when I was a kid, with my brother when I seven. Ace is really my half-brother-"
"What happened to your face?" She cuts off his rambling, touching the bandage softly. Luffy moves away from her touch.
"Nothing. Just some kids at school. Where do you go to school at anyways? I never see you-"
"Luffy, listen."
He looks at her, listening.
"You have to hit back. You have to hit back hard."
"I can't," He says and it's a bit embarrassing to admit this to a girl. "There's three of them."
"Then you hit back even harder. Hit them back as hard as you can. Then they'll stop."
He's thought about this multiple times; it's what with happen afterward that scares Luffy. Because while the older boy seems content with just giving the occasional punch to the gut and shoving him into lockers, Luffy's afraid that if he actually fights back, the bullying will just get worse.
He explains the last part to her. "Then scare them with a weapon, like a knife."
"What if that doesn't work?" Because Crocodile seems like the type of person that won't be afraid of anything, much less a knife being welded by a boy much smaller than him.
"Then I'll help you." She says simply.
"But.." He doesn't want to sound mean when he says it because he doesn't want her fighting for him. "You're a girl."
She places her hand on top of his, smiling softly and looking very patiently at him. "I'm a lot stronger than you think I am."
When he returns to his room, he has to wait only moments before Nami's knocking on the other side.
'Hi' She taps out.
'Hi' He taps back.
xXxXxX
After school, Luffy asks his gym teacher if he can take the strength training classes after school. It's really suppose to be for the older students, but the teacher gives in after seeing the determined look in his eyes.
"Don't come crying to me if you can't handle it. But you can start tomorrow at four, alright?"
"Okay."
There's no food when he gets home, and his father is passed out drunk on the couch. Luffy pulls out a twenty dollar bill from his father's wallet, and tells Nami to follow him.
He takes her to the local arcade, telling Nami she's cool because she can beat most of the puzzle games there. "How're you so good at them?"
She shrugs. "I just am."
He stops by the deli to get something to eat, picking out a package of lunch meat to eat. "You want something?" He offers. "It's really good. Meat's my favorite."
She declines, but Luffy's stubborn, wanting to buy her something because she can't not eat. And he doesn't feel right eating in front of her face. "You want fruit then? They got tangerines and stuff if you want that."
She shakes her head no again, so Luffy lets it go. Halfway home, Nami hesitantly asks for a piece of the ham his eating, to which he happily agrees to. But Luffy can tell something wrong; although she tells him it's good and she likes it, her face says otherwise.
She takes a few steps from him before she's coughing up the meat. "Sorry," She mumbles out.
Before Luffy can stop himself, he's pulled her into a hug.
They stay like that for a few moments. "Luffy, do you like me?"
"Yeah," He admits softly. "A little, maybe a lot."
"Would-would you still like me? Even if I wasn't a girl?"
Luffy doesn't understand what she means by this question. "Yeah, I guess. Why?" He pulls from the hug and looks at her, confused. "Why?"
"No reason."
But even as she says this, she takes his hand and holds it.
xXxXxX
He dials the number, pacing back and forth in anticipation. The phone's picked up on the third ring and a gruff voice answers it. "Hello?"
"Hey Marco. Is my brother there?"
"Ace? Yeah he's here-hold on lemme wake him up. Just had one of his narcoleptic fits."
There talking in the background as the man places the phone on a surface. Then more noise as the phone's picked up again.
"How is it that you always call right when I fall asleep?" The teen joked, letting out a huge yawn. "So what up? How's the old man?"
"He's the same. Nothing's changed." Ace made a noise that might have been somewhere between a snort and a sigh. "Hey Ace, can you I ask you something, if you promise not to laugh?"
"What is it?"
"Promise you won't laugh."
"Fine, I won't laugh. Now what is it?"
"How do you know if you like someone? Like really, really, really like them?"
Despite the older boy's promise, Ace burst out in laughter and happily announces to Marco that his little brother has his first crush.
Alright, first chapter is done! This will be updated every Saturday or Sunday, depending on my schedule. Reviews/Criticism are accepted.