-x-
an affectionate man
-x-
During a brief period, when Luffy is a little over a year old and just starting to walk, he cries whenever Garp so much as looks at him or says his name. His face turns red, twisting into an unhappy grimace. Big tears slide down his cheeks and he wails at the top of his voice. It's a cry full of some primal terror that Garp doesn't believe he deserves just yet - all the same, he can't help feeling proud of those powerful little lungs. It means the boy's healthy, means he's strong.
Holding onto the edge of the porch, Luffy stares at Garp while he lets out these pitiful huffing cries. He shuffles away, only to come shuffling back, whimpering and gasping, because Garp has a sandwich and the boy is hungry.
"That's right, Luffy~" Garp croons with that wide grin, holding a bite of sandwich out to his grandson's open mouth, "Look what Grandpa has!"
Luffy sees it alright. He's practically salivating. But he decides at the last minute that he doesn't want it. He turns his face way and scuttles off down porch, clinging to it with his hands, stumbling along on unsteady legs. He looks back once he's safely away, and when he starts to cry again, Garp unashamedly baits him with the sandwich, "C'mere, Luffy! Come to Grandpa!"
Luffy shuffles back, crying, with his mouth wide open and tears rolling down his face. He comes a little closer this time, inch by inch. Again, he turns away just as Garp tries to put the bite of sandwich in his mouth, and the cycle continues in this fashion for a good ten minutes. Luffy cries and moves away, he cries and comes back; he holds his mouth open, he points sometimes and fusses wordlessly, but he turns his face away every time Garp gets too close to him, and he cries harder than ever.
Garp throws his hands out in frustration.
"Makino," he says, voice raising over his grandson's determined wailing, "What's wrong with him?"
Smiling, the girl drops what she's doing and comes over to pick Luffy up, sitting beside Garp on the porch and holding Luffy in her lap. He stops crying immediately, snuffling and gripping onto the arms that are circled loosely around him. He chews in his bottom lip, staring at Garp with those big, watery eyes.
"He just doesn't like you," Makino says with cheerful honesty. She takes the piece of sandwich from between Garp's fingers and holds it out to Luffy, her voice low and drawing out to soothe him, "Biiiite, Luffy. Can you say biiite?"
Garp doesn't think she should be teaching him that particular word. He can already tell Luffy is going to be a kid that bites well into adulthood - he has no qualms with putting anything that will fit into his mouth, unless it comes from Garp, apparently. Luffy opens his mouth without heeding Makino's prompting to speak, looking right at Garp as she sets the sandwich on his tongue as if he is being contrary just because he can get away with it. He chews slowly, bringing his tiny fists up to smear the tears and snot off his face. He crams his hands into his mouth after the sandwich is gone, mumbling and humming and chewing his fingers, and Makino pulls them out and passes him another bite.
Garp watches this spectacle with a frown on his face.
"Little brat," he growls, only half meaning it. If he had to pick between himself and Makino, well he'd probably pick the girl, too. Luffy's face scrunches up at Garp's tone. His mouth trembles and a single thick tear rolls down his cheek, and Garp dials it down just a notch, sitting back.
He's got a crybaby on his hands.
That's just great.
"We're gonna have to break you from this foolishness," he tells Luffy sternly, pinching off another bite of sandwich and handing it to Makino, "Can't be a marine if you're out here squalling all the time."
Makino looks at him with the type of disapproval that only a sixteen year old girl can muster up, clutching Luffy to her front as if she squeezed him out herself.
"He's a baby!"
"That's the problem!"
"I mean, he's a literal baby, Garp."
"Yeah, and what's he got to cry about?"
Makino disregards him.
"Don't you listen to your mean old grandpa," she sings to Luffy, ignoring Garp and the indignant noise that he makes in response to this. She feeds Luffy more of the sandwich and he watches her with rapt attention, hands covering his mouth, tears drying on his sticky face. "It's okay if you need to cry! Crying makes you strong, too. Are you gonna be stronger than your mean old grandpa? Huh, Luffy? Your mean old grandpa?"
She smiles and cooes and bounces her knees, holding Luffy under the arms, and Luffy laughs suddenly, a high giggle that shakes his whole little body, that makes Garp smile even though he still wants to be annoyed. Makino bounces Luffy higher, lifts him up over her head and swoops him back down. She squeezes his soft sides and Luffy curls and kicks his feet and laughs harder while she chants mean old grandpa, mean old grandpa!
Consequently, "Mean old grandpa!" is the first sentence Luffy puts together, and he's got the nerve to say it to Garp's face. By the time Garp returns to Windmill Village, the boy is walking and talking like a real person, only miniature, with a real attitude to boot. He laughs freely when he sees Garp, actually reaches up for him, standing on his toes. He is all dark, wild hair and wide smile and dirty bare feet, and Garp has that aha moment where he finally sees the resemblance, sees where this little boy is a part of him in a way that no other little boy in the world is.
It's difficult to tell with babies - they're all the same undefined, pudgy pink - but as Luffy begins to grow in earnest, Garp begins to notice things. That Luffy's hairline is different, his nose is different, his face too round, his frame too skinny, and there are those big, wide, honest eyes.
He looks like his mother, Garp decides, scratching at his beard.
There's that grin, though.
Takes up his entire face, pushing those big cheeks up and scrunching his eyes, showing all his teeth (except the one that Garp knocked out himself about a week ago, to make room for the grown-up tooth trying to force its way through his gums). That grin is Garp's - every inch of it. And once in a while, when Luffy is concentrating on something, his eyebrows draw together and his eyes become sharp but still too-wide - when Garp isn't really looking at him, just out of the corner of his eye - he can see it. He recognizes his own face, and maybe a bit of Dragon's when he was young, but when Garp turns to have a better look the illusion is gone.
It's just Luffy, making some stupid face as he tries to sneak up on a bug, and Garp thinks that maybe the less he looks and acts like his father, the better.
-x-
By the time he's about four years old, Luffy is big enough to start training - stubborn enough to get back on his feet after he falls, even though he cries about it. It hurts his feelings to get knocked to the ground out of the blue. After a couple of times, it makes him angry. Garp's hand is a big as Luffy's entire chest. It takes no effort to push the boy off balance, to send him sprawling in the dirt where he scrapes his hands and knees. They bleed a little, and Luffy smacks them tenderly against his shorts to get the rocks and bits of dirt out of his palms, tears streaking down the dust on his face and leaving tracks.
"Stop it, Grandpa!" his voice wobbles thickly, and Garp's throat tightens, "That hurts!"
"Oh yeah?"
Garp says it louder, pushes harder, and Luffy tumbles head over heels. He gets up again once he gets his breath, though it's a hard task with snot choking him and sobs heaving out of his throat. Garp doesn't waver.
"You're bigger than me," Luffy cries, "It's not fair."
"Everyone's bigger than you," Garp says firmly, giving him another push, "And people are going to push you down. What are you going to do when it isn't your mean old grandpa, huh? What are you going to do when it isn't someone who loves you, Luffy? They won't be as easy on you as me!"
Luffy cries a little harder, but he gets back up. This time when Garp reaches out to knock him down, Luffy scrambles out of his way. His fists come up, round soft things that have never landed a single blow, and there's that flash of sharpness in his eyes even while he's blinking through his heavy tears.
"People that love me won't knock me down! You're mean and ugly!"
Garp has never prided himself on being an affectionate man.
Reasonable, powerful. He is a far cry from sentimental, or soft, or even kind. He has lived a hard life on the seas, fighting pirates and all sorts of villains since he was able to do so, and it has made him harder than steel and withered away at the tender parts of him that he might have nurtured in a different life. To say all that is not to say that he doesn't feel it. Every man loves in his own way, and Garp's way is with his fist. That has been his way for a long time - he is Garp the Fist, after all - and he's too old now to change things up.
He bonks Luffy on that stubborn head of his.
He laughs, a roar deep from his chest.
"What are people that love you supposed to do, then, Luffy?" he demands in a bellow, because he's curious as to what his brat's answer is going to be, what he knows about love.
Luffy shoots his skinny arms into the air and bellows back, with powerful lungs and with purpose, with everything that he has,
"Pick me up!"
"Good answer, boy!"
Garp grabs the front of Luffy's shirt; Luffy's tiny hands scramble at his fingers, panicked, trying in vain to pry him off; and Garp launches the boy into the air as high as he can. He needs endurance. He needs to be prepared for anything. Garp is not too big of a man to admit that he might have overdone it a bit.
He has sense enough to catch the boy.
Luffy has passed out on him, from thin air or the fright, or both. He cries when he wakes up because he's startled and tired and sore and hungry, and because he is small and his mean old grandpa is too rough with him, and he is too young to understand that it is the only way Garp knows how to protect him. Garp allows him a few minutes to sit on the ground and cry until Luffy is worn out from it.
Afterward, he readily forgets and forgives how he's been treated all day. Garp offers to carry him back to the village and make them both something to eat, and Luffy reaches for him with open arms, grinning - and Garp marvels that it is that easy.
-x-
Ace wants nothing to do with Garp from the start, and he does his best to run away from him the moment he can crawl.
That he no-doubt inherited from Roger, though Ace has the same resting brat face that his mother did. It is absolutely comical on a baby, who rarely cries, and who frowns more than he laughs no matter what Garp does. He likes to be chased, at least. Ace laughs and squeals whenever he sees Garp coming and he speeds away across the floor, so Garp chases him, grinning and grabbing after him with the same large hands that clashed with his father years ago, calling, "Come on, Ace, come to Grandpa!"
Even after he's caught, Ace will try to squirm free. He will fuss and reach for any passing bandit before he will sit longer than a minute on Garp's knee. Dadan is the toddler's favorite, even though he bites her and pulls her hair - and she loves him, even though she swears at him more than anything else.
"Damn you, Garp! He's a little monster!"
Garp only laughs, "What did you expect, Dadan?"
As Ace gets older, though, Dadan lets her temper and her fears get the better of her.
After she lets it slip about Roger, Garp spends four days of his next visit hunting Ace out of the woods to sit him down and have a serious talk. He had intended to tell Ace about his parents in his own time. He's never been great with kids; gets along with them alright when he has to, but he doesn't know how to talk to them. And maybe because of that, he only makes things worse, when he had hoped that telling Ace about his mother might calm some of the storm he knows is building up inside the boy.
All that's left of his father's legacy here in the east are rumors spun from people who have lost too much to pirates to be anything but bitter about the way the tides are changing. His mother did what she had to do to keep Ace safe from that same legacy, and it cost Rouge her life. So Ace grows up, hating a man he might have loved, for the things he did and didn't do.
It's a hard thing to watch.
Ace throws himself into fights, that infamous temper boiling over into his fists, burning him from the inside out, because he has nowhere to go with it. Underneath, he's just a lonely kid looking for answers, and something else, and Garp doesn't know what to do except to try and put a stop to it.
"No one out here is going to tell you anything good about your father," he says carefully, one evening when he finds Ace in a rougher condition than usual. He feels likes he's getting older just taking to this kid. It worries him. "So do yourself a favor, Ace, and stop asking."
Ace doesn't say anything for a long time; just stares out across the ocean like it's calling his name.
"What about you, old man?"
Garp isn't sure how to answer that.
He knew Roger, maybe almost as well as his own crew did.
He spent his entire career, a good chunk of his life, chasing that man at every turn, and that sort of thing just happens. Roger was a good man with a foolish dream. He was stubborn, and reckless. He was wild and free and loyal to a fault. And Garp is self-aware enough to know how similar they were down at their roots. It's why they got on so well, as infuriating as that was at times; why they butted heads more often. But Roger was a pirate, whatever his reasons, and Garp has been a navy man far longer than he's been anything else.
-x-
Ace is ten years old, and something gives. After that cocky red-haired hooligan puts those foolish ideas of being a pirate in Luffy's head, and after Ace beats a man in town nearly to death, something has to. After doing what he does for fifty some odd years, Garp trusts his instincts. He can think of a lot of people who are paired up when they ought to not be, and his boys compliment each other better than most.
Luffy is a crybaby that tries to act too big for his britches and needs constant looking-after. Ace is a hardass little devil that needs to settle down before he gets himself killed, or worse. Ace is too smart for his own good and Luffy is - Garp's just being honest here, the boy is dumb. He's dumb and he doesn't listen worth a damn. Neither of them do. But Luffy is bursting with a want that Ace doesn't allow himself to feel toward others, or even himself, and Luffy is persistent.
If anybody can get Ace to open up, it's Luffy. His charm is about all he's got going for him at this point. He's hard to say no to. And the two of them get on like a house on fire once they finally warm up to each other. Ace has someone to stick up for, and Luffy has someone to follow. Something inside of Ace shifts aside and softens to make room for the little brother he didn't want, the little brother who needs him, and Garp has never been more relieved.
Another boy comes out of the woodwork - that orphan runt from High Town that Garp has pretended not to notice because him and Ace have been sneaking off together - and Garp isn't complaining, though Dadan is. Sabo is patient where Ace is hot-headed, cautious where Luffy is inattentive, and he is just as crazy and stubborn as they are. It fills Garp with joy to throw them around every couple of weeks, to see them growing and becoming stronger and bigger, working together.
They're going to be fine men some day, sailors or not. How can he not take pride in that?
-x-
Ace changes after that boy Sabo dies.
Luffy is pretty much the same, to a point. He still cries as often as ever when he's unhappy or frustrated, but he is too young and too grounded in the present to hold onto the burden of losing someone you care about the way his brother does. Ace is quieter, quelled by his grief, stomping down that mean temper of his when it rears its ugly head so that he can grow without it.
Garp knows they're not going to become marines like he wants. He can't say how he knows, exactly. But he knows just by looking at them. Very little frightens him the way accepting that as a fact does, and he fights against it every step of the way because he's afraid.
The world is big, the seas are an ever-dangerous place, and he has seen what it does to the weak, and the cavalier, and the unprepared. He's seen it drive men mad, bring men to their lowest. He wants his grandsons to be strong, to be safe, to be wanted and loved. He wants them to be happy and proud, and to stand tall with no regrets. So if they're going to live their lives however they want to anyway, Garp decides he is going to do whatever he can to make them strong enough to endure any hardships the world is going to throw at them.
If they end up hating him, that's fine.
They'll have their freedom, and their strength, and each other.
At Marineford, when he watches his idiot grandson killing himself to save his brother, when he stands between them at the scaffold - he wants to see a pirate, and he wants to believe that he is on the right side here. This is the path that they chose, and this is what happens to criminals. But he remembers Luffy's tiny hands pulling at his beard, his eager voice as he talked about adventuring on the sea and his bright, dumb laughter; his easy forgiveness. He remembers the way Ace's face would light up when he was being chased across the floor, freckles standing out against his flushed round cheeks when Garp would pinch them between his fingers and tell him to behave himself; his somber, thoughtful replies.
Something in him caves then.
Something gives up and roars in defiance all at once, and for the first time in his life Garp pulls his punch.
He can't hurt these boys.
Two things are going through his mind in that moment. Ace's quiet expression as he stares out at sea, full of wonder and joy and sadness because people love him enough to fight for him, and that is such an unfathomable concept to a boy that doesn't believe he deserves to be alive, even now. Luffy's battle-hardened fists, his bruised and bloodied hands, ready to shake the entire world to its core if he has to for somebody he loves, and damn the consequences.
-x-
(A/n) Finally watching the funi dub up to the skip and it's pretty much ruining my life so here you guys go! 2018 is looking up, despite this! Thanks so much for reading!
-bobtac