Splish Splash, We Were Takin' a Bath
"You're all taking a bath. No arguing!" Nami announced to the men of the crew.
They'd defeated Moria and had their celebration feast, now it was time for the dirty animals to get clean, or rather fully clean instead of the minimal clean for getting their wounds treated.
"Whoo! Bath Party!" Luffy cheered, one of the few times he was happy to go take a bath. Chopper and Usopp joined his cheer and Nami rolled her eyes (whatever works, right?).
Brook just chuckled. His new captain and crew certainly knew how to have fun. It certainly would be nice to get clean though. Brook couldn't quite remember when he'd last had a bath. It hadn't particularly mattered when there was no else to be bothered by his scent. In fact, Brook wasn't sure he had much of a scent anymore, what with a lack of sweat glands and skin for scents to rub into. His clothes probably smelled more than himself. Speaking of which…
"Not to argue with your order to take a bath or anything, but I'm afraid I don't have a change of clean clothes," Brook hedged. It kind of ruined the feeling of getting clean in the bath to put on dirty clothes afterwards.
"I know. That's why I grabbed Zoro's coat from Alabasta and a pair of his pants."
"Oi!" Zoro started to object only to be silenced with a glare from Nami that promised a raised debt.
"They're not going be a perfect fit, but they're the longest we've got," Nami explained. She excluded the provision that they were the longest men's clothes they had because while Robin was taller than Zoro, with the musician's tendency to ask after panties, it was better to just not bring that up. And Franky never wore pants, nor were his shirts quite long enough to properly fit the musician.
"Ah, thank you," Brook said with a tilt of his head to the navigator. "If you don't mind, Zoro-san?"
"It's fine," Zoro replied. It wasn't lending the older swordsman clothes that he had been objecting to, rather it was the witch rooting around in his locker without even asking.
That settled, all the men headed for the bath.
Inside the bathroom, things quickly dissolved into a water fight, the Devil Fruit Users vs the Non-Users. The Devil Fruit team got to use the shower heads (they couldn't really participate if they were actually in the bathtub where their strength would be sapped by the water) and the Nons splashed water from the tub (Franky's dinner plate sized hands could be used to make quite the squirt gun). Both sides used buckets for extra scooping and flinging power.
It was fun, it was lively, it was senseless. Brook loved every second of it. So did the others, for that matter, going by their wide grins. He egged them on, singing a half-forgotten song, "Splish splash, we were taking a bath! Having fun out on the seas!"
Eventually, the splashing battle comes to an end, Zoro and Sanji arguing over who had won, even though they had been on the same team (such an odd quirk, to always fight, but those boys did seem to be the best of friends, Brook absently thought, seeing as neither ever seriously injured the other for all their fighting).
With things calmed down, the boys of the crew set about to scrubbing themselves clean. Brook started with his afro, Usopp being kind enough to lend the skeleton some of his own shampoo and such seeing as they both had such curly hair. Murky suds and water flowed down off of all of them. With his afro cleaned, Brook moved on to his body, only to hit a snag. Rubbing a bar of soap over bones wasn't particularly effective in cleaning them, not to mention that the bar of soap would not fit into all the crevices and joints that he could feel dust and dirt grinding in now that he was paying attention.
"Here," Chopper said, tapping the musician's tibia and offering a thick bristle brush.
"Ah, Chopper-san, I─"
"You've been picking at your joints and I know that some places can be hard to scrub with just soap and hands. I usually use this brush for my antlers, so it should work well for bones, right?"
Brook couldn't help but smile at the little doctor's kindness. "Thank you very much, Chopper-san. I believe it will do just fine."
And it did. It was a bit of a learning curve to figure out the positions and angles necessary to get everything clean, and he ended up needing help getting inside his skull and ribcage. Usopp had freaked out a bit about putting his hands inside of someone when Zoro and Sanji had both made him take a turn, but considering that one of the ship rules was to always have a Non-User in the bath with a User (a precaution against standing water and its draining effects), it was necessary. Franky's hands were to big to reliably fit and maneuver in those spaces and Zoro and Sanji wouldn't be available to do it all the time. Luffy took a turn as well, wanting to help his nakama, and Chopper tried, but well, short arms or big hands, so he couldn't get the middle sections of Brook's rib cage.
Brook was just delighted that they all cared enough to help.
Author's Note
Considering that Brook continued to wear his tattered old suit until it got replaced sometime during his Soul King tour, it seems likely that he only had the one outfit upon joining the crew. Truthfully, Brook seemed to join them with little more than the clothes on his back, so that's why all the borrowing. Fighting and getting put through rubble several times is sure to get one dirty, so bath time (and laundry)! According to an SBS in volume 67, the guys sometimes have Great Bath Parties, so I used that here. Troubles getting skeleton joints and stuff was a little bit inspired by a scene from the series Overlord, though Ainz's solution was to have a bath in slimes (the monsters, they ate the dust and dirt off him or something). Oh, and the tibia is the front bone in the lower leg. And if you clasp your hands together in a certain way, partially submerge them, and then squeeze, you can squirt water. Now think of doing that with Franky's giant hands (even pre-timeskip). Yeah, decent sized water gun (and Brook couldn't do it at all, being bones, lol).
