A/N: Two years since I last updated, and I can't confirm when the next one will come out… Well, my dream is to post a lot of one-shots so my heart is there at least *smile*.
ONE-SHOT 11: SUMMER HOLIDAYS
When Dadan leaves the house for the summer holidays, Ace and Luffy are stuck there alone trying to beat the heat.
Warnings: Summer is hot.
"I don't know what I'm thinking," Dadan said with a sigh, landing on the zabuton with her hands over her eyes.
Luffy and Ace stood around her, Luffy before her and blinking bewilderedly at her and Ace behind as he dangled the remains of a popsicle from his teeth and whipped his singlet to try and get some cool air.
It was a blazing summer that Dadan had decided to leave them alone in, with the temperature hitting thirty-eight or nine on some days, though it wasn't on purpose as she had been working on getting a quote-unquote real job since about a few years ago, when she had decided to kick out all the bandits from her house and start attending classes. And now, two years later, she was going away for a final summer course… or she would be if she followed through with it.
"What are you talking about?" Luffy was saying. "It's just school! If the teacher gets too boring, just skip out on class!"
"Why would I skip class?!" Dadan retorted. She brought her wrist to her forehead and shook her head. "That isn't the point. Maybe I shouldn't go after all. I barely passed my exams. I should just call and get my money back, maybe find a retail job, hope that old man will continue to cover my ass…"
The silence in-between was unbroken by the loud whirring of the fan in the living room and the droning of the TV talking about train delays, the shoji open wide so that the three of them wouldn't die from the humidity but also causing the cricketing and chirpings to fill it as well. Ace turned his head towards the outside where a bird was tweeting particularly loudly, but the sun shining down there hurt his eyes and he turned back.
With Dadan still groaning while Luffy was trying to convince her otherwise, Ace said lazily, glancing at their clock, "Just leave already, your plane's taking off in an hour."
"You brats…" Dadan complained to herself.
"We all know you're not actually going to stay here," Ace continued. "And you think we're absolute hell spawns…"
"Correct…"
"…and you can't wait for us to leave the house."
"Oh, every day…"
"Why, just last week we put a hole in your bedroom."
Luffy was nodding along. "Yup, we did that… no we didn't!" He suddenly realised, yelling at Ace. "That one was you!"
"But you did spit watermelon seeds into her face thinking it was me."
"You poured lemonade into the laundry!"
"I was trying to wash the clothes, you took her bra and tried to use it as a bird's nest!"
"You said—"
"Alright, alright!" Dadan shouted, rising and getting in between them. "The two of you are the most ungrateful brats I've ever had the misfortune of taking in, and I don't want to be here for even just a second longer!"
Now she was hot and bothered, her good shirt staining at the spits and the back of it probably looking like an excited dog had slobbered all over. She started counting to five in her head, but didn't make it to four when Luffy spoke up again.
"Shirtless."
They both turned to him, only confused now.
"What?" said Ace, since it sounded like Luffy was accusing him of something.
"Shirtless," Luffy repeated, pointing at him.
Ace and Dadan looked at each other, Ace scratching the back of his head for an answer. Unable to come up with any good one, he shifted his weight to the other foot and replied, "Yeah, I'm shirtless a lot now, not today… Did you just try to insult me?"
Luffy merely crossed his arms, not denying it.
"Anyway," Dadan said, "I…"
They both turned their attention to her now. She still seemed unsure of something, and she remained standing in between them, lost in her thoughts.
"What?" Luffy said, leaning in.
Ace leaned in too. "You don't actually want to go?"
Luffy whipped his grinning face towards Ace. "She doesn't want to leave us! Dadan's shy!"
Ace tutted. "When she has such a good opportunity… I guess she has forgotten about us accidentally catching her in our traps—"
"You brats!"
Dadan practically flew like a bat out of hell out of the house then, but before she was gone she turned back around and hollered, "Don't destroy the house while I'm gone or you'll be working off your debts!"
"We love you too, Dadan!" Luffy yelled back, waving along with a grinning Ace.
Dadan, shocked, frustrated and embarrassed, whirled around and continued stomping away until she disappeared among the trees. Ace and Luffy only stopped waving to her then, continuing to watch the trees sway as though they were physically fighting the sunlight that was beating down on them while birds hiding in their leaves twittered and flapped their wings at each other like they were having a great conversation, until the meow of a cat made the two brothers snap their heads toward it.
As if scared by their gazes, the cat turned back around and scampered back into the shrubs that rustled in protest. Ace and Luffy turned back to each other and their faces slowly broke into matching grins.
The drips of a lazily-eaten popsicle fell onto Luffy's shirt and he groaned in response. He pushed his hand against the floor but then gave up and fell back onto the mat, shoving the popsicle deeper in and letting it hang there as he lied on the floor with his limbs splayed out.
Again he was in the living room pointedly ignoring his homework, but this time the continuous whirring from the fan was driving him crazy. The TV had been turned off since he couldn't pay attention to it anyway, dying as it felt like he was doing in the heat. Lying down made it a little better to endure, but only just so slightly and he was wondering if it was worth it to get back up again and find something good to watch, maybe drag the fan to his ear until it was close enough to make him go deaf.
The sight of his brother essentially playing dead in the house was what greeted Ace when he returned with a plastic bag filled with popsicles and another with actual groceries. Having eaten one already, Ace let the stick he had in his mouth fall to the floor with a clatter to get Luffy's attention.
"Get up if you want one."
He swooped over to pick the stick back up while Luffy clumsily got to his feet and followed after him, their feet thudding against the floor. The rustling of bags soon filled the air as Ace began to put the groceries away while Luffy only rummaged in the other for popsicles, stuffing two at once into his mouth and sinking down onto a zabuton, being entirely unhelpful. Ace, though, was used to that.
"I'm taking a bath," Ace announced once he was done.
"Me too!" Luffy said, quickly getting up again and Ace shook his head because without the heat he wouldn't go unprompted, let alone willingly.
With their bath done, they were, for a brief moment, refreshed again when they sat back at the entryway. The fan directly behind them, they sighed in unison and only dared stretch their legs enough to avoid the rays from the sun attacking them. A watermelon sat between them innocently.
"What are we doing to do today?" Ace asked, slowly rolling his neck to look over at Luffy.
Luffy, seemingly looking at the woods before them for inspiration, answered, "Fish…"
Ace gave a half-hearted reply, having nearly commented that he'd have to fish him out instead.
With no real answer, they crushed open the watermelon and dug away at it, fighting each other until the last seed was gone. Resigning himself to lying about the house all day, Ace fetched a popsicle and stood there again with Luffy wondering why he had a shirt on. He was pulling it off with one hand when he felt a tug at his shorts.
"What, Luffy?" he asked, and with no reply he continued to manoeuvre his way out of the shirt. But it was a lost cause since he was still holding his popsicle. Feeling a tug on his popsicle hand, he let it go. "You better not finish it…"
He took off his shirt successfully and glanced down at Luffy for his food back. But he was lying down with his arm over his eyes and the stick was nowhere to be seen. Luffy ate pretty much everything, but not a stick, at least he shouldn't be hungry enough to do that, Ace thought in disbelief. But then realised he might have just done it to hide the evidence.
Not that Ace was as dumb as he thought. "Luffy!" He prodded him with his foot.
Luffy groaned in response, sounding like he was slowly waking. "What?"
Ace, surprised at that, asked, "Were you sleeping?"
"Yeah…" He covered his eyes back again.
Before he could go back to sleep, Ace asked again, "Then what happened to my popsicle?"
"What do you mean?" Luffy asked, barely paying attention to him.
Ace was baffled. He'd think he was being gaslit if it was entirely out of Luffy's character or ability to do that, and especially not over a popsicle. He thought it over too long and soon enough, Luffy was obviously asleep again. So he didn't do it, and now Ace had no idea what the fuck just happened.
He ended up just going back to get a new one.
Soon enough, they decided they had to at least leave the house for a bit. They got on their own bikes one morning and left the forest, coming back to a familiar path where every patch of skin that was uncovered was inflamed by the sun and the path appeared to be ablaze. But still they rode with the sun behind them and forced the wind to oppose them, pedalling down a grassy countryside where the closest city was somewhere over the endless horizon.
Once they got to town, they rolled their bikes alongside them as they walked on the burning sidewalk. Luffy was able to wave to even just the few people they were able to see out and about in town. Ace though, kept his eye on the buildings they passed.
"Hey, Luffy, a surf shop."
"What? Does Ace want to go surfing?"
"The beach is too far… maybe we can get Marco to drive."
They continued like that for a bit longer until they managed to finally duck into a coffee shop. Ace dropped into a chair at the table right under the air-conditioner and Luffy closely watched the waiter coming.
"I'd like any drinks with ice in it, please," Ace said, after giving the menu a glance-over. He slid it back to the waiter. "Except coffee," he amended.
"I want all the meat you have!" Luffy declared.
The waiter was unsure how to reply at that. "E-excuse me, sir, we only have one meat dish…"
"What is it, what is it?" Luffy asked, his tongue out as he grinned.
Minutes later, two plates of egg rolls were pushed before Luffy and Ace. Ace looked at it in disappointment, while Luffy looked at it in both disappointment and confusion. He grabbed one and gave it a disheartened look.
"What? I was expecting good meat." He put the entire thing in his mouth and chewed on it. Through a full mouth, he said, "It's good, but it's nothing like Sanji's food…"
"Maybe there's another store open," Ace said, glancing outside.
"I miss Sanji…" Luffy said sadly, eating another egg roll whole. "I miss his food…"
Then Luffy tore Ace's plate away from him before he could fall asleep into it, and, under the gazes of people who had whipped their heads to look at what had caused the loud thud, ate everything from Ace's plate as well.
At Ace's indignation when he woke up and found that there was nothing left to eat, they continued walking down the sidewalk trying to find a proper restaurant. But they had come on a Sunday, and with the town being as deserted as it was, any businesses they came across were already closed.
"…We should've checked the calendar," Ace said.
"Wow, look at how cold that is," Ace was saying, his head resting on top of Luffy's as he rested his arms on his shoulders.
Luffy had succumbed to keeping his tongue hanging out. "Yeah, I wish I was there right now…"
"Wow…" Ace whispered, unable to look away.
The channel was on an old rerun of some snowboarding competition, and the faces on the TV were red from the cold, the closeups the camera gave them showing every last bit of snow and ice stuck in between the folds of their beanies. They were dressed in layers to the point that everyone had the figure of a Michelin Man. In contrast, Ace back in their humid house had on just a pair of shorts, his chest glistening with sweat, while Luffy had on a sleeveless shirt with shorts and was sweating profusely.
Soon, the program ended and they sighed. For a moment it really did feel like they were cold, and with the program changing, they had to wipe off their sweat again. Ace pulled away from Luffy and brought his legs up to rest his arm on his knees.
"Alright," he finally said. "Luffy? Race you to the lake."
In a swift motion, he was off the floor and running into the trees, while Luffy was still crying out and turning over himself to push himself up. And when he finally caught up, Ace was cannonballing into the water, which caused the water to splash all over him.
"Ace! You cheater!" Luffy protested, and he looked around for the highest tree branch to climb onto.
That took a while, so when Ace was in the water having already swum in circles for a bit, he was looking back to the bank in surprise, having just recalled that Luffy was supposed to be here too. And behind him there was a meteor named Luffy that was hurtling in his direction.
…Well, Luffy missed Ace, but it did scare the shit out of him.
Afterwards, once they were done splashing each other in the water and nearly trying to drown each other with their roughhousing as well, they floated on their backs for hours and hours, the light shining down on them eventually turning from searing white to orange and then to a gentle blue that caressed them and gave the countless ripples of water their sparkle. They reluctantly got out of the lake then only because they remembered their hunger once they could see the stars, and caught fish by pouncing on them.
The fire they lit brought the colour red-orange back into the world, and they laughed at each other in its light and fought over the fish they caught. And when one went missing from Luffy's side, Ace took one look at him and gave up the last one he had.
Luffy, asleep on top of his futon, dreamed of giant meat popsicles dancing in his vision until they started growing Ace's head, each and every one of them. He woke up shouting into Ace's face.
"Luffy!" Ace yelled back, gritting his teeth and pushing him back onto the floor.
Luffy stared up at him. "Ace, I thought you were a meat popsicle."
"…What?" Ace said. He shook his head. "Never mind that — we're going to the beach with Marco and the others today, come on!"
Luffy's expression slowly changed into a grin as if it was taking a long time to sink in, then he was jumping up and knocking Ace to the floor.
"Alright!"
Ace shot back up, holding his nose. "Luffy, you bastard!"
Mere minutes later they were riding on Ace's bicycle with Ace cycling them and Luffy standing at the back and loudly urging him to go faster. Ace's retorts were lost in the wind.
Passing the countryside and going through a sleepy town to end up at a crossroads, Ace finally braked before a car where a brunette stood leaning against it.
Upon noticing them, he turned around, grinning. "Ready?"
"Ready, Bread Guy!" Luffy had his arm shot up to the sky and grinning as if he was answering the question of a teacher in class.
"I've already told you I'm Thatch!"
Unable to argue further when Luffy only laughed in response, Thatch helped put Ace's bicycle in the trunk of the car before they climbed in, greeting Marco who was at the wheel before they set off. Inside, they talked, sang at various degrees of proficiency, played games and annoyed Marco often, and all the while the litter in the car was piling up from how much food they went through. Outside, the darkness gradually descended upon the countryside, occasional farm animals they passed watching their car race past, and slowly, lights began to emerge from the distance.
Marco drove them right into the city where the darkness stayed far above them at bay. Buildings like huge boxes with holes poked in them and glowing bright, streets that were never empty and roads that continually turned all were lost in a sea of blur as they drove directly south, and finally they stopped where the asphalt did, the passengers all stepping out into the warm sand that replaced it.
They got to taking their things out of the trunk. The beach not too crowded, Luffy looked around for a bit and spotted them sitting near the water. He grinned and yelled, "Oi! Zoro! Nami!"
Nami turned her head towards him, her low pigtails following. "Luffy!" She got to her feet.
Zoro, cracking open a beer bottle with his teeth, got up as well.
They all helped to add to the space Nami and Zoro had already set out, and soon they were all laughing on the picnic blankets together. Luffy sneaked out an early snack to quickly finish off before jumping up and running towards the ocean with Zoro following. Thatch followed too with a surfboard, Luffy looking away from his race with Zoro to gape at him deftly surfing a wave.
"Let me have a try!" Luffy ended up demanding.
Thatch, fruitlessly fighting with his limp hair, asked him, "Are you sure? Have you even surfed before?"
Luffy nodded seriously without speaking.
Once he got hold of the surfboard, Thatch spoke instructions and warnings that went in one ear and out the other while he swam towards the incoming wave.
Ace, only noticing what Luffy was doing then, stopped his conversation and walked towards the shore to shout at Thatch, "Is that your surfboard he's using?"
Thatch swam over to him as he shouted back, "Yeah!"
Ace faltered before speaking up again, "Are you crazy, Thatch?! He just learned how to swim this year!"
Thatch opened his mouth then looked back to Luffy who was already on a rising wave and then back to Ace, saying, "I didn't know! Anyway, Ace, surfing's not very dangerous."
"He was a total anchor before this year," Ace said, unconvinced. "Didn't I tell you about the many times I had to fish him out of the water? The worst time was when there was a crocodile—"
"Yes, I remember that one," Thatch said, unwilling to let him go on and even more unwilling to let him repeat an old story. "If you're so worried about him, how about you focus on the present?" he asked, jutting his thumb behind them.
Ace started at that and whipped his head towards Luffy.
Just a moment ago, Luffy had successfully climbed onto the rising wave and Zoro had shouted something with a grin at him. Then, his confidence having risen along with the wave, had started to stand on the surfboard. When Ace looked over, Luffy was standing properly, looking for all the world like someone who actually knew how to surf and impressing them all, then the few brief seconds were over when he flailed and disappeared into the wave.
The wave had been so small that Ace ended up just looking on speechlessly.
Zoro swam towards Luffy while Thatch swam to fetch his surfboard, and Marco and Nami, still sitting on the beach and drinking juice together, looked at each other with silent, knowing gazes.
Ace berated Luffy while Zoro stayed in the water, and Thatch continued to surf. Luffy, effectively hungry now, sat dejectedly at the edge of the blanket and poked at a hermit crab until it finally had it and he was left with a sting in his finger and Nami shaking her head at him. Ace somehow succeeded in making Marco agree to be buried in sand, so soon both Marco and Luffy were in the sand buried up to their necks, Luffy there because he had thought it was a fun idea and he still did, grinning at Marco who looked like he was second-guessing all of his life choices.
Then Thatch finally returned from the water and Luffy called Zoro back from it too when Thatch got the barbeque going. Nami got all the alcohol out and went ham on a bottle, Zoro started an unspoken competition with her, Marco cracked open a cold beer and stayed next to Thatch talking with him, and Ace and Luffy were busy with fighting each other for the food.
The food was quickly finished and Luffy, revigorated, ran around the beach until he came back with a pole and a group of people behind him which managed to lead to a massive limbo competition that roped everyone remaining on the beach into it which still ended with Luffy winning. Then before they knew it, they were gathering all the driftwood and a fire erupted on the beach, everyone joining hands and dancing around it.
It was after all of that, after Ace and Luffy ate until they were full again, after everyone else left and their friends all fell asleep that it was finally quiet once more. The crickets returned. It filled the silent night along with the tides as they both lied down spread-eagled on the sand and counted all the stars in the sky.
After they've nearly counted all the stars in the universe, Luffy said, "Hey, Ace."
"What?"
"You think Dadan's having fun?"
"…Yeah."
The tides came crashing in noisily, yet somehow soothingly at the same time. Luffy slowly got to his feet, the sand crunching under his every movement. He walked to pick up a beach ball that was at the edge of Ace's vision.
"Let's play." Luffy was smiling.
He walked into the water without waiting for a reply, his legs soon becoming lost in the midnight blue. The tide came in again and wet Ace's feet. Summer was ending, he thought. He sat up, saw their friends sleeping peacefully on top of each other, turned and saw Luffy who had his back toward him, his head straight and facing the horizon.
Ace, the lethargy slowly seeping into every part of his body, got up and followed Luffy into the ocean.
