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Entry tags:
Random One Piece fic
Prompt: Ahh, Puberty
Rating: PG
Pairing: Gen
Word Count: 1267
It had started even before they had left for the Grand Line. Inevitable, probably, considering not a single person on the Going Merry had seen two full decades. Sanji was the most obvious, hormones in control of part of his brain from the instant Nami set foot on the Baratie. He mooned and swooned and cooked the navigator extra special macaroons and other girlish trifles. Basically he made a complete fool out of himself, or so Zoro said from the first time he laid eyes on the blonde’s attempts at wooing. And then there was the facial hair. It wasn’t really enough to call a goatee and it would never qualify for a beard. A patch of blond scruff on his chin and it took Usopp almost a week to realize it was a deliberate amount and not just the cook’s base facial hair output. At nineteen, Sanji wasn’t really a teenager anymore but not quite a man either. He hadn’t fully grown into his gangly limbs – Nami had bets on his eventual shoulder width – but at least his voice had settled into a pleasant baritone.
Zoro was nineteen as well and clearly at his full height. The swordsman gave no outward signs of being gripped by the vicious hold of puberty. His deep voice was rich and full, the old-fashioned shaving kit with its straight razor came out like clockwork every other morning to scrape along his jaw, and, excluding that marine girl, he never got flustered around women. About the only thing that did give away his age – besides, Nami said, his boneheaded nature – was his sleeping pattern. Like most teenagers, getting up in the morning was nearly impossible for Zoro. He managed to haul his grouchy butt out of bed to train but it was usually with his eyes mostly closed until after breakfast. Sleep was quite possibly the swordsman’s best friend and the amount of time he spent in it couldn’t entirely be written off as a side effect of his training.
The boys had learned about Nami’s own more or less completed job of growing up two days after they sailed out of Loguetown. Never, EVER mess with PMS. The already high-stress job of being more or less responsible for a ship full of idiot teenage boys was definitely made worse by cramps, bloating and a headache brought on by more than the usual fighting and banging that occurred daily on the ship. Sanji was at his best, suave and caring and offering exquisite tidbits, and the rest of the crew happily let him take the brunt of Nami’s ire and stayed firmly out of her way. As it was, they were all more or less clueless as to why their navigator suddenly had become a grouchy bundle of hormones but they were smart enough not to push her. And Nami, when the first two days of hell were over, didn’t bother to enlighten them. She DID wear her skimpiest bikini top the following week in silent gratitude to Sanji, but as usual he ogled and drooled and she had to smack him sweetly over the head to get him to go away.
Poor Usopp had all the symptoms: changing voice that cracked and wavered whenever he was stressed, limbs he didn’t have under complete control, sweaty palms whenever he thought about the lovely young Kaya back home, more sweat he didn’t like to think about when Zoro worked out or Sanji shrugged out of his jacket or Luffy flopped bonelessly into his lap and demanded a story. He was a bundle of hormones and he was wise enough to know it but too curious sometimes to resist testing the limits of his changing form. It got him into trouble sometimes, his experimentation, but he was a scientist and he like finding things out for himself. The common sense that served to make him reasonably wary of the battles Luffy perpetually dragged him into somehow didn’t come into play when it came to pushing his growing form and trying things that had always been termed ‘adult.’ At least his nakama on the Going Merry were both literally and figuratively in the same boat and didn’t give him too much of a hard time when they freed him from the messes he got into.
Then there was the captain. Luffy was, as always, a bundle of contradictions. Sometimes it seemed like he had the mind of a seven year old trapped in a seventeen year old’s body. And then sometimes it seemed he had the quiet wisdom of someone who’d seen seventy years inhabiting the elastic and youthful form of a teenager. Thanks to his devil’s fruit, Luffy wasn’t gangly unless he wanted to be. Shaving hadn’t struck him either and it was a matter of debate whether it ever would. Considering how the gum gum fruit generally kept his body from scarring, it remained highly possible the nature of his flesh would prevent the growth of hair too. Except that sometimes he forgot about pants in the morning and it became apparent that he wasn’t hairless like a child all over. He certainly had the appetite of a teenager, easily eating everything Sanji set in front of him and always wanting more. There were those odd moments of quiet too, times when Luffy went somewhere inside his head and thought about things that made his brow crease and his expressive dark eyes dull ever so slightly. No one believed he was just thinking about the next meal at those times.
So the Going Merry was a youthful ship and the addition of Chopper only lowered the average age, added in the innocence of an animal, mixed with sharp intelligence and a form that changed readily. Chopper was largely immune to the flow of hormones that washed over his ship and occasionally confused his nose. But whenever he popped into his large, most human form he got a dose of the madness that seemed to occasionally sweep through his nakama. THAT was always interesting and everyone learned that yes, Chopper could visibly blush even through a heavy layer of fur.
It was in the midst of this somewhat tumultuous mess that Robin entered. Calm, cool, collected, adult, she was in many ways everything her fellow pirates were not. She was experienced and wise in some ways and she kept an air of mystery around her like a shield. Watching the goings on of the not-quite-children but not-quite-grown-up nakama around her made her feel younger, happier than she’d been in years. She liked the spontaneity and the freedom, the air of wonder her nakama had as they approached every new obstacle the Grand Line threw at them. Sometimes though, the air thick with hormones and barely repressed aggression, she wished they’d get over their naiveté and youth and just get on with life.
And when Franky, after his third night bunking with the rest of the boys aboard the Thousand Sunny sought her out after breakfast shaking his head with a bemused smile on his broad, life-scarred face, she finally found an ally. “How do you stand it?” he’d asked and she’d raised an eyebrow and asked what he was talking about. Franky shook his head again, blue forelock flopping over an eye. “Should’ve built more showers. Didn’t figure on all of ‘em bein’ so shy. Least Luffy doesn’t seem to care. After all,” and he slung a beefy arm across Robin’s slender shoulders and winked at her with the sort of knowing no one else on board could yet muster. “Youth is SUPER!”
Rating: PG
Pairing: Gen
Word Count: 1267
It had started even before they had left for the Grand Line. Inevitable, probably, considering not a single person on the Going Merry had seen two full decades. Sanji was the most obvious, hormones in control of part of his brain from the instant Nami set foot on the Baratie. He mooned and swooned and cooked the navigator extra special macaroons and other girlish trifles. Basically he made a complete fool out of himself, or so Zoro said from the first time he laid eyes on the blonde’s attempts at wooing. And then there was the facial hair. It wasn’t really enough to call a goatee and it would never qualify for a beard. A patch of blond scruff on his chin and it took Usopp almost a week to realize it was a deliberate amount and not just the cook’s base facial hair output. At nineteen, Sanji wasn’t really a teenager anymore but not quite a man either. He hadn’t fully grown into his gangly limbs – Nami had bets on his eventual shoulder width – but at least his voice had settled into a pleasant baritone.
Zoro was nineteen as well and clearly at his full height. The swordsman gave no outward signs of being gripped by the vicious hold of puberty. His deep voice was rich and full, the old-fashioned shaving kit with its straight razor came out like clockwork every other morning to scrape along his jaw, and, excluding that marine girl, he never got flustered around women. About the only thing that did give away his age – besides, Nami said, his boneheaded nature – was his sleeping pattern. Like most teenagers, getting up in the morning was nearly impossible for Zoro. He managed to haul his grouchy butt out of bed to train but it was usually with his eyes mostly closed until after breakfast. Sleep was quite possibly the swordsman’s best friend and the amount of time he spent in it couldn’t entirely be written off as a side effect of his training.
The boys had learned about Nami’s own more or less completed job of growing up two days after they sailed out of Loguetown. Never, EVER mess with PMS. The already high-stress job of being more or less responsible for a ship full of idiot teenage boys was definitely made worse by cramps, bloating and a headache brought on by more than the usual fighting and banging that occurred daily on the ship. Sanji was at his best, suave and caring and offering exquisite tidbits, and the rest of the crew happily let him take the brunt of Nami’s ire and stayed firmly out of her way. As it was, they were all more or less clueless as to why their navigator suddenly had become a grouchy bundle of hormones but they were smart enough not to push her. And Nami, when the first two days of hell were over, didn’t bother to enlighten them. She DID wear her skimpiest bikini top the following week in silent gratitude to Sanji, but as usual he ogled and drooled and she had to smack him sweetly over the head to get him to go away.
Poor Usopp had all the symptoms: changing voice that cracked and wavered whenever he was stressed, limbs he didn’t have under complete control, sweaty palms whenever he thought about the lovely young Kaya back home, more sweat he didn’t like to think about when Zoro worked out or Sanji shrugged out of his jacket or Luffy flopped bonelessly into his lap and demanded a story. He was a bundle of hormones and he was wise enough to know it but too curious sometimes to resist testing the limits of his changing form. It got him into trouble sometimes, his experimentation, but he was a scientist and he like finding things out for himself. The common sense that served to make him reasonably wary of the battles Luffy perpetually dragged him into somehow didn’t come into play when it came to pushing his growing form and trying things that had always been termed ‘adult.’ At least his nakama on the Going Merry were both literally and figuratively in the same boat and didn’t give him too much of a hard time when they freed him from the messes he got into.
Then there was the captain. Luffy was, as always, a bundle of contradictions. Sometimes it seemed like he had the mind of a seven year old trapped in a seventeen year old’s body. And then sometimes it seemed he had the quiet wisdom of someone who’d seen seventy years inhabiting the elastic and youthful form of a teenager. Thanks to his devil’s fruit, Luffy wasn’t gangly unless he wanted to be. Shaving hadn’t struck him either and it was a matter of debate whether it ever would. Considering how the gum gum fruit generally kept his body from scarring, it remained highly possible the nature of his flesh would prevent the growth of hair too. Except that sometimes he forgot about pants in the morning and it became apparent that he wasn’t hairless like a child all over. He certainly had the appetite of a teenager, easily eating everything Sanji set in front of him and always wanting more. There were those odd moments of quiet too, times when Luffy went somewhere inside his head and thought about things that made his brow crease and his expressive dark eyes dull ever so slightly. No one believed he was just thinking about the next meal at those times.
So the Going Merry was a youthful ship and the addition of Chopper only lowered the average age, added in the innocence of an animal, mixed with sharp intelligence and a form that changed readily. Chopper was largely immune to the flow of hormones that washed over his ship and occasionally confused his nose. But whenever he popped into his large, most human form he got a dose of the madness that seemed to occasionally sweep through his nakama. THAT was always interesting and everyone learned that yes, Chopper could visibly blush even through a heavy layer of fur.
It was in the midst of this somewhat tumultuous mess that Robin entered. Calm, cool, collected, adult, she was in many ways everything her fellow pirates were not. She was experienced and wise in some ways and she kept an air of mystery around her like a shield. Watching the goings on of the not-quite-children but not-quite-grown-up nakama around her made her feel younger, happier than she’d been in years. She liked the spontaneity and the freedom, the air of wonder her nakama had as they approached every new obstacle the Grand Line threw at them. Sometimes though, the air thick with hormones and barely repressed aggression, she wished they’d get over their naiveté and youth and just get on with life.
And when Franky, after his third night bunking with the rest of the boys aboard the Thousand Sunny sought her out after breakfast shaking his head with a bemused smile on his broad, life-scarred face, she finally found an ally. “How do you stand it?” he’d asked and she’d raised an eyebrow and asked what he was talking about. Franky shook his head again, blue forelock flopping over an eye. “Should’ve built more showers. Didn’t figure on all of ‘em bein’ so shy. Least Luffy doesn’t seem to care. After all,” and he slung a beefy arm across Robin’s slender shoulders and winked at her with the sort of knowing no one else on board could yet muster. “Youth is SUPER!”