Yuru-Camp Opening 1 Acrylic

every high and every low

i wrote a tiny little something for @mangogreent, it isnt much but i hope you like ! happy birthday lake ! title borrowed from glad you exist by dan + shay (listen with your platonic nakamaship hat on and dissolve into seafoam with me)

read on ao3

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Luffy’s body doesn’t scar easily. It’s one of the many facets of a frankly unhinged healing factor; his body shuffles micronutrients and vitamins around like a circus clown juggling pins, wounds healing so quickly and completely that there is rarely a trace left behind.

There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. The smiling pencil-mark curve beneath his eye is one of them. The cruel, gaping burn across his chest is another.

Sanji and Chopper have spent hours going over dietary needs and goals for everyone aboard Sunny, not just their captain. But it’s their captain whose food works like a miracle in his stomach.

If Sanji thinks too long and too hard about Totto Land—about Luffy’s trembling, emaciated limbs when he handed over a disgusting, ruined bento, the way his skin plumped up and shone with good health within minutes of a meal—there are very good odds that he’ll spiral into a fit of grief or guilt or panic no matter where he is or what he’s doing at the time. So he tries not to think about it, and instead loads his captain with carbs and protein and fiber at every opportunity instead.

Suffice to say, Luffy’s skin is largely whole and undamaged, only a few faint scars scattered here and there that you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t really looking. His rubber body is a marvel, but it burns like a starving furnace, and sometimes it does him a disservice no one could have possibly seen coming.

“You don’t feel that?” Usopp says with a frown.

“Nuh-uh,” Luffy confirms blithely, watching the feather move back and forth across his arm. “If you pinch me or poke me with something sharp I will, but if it’s soft it’s like it’s not there at all.”

For a moment, everyone sits there and absorbs that information. Sanji can feel it settling over his nakama like a blanket of snow; cold and promising to pack in and be a pain in the ass to shovel through. Sanji has to readjust his understanding of the world, too. It takes him a minute.

The only touches that Luffy feels easily are the ones that hurt. That’s true for everyone, in a sense—but just because a slap might register louder and faster than a gentle touch doesn’t mean the latter doesn’t carry a weight of its own.

Sanji wonders, abruptly, if the last thing Luffy felt from him was the fight they had on Whole Cake when Sanji was desperate to free his captain of his obligations to a pathetic, useless cook—when he did everything in his power to drive him away.

Nami and Brook have joined Usopp in the game of poking Luffy’s arms and legs and squishy sides in the name of proving him wrong, finding a spot where he isn’t so thick-skinned. Brook’s phalanges drumming against his ribs make him giggle a bit, but how much of that is real feeling and how much is simply delight at all the attention and affection pointed his way?

It should be cute, but Sanji can see—and feel—it cutting everyone to the quick. Robin has closed her book, watching the scene without a smile on her face. Franky’s hands are unmoving around the great feathered monstrosity he and Usopp have been building at the table together up until this point, as if he’s forgotten he’s holding tools in the first place.

Enough is enough, Sanji decides, and sets aside his pride along with his bowl of red velvet cupcake batter and maryse spatula, moving around the counter with purpose.

“Got an idea,” he says at length and Nami scoots gamely to the side. Sanji keeps moving before he can get in his own way and takes Luffy’s round face in one work-hardened hand.

Luffy, who has been known to use his actual skull as a battering ram, usually fights with his whole chest and carries most of his injuries there, too. His face, aside from an unfortunate unsupervised incident with a knife when he was little more than a toddler with a highly questionable and often day-drunk role model, is unscarred.

Sanji brushes his thumb against Luffy’s cheek, where the skin lays very thin over sensitive nerve endings. His captain blinks up at him, brown eyes wide and trusting, every bit as if he’s looking at someone who has never hurt him before.

The crew present is watching raptly, their disquiet transforming into absurd, single-minded scrutiny. There’s a reason they’re not only living in the New World but thriving there—they’re good at adapting, at assimilating new information, at smacking the curveballs right out of the park on their second swing.

“Feel that?” Sanji asks.

Luffy tips his head curiously, just enough not to dislodge Sanji’s hand. Perfectly willing to sit still and be held when it’s his cook doing the holding.

“Kinda,” the boy says, the barest hint of a furrow forming between his brows. It’s the beginning of an epic spoiled sulk that everyone who loves him is intimately familiar with—because his nakama belong to him, and so Sanji does, and so his hand on Luffy’s face does, and it is rapidly occurring to Luffy that it’s not fair for all of those things to be true and for him not to be able to feel it.

Sanji can’t help but smile, always equal parts charmed and exasperated by the future king in a pout. He leans in and presses his mouth to the same place his thumb was, kissing the soft cheek firmly. He can almost see it when Luffy zings to attention, his overwhelming focus zeroed into that singular point of contact.

By the time Sanji straightens, Luffy is already beaming ear-to-ear.

“I felt that!”

Sanji returns to his dessert prep, perfectly satisfied with the changed world he leaves in his wake. Chopper is already clambering over the top of the table, scattering the bits and bobs of the engineers' project into an irremediable mess in his haste to bury his favorite human in fuzzy reindeer kisses, and similarly everyone else’s eyes are gleaming with promise.

Luffy’s rubber body is both a wonder and a menace, much like the golden soul it houses. But where it falls short and fails him, his friends will pick up the slack. Luffy is probably going to get his cheeks and forehead pinched and poked a lot more when he’s whining or complaining or elsewise being his annoying, incorrigible self.

But he’s also going to get kissed a lot more there, too.

still thinking about your fic and how the strawhats were like 'we waited two years for him, we can wait again' and those few hours turned into weeks, then months, then years AND YOU'VE MADE THEM WAIT 20 OUGHHH YOURE SICK (but i love u for it)

I think that at first glance, 20 years is a long time, yeah, but if you really think about it -

20 years is an entire lifetime. In 20 years, parents see their kids, babbling and waddling, grow into adults who pay their own taxes. 20 years ago, the One Piece manga was at Skypiea. 20 years ago, it was 2003 - I wasn't even born then, so just imagining spending that long looking for someone you don't even know is alive - what does that do to a person wink wink

THIS IS SO SICKED AND TWISTED

love u anon 🙈

READ NOW THE DARKNESS COMES ALIVE BY @taizi RIGHT NOW

hiii. i just need you to know that i love YLTS so much and it's occupied my brain for the past two weeks since i read it and i actualy can't stop thinking about what's going to happen next. I haven't felt this way about a fic since 2020, i feel so alive [unlike luffy. maybe? LMAO] thank you for creating something so wonderful[ly angstyyyyy]

omg. this was so sweet of you to say 🥺🥺 it makes me happy to hear YLTS is living rent-free in ur brain. thats my child right there. in this economy, they cant afford to live on their own

(also YOUR USE OF BRACKETS MADE ME CACKLE LMAO)

thank u so much for support <3 there are no archive warnings, but ill do my best to kill luffy

i wanna read the ch3 angst so bad but i have to write it myself 😭😭😭 HELL WORLD HELL WORLD

hello again! i need to tell you that i've reread YLTS so often that i've begun dreaming about the story LMAO especially since the second chapter has art. I just rememebred that Chopper left some of Luffy's meds behind and Usopp made a sign, but aaaa the fire that Luffy came back to (that Sabo maybe set?????) might have burned up that sign and now I'm all wobbly-eyed again haha

omg hello!!! im honored to hear that ylts has left such an impact on you.

hehe its nice to see someone mention that little part from ch1! not that it has any plot relevance...

i hope i can post ch3 within the year, and i greatly appreciate ur patience and support!

heres a little preview for the next chapter! its subject to change, but i think it gets the vibes just right!

The world is ending.  And there is nothing you can do to stop it. 

They say that if the sun ever burns out, you will not know until eight minutes after it does. Then, you will notice the cold. The dark. The stars you once admired in the night now objects of terrified realization in the day.

sketch of my pretty mr. fraud

The Mirror of Erised

SHOUT OUT TO MY FAVOURITE CUTIE PATOOTIE @saraisanamazingcow for being such a cutie patootie

So I got into the turtle show.

To @goodlucktai for T3's gift exchange!!!

Pirate Hunter