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Life didn’t give Luffy an easy path. Orphaned as a baby, Luffy grew up with an extremely strict grandpa and two lifelong friends turned sworn brothers: Ace and Sabo. Ace, the eldest of the trio, worked as a firefighter to help support his two younger brothers. Ever the middle child in the way he mediated all the chaos his brothers caused, Sabo enrolled in the local college to become a lawyer. This meant that Sabo earned the opportunity to work as an intern through the college’s experience program with a downtown law office. The internship even paid some of the brothers’ bills in a refreshing and grateful surprise! Luffy knew that his education ended after obtaining his Bachelors. As a young twenty-something that tried his best to get through his college years, he found his disabilities like ADHD and a hint of dyslexia made even getting that degree incredibly difficult.
The older brothers handled the expenses of their household, well… apartment-hold. Living with such different jobs and schedules, the brothers created an individual list of jobs that catered to those best suited for the position. As Ace and Sabo labored with longer hours than their youngest counterpart, Luffy found himself appointed chef of their family.
The brothers collected a month’s worth of cooking horror stories before Luffy gathered enough experience to cook without a disaster. His brothers did the dishes though.
No exceptions.
In order to make his chore more enjoyable, Luffy invited his friend Sanji, who happened to be in training to become a professional chef, over to help him create delicious meals out of what little they could afford. Luffy spent hours tossing out ideas, usually involving instant ramen or re-heatables since those populated his pantry the most often. Luffy found it easy to distract himself with creating new dishes instead of focusing on any foreboding sense of dread that accompanied the territory of getting older and school work. The meals they made together often tasted more delicious than expected and fed an entire army for a week or about three days at the brother’s apartment. The culinary successes created a surprising amount of interest from others and Luffy got the idea in his head that people needed to know how to make meals on a budget so they weren’t stuck with boring food like bread sandwiches for dinner.
He began his videos with help from his many friends, having them on as guests and asking them to help edit his videos. Granted, his friends mostly assisted him by handing him the gathered ingredients and making sure there weren’t too many awful jokes. Gaining a good follower base took Luffy a few months to build up on YouTube. Nami eventually devised a plan to fully integrate Luffy’s social media togher. Soon he started to gain more followers on other social media sites like Instagram and Tik Tok, which showed off the finished product and linked back to his original videos.
And he thanked her every day, in his head at least.
“Ballin’ on a Budget,” his most popular series on the channel showed Luffy getting drunk and teaching people how to both shop for a family of five and prepare a week’s worth of food that wouldn’t go bad in a few days. Considering the most common and cheapest ingredients selected for the budging individual, the main goal of the meals he created for this segment largely depended on two things: dressing up the food in different ways and creating a large flavor palate so families don’t feel a repetition of tastes.
The most popular episodes by far contained the chef, Luffy, ranting and raving about how Trafalgar D. Water Law, a famous actor that Luffy adored, should be labeled a menace to society with how hot and distracting that man could be. Luffy found it extremely difficult to articulate in full sentences just how incredibly attractive he found this man. Yet this challenge often did not stop him from ranting. “No! You don’t- You DO NOT UNDERSTAND!” He yelled with snickers from his current guest and friend, Ussop, who had gotten him on the topic on purpose. “His hair looks so sooooooooooft and – and he looks like he could snap me in half. IN HALF I SAY!” He loudly announced to the audience without a hint of shame. “Fuck. I wanna be snapped in half. Is it the tattoos? Probably… Yeah, definitely, but also… His face. And the buff arms? I wanna squeeeeeeeeze.” This part, of course, came while Luffy juiced a lemon. It all fit quite perfectly with the timing and his friends on set died laughing.
“Ballin’ on a Budget” became the honest to goodness YouTube playlist that lured in enough subscribers to allow Luffy to get paid for his videos. This monetary and visible success definitely made Luffy feel better about the direction of his life and relieved some stress from his mind. With funding from YouTube, Luffy started pushing out more videos. He learned to edit as well so his friends didn’t do so much for him. Their help became optional instead of required. But not only his personal friends tried to help. Denizens of the internet started sending him things that they thought he needed or should try and Luffy always thanked everyone for everything that he received. The packages usually held some fan-made stuff or different kinds of instant noodles. A favorite gift happened to be a tumbler, specially made with an image of Trafalgar Law on it, which promptly became a staple in the kitchen shows, never leaving Luffy’s side. He jokingly referred to the drink holder as his boyfriend and would hug it for good luck.
Fans, being what they are, began trying to link or tag the famous actor in the videos that included the rants or the absolutely adorable drunken Luffy in general. Luffy’s audience became absolutely determined to get him in contact with his favorite actor one way or another. Their attempts seemed to be useless, though they wouldn’t know it.
Law never personally checked his social media and didn’t even want to have any accounts to begin with. Cora, Law’s agent, insisted that a social media presence would be a great idea so his fans could interact with him, even if it happened to be a pseudo interaction. They hired two of Law’s old friends to run his social media, Sachi and Penguin. They duo crashed at Law’s house most of the time anyway, so they might as well be paid to do something while also getting the chance to hang out with their friend more often. They succeeded at their job, mostly because they snuck high quality pictures of Law to post from behind the scenes at different TV shows and movies that he worked on. With Law’s acting career based off of a few medical dramas, pop culture ended up calling him Dr. Heartstealer and so, his social media accounts followed suit. Sachi and Penguin made sure at least some fans got responses as did some of his fellow actors to make it seem as if Law found such interactions interesting. Occasionally, the duo suggested posts and videos for Law to enjoy or give an opinion on.
It happened to be one of those lounge about lazy days that Sachi and Penguin finally caught sight of a largely popular of Luffy’s videos, thanks to the incredibly determined and dedicated fans Luffy had gathered. Sachi and Penguin thought it would be a riot to see someone ranting about their dear friend and kind of hoped the video contained a roast of sorts, so they put the clip up on the big screen while Law fiddled around in the kitchen for something that one might generously call a meal. Law couldn’t be bothered to do anything on his day off that would take up too much energy. His friend’s rioting laughter caught his attention and made him look toward the video playing on the giant screen. He made his way into the room and glanced at the two before his eyes flicked to the screen again. “What are you two watching now?” He asked, already sounding exasperated, as if they sucked away any and all energy he had been trying to conserve. He peaked back to the screen as Sachi took charge of explaining through a barrage of giggles while Penguin at his side could barely manage to breathe right.
“This.. This guy! H.. He loves you so much it’s hilarious!” He declared before falling back into the couch due to his giggle fit. “It’s really adorable though! He makes cooking videos to teach people how to eat decently on a tight budget and he just adores you.” Sachi could not stop laughing long enough to even notice Law walking away from the main room with his bowl of cereal. “Hey wait! Come on and watch it with us! It’s cute!’ He called out before a door was slammed and left the duo to laugh and watch the remainder of the show on their own.
“Fucking idiots.” Law sighed and shook his head, shambling over to his bed to eat his light meal and flip on something that had nothing to do with what he’d seen on the television. The guy on the screen appeared pretty cute at first glance, sure. But Law felt like the man reached through the TV to suck the energy from Law’s limited supply. The actor already endured Sachi and Penguin on his day off. He knew that even watching such an animated person would have him feel like he needed another nap. He just needed to relax with his puppy, Bepo, who gave him all the positive love he’d ever need. Law didn’t take long to finish his meager meal of cereal, the lowest energy thing he could make, and curl up on his bed with the all white, very fluffy, and most importantly easy-going Samoyed puppy. “They like to tease too much.” He sighed and complained to his sweet Bepo, who licked his nose and caused a smile to form on his face. “You get me, Bepo. You’re a good boy.” Being cuddled up like this caused Law to begin to fall asleep for his next nap. He would take Bepo for a walk after he woke up to thank him for listening so well.