Chapter Text
Monkey D. Luffy was only six years old when his grandfather, his only legal guardian and known family, was arrested for child abuse, endangerment, and neglect. Those charges were seen as enough for the Navy to erase all connections he had with Monkey D. Garp; they used the excuse of not wanting the young boy to be in the spotlight due to his grandfather’s high rank. He would never see it as such, though others who were brave - or just stupid - and knew of his situation would try to explain that things would have been worse for him had they not gone to such measures.
As a child left nearly alone, he called bullshit.
Now, a wild and uncomfortably independent seven-and-a-half (he never lets anyone miss the half, continuously correcting anyone who dares to say he is only seven ) year old, Luffy is known as the “unruly orphan Makino is stuck with.”
Despite what that sounds like, Makino has never once complained about being Luffy’s halfway guardian. If anything, she genuinely enjoys taking care of him when he lets her, and she views him as a little brother - not son, considering she’s only twenty-five and in no way ready to even think about children of her own - who is liable to give her gray hairs if he doesn’t stop getting into trouble. Nevertheless, the bar owner loves him, and has punched one too many drunk patrons for telling her to just dump him at some group home.
Luffy hasn’t learned of that particular event as far as she knows, since he hasn’t clung to her and offered to help with everything as he usually would when he finds out she defended him in one way or another. And she would always defend him, even when she loses the business of men who believe he would be better left in an environment away from the one his grandfather had been raised in, even when women shoo their children away from him in fear that he has some contagious disease just because he was abused and abandoned, even when her own friends distanced themselves from her just because she was the one to take care of the boy. He didn’t know about all the things that have happened because of others’ opinions, but he knew some, and he always felt the need to try to repay her despite her protests.
While he often spent his afternoons out galavanting the forests that sat behind the seaside town, he always showed up at the bar (a little apartment sat above the bar itself that Makino called home, and as many times as she offered to let him stay the night, he very rarely did) between seven and eight in the mornings to tell her good morning and reluctantly accept breakfast and he would always show up between six and seven in the evening for a dinner that he’d eat in his seat at the end of the bar. It was their routine, and in the years they’d known each other, that’s how it had always been; even before Garp’s arrest, the two had been each other’s company more often than not in the evenings, as she always tried to give the roughed up and grumpy child something to eat before he had to head home. He was, what, four? Five? When he first began wandering the town, his grandfather often out tending to whatever business he had, so Makino found herself drawn to him. The troublemaker instinct, she’d joke, is what made her want to help him out, and it always made him laugh.
No one could say they didn’t love each other, at the very least, even if they feared what the young boy could turn into with age.
As the weather warmed and the days grew longer, Makino’s worries would always spike, because Luffy often lost track of when he was meant to show up, and she would either have to wait for him to come in on his own or find someone willing to check his usual haunts. At least this year, she had a child-tracker in mind, considering he was moving back to their little town.
x-x-x
Even after a year and a half primarily under his own and Makino’s care, Luffy is still getting used to the whole. . . normal childhood thing. The whole “don’t have to watch movements to anticipate punches” thing. The whole “getting food if he asks and not having to make it himself or earn it” thing.
To be fair, calling what he’s living a normal childhood would probably warrant concern from the parents who keep their kids from interacting with him. Yes, he knows about them. They never bother to try to be kind with their words when he’s within earshot, and he can’t do anything except pretend that it doesn’t hurt for them to only see his gramps instead of him. It certainly didn’t help that he shared so much with his gramps - his eating behaviors, his protective and sometimes aggressive nature, and his looks just for starters.
He has more traits that differ from him, in his very unbiased opinion. He’s not as mean, he doesn’t go around hitting anyone the way gramps would whack him, he isn’t afraid to cry (now that’s something Makino had to teach him was okay, and that he wasn’t a weakling to express himself like that) in front of anyone, and he absolutely, positively refuses to trust or like anyone in the military or law enforcement or anything . Makino learned that for herself when she tried taking him shopping in one of the bigger stores and he bit a security guard who thought he was trying to steal. Afterwards, she found it a little funny, but at the time she had been apologizing to the poor man who had a perfect print of Luffy’s mouth on his hand.
That was another thing Makino was trying to teach him: biting people isn’t a safe way to defend yourself. He didn’t quite get how he could get sick from other people’s skin or their blood, but he reluctantly agreed. They never tasted good anyway.
He finds it weird how Makino has taken time to teach him stuff; gramps never bothered to teach him anything, and so far he’s avoided going to school under the excuse of online classes. He’s sure that’ll change as soon as Makino finds out and can figure out a way to enroll him, but for now, he’s enjoying learning the little things she teaches him herself. Like how kissing his scrapes make them feel better (they don’t, but he isn’t going to tell her and make her feel stupid for it! He isn't Garp !) and how you’re supposed to clean the bleeding ones with alcohol that isn’t the drinking kind. She’s taught him that apparently Poptarts aren’t an acceptable dinner, but he still argued with her on it. She taught him how to be careful when sewing up holes in his clothes, and how to take pictures on her phone, and how to write in cursive even if he has a lot of trouble with spelling.
But even though she’s taught him all that, and has tried to teach him how to sleep indoors again, he just doesn’t like how confined he feels after so many nights sleeping in trees or on particularly soft patches of moss. He’s incredibly proud of his immune system for not letting him get sick in the time he’s slept under the stars, and he’s incredibly proud of himself when he can tell when the weather’s going to be too cold to not steal Makino’s couch.
So that’s why he’s found stretching from his perch within the tree he usually claims in the summer, sunlight dappling his skin and clothing that he should probably ask Makino to wash for him later. Sluggishly noting that it looks like it's later than he usually wakes up, he scrounges around in his poorly patched backpack until he finds a baggie holding a couple cookies that he’d stashed there a few days back. Eating his morning snack, he worked at waking up properly, listening to the forest around him calmly.
Well, calmly until he caught the tell-tale sound of unfamiliar footsteps heading his way. Suddenly more awake, he shoved the second cookie into his mouth and devoured it in record time, crouching and looking down at the forest floor like a predator preparing to pounce, complete with the animalistic snarl he learned from the feral dogs that liked to wander into what used to be his gramps’ back yard. Watching closely, carefully, he leaned over his branch until he caught sight of red hair and tanned skin. Waiting, waiting until he was underneath, and then –
He slipped.
“ Shit -!” He yelled, getting a startled echo from the man beneath him as he fell directly onto his shoulders. Luffy scrambled to get a grip and not fall onto the ground, but when he felt hands grabbing at him, he latched his teeth onto the closest thing he could, which just so happened to be the stranger’s ear.
“ Oh, what the hell! ” Red-hair shrieked, jumping around like a trapped animal, finally succeeding in shaking Luffy off after a few moments. With a soft oof and worryingly fast recovery time, Luffy was in a crouch and meeting the older man’s gaze without fear.