Fic: Sunglasses, Chapter 4
Title: Sunglasses
Overall Rating: Worksafe, if nothing else. So far there's a bit of swearing from Garp but nothing really naughty.
Word Count: Looooong.
Pairing: CobyMeppo <3
Summary: When Coby is promoted ahead of Helmeppo in the Navy, Helmeppo's reaction is strong to say the least. Is it envy...or something more?
Notes: Took too long to produce and not much happens plot-wise. I'm not happy with it. But I really wanted to push on with this after leaving it suspended for six months. ^^; I apologise.
Helmeppo had waited for Coby’s next visit with an almost painful anticipation. Not because seeing the little twerp brought any sparkling glimmers of glee into his heart, of course not. He was just something to break up the monotony of the week, another ear into which he could talk, the saucer upon which the mighty teacup rests, so to speak. He didn’t merit a coded mark on the calendar nor any impatient watch-tapping, of course not… Nevertheless when the planned day came, Helmeppo couldn’t deny that his eyes were constantly glued to the clock, so much so that the drill sergeant kindly offered to mount them up there for him. He rushed through the exercises that day with his heart raging away the entire afternoon. His stomach didn’t get off lightly either. His evening meal went down virtually whole, the resulting heartburn suppressed by a handful of chalk tablets. Eventually when the sun shuffled away behind the horizon and the sharp yell for lights out resounded down the corridor, Helmeppo was finally allowed to admit to himself that he was indeed very much awaiting Coby’s arrival. Sat in the dark under the covers with his knees pulled up to his chin, a stray smile had stretched itself across his face. How lucky Coby was to see him again!
Coby clearly didn’t know it though, the ungrateful little swine. He kept Helmeppo waiting for several long hours during which he rediscovered the underrated joy of harvesting the fluff off his socks and squashed a pair of bluebottles noisily engaged in an indecent act on the windowsill. (“Just because I’m not having any fun, doesn’t mean they can!”)
It had just reached about 2 am and Helmeppo was seriously considering sleep when finally a beam of light sprang forth from an open door and Coby stepped quietly inside.
“Helmeppo-san?”
Helmeppo sprang out of bed and was at the light switch faster than Bellamy the Hyena on some serious recreational drugs.
“Where the hell have you been?” hissed the blonde, straining to control the volume of his voice.
“Sorry,” muttered Coby, pulling off his balaclava as slowly as if it were made of lead. His hair lay flat and unwashed, his eyes ringed with the tell-tale signs of sleep deprivation. He walked over to Helmeppo’s bed and dropped himself on to it. His usual strength of posture was gone and he sat with his shoulders hunched forward as if two giant invisible hands were thrust upon them. Feeling his companion’s gaze upon him, he made an effort to sit up straight.
“Sorry,” he repeated, “I’ve just had a lot to do these past few days, paperwork and all. I couldn’t leave tonight until it was all finished; everything had to be wound up by tonight.”
Helmeppo sat himself down next to Coby with his entire body turned to his direction. Coby’s lacklustre appearance had stunned all the irritation in him and made him feel uneasy. Normally his friend was a chirpy, argumentative little sparrow with a pleasant demeanour and an extreme passion for apologising but in front of him now was a despondent sack of flour with a slight whiff of BO. He tried to question Coby further about the paperwork but Coby pressed a resolute smile on to his face and quickly changed the subject.
“Paperwork’s pretty boring - though you’ll have to do it all the same when you get to my rank - so why don’t you tell me how the midshipman’s training is going?”
At any other time Helmeppo would have Olympic high-jumped at any invitation Coby gave him to talk about himself, his number one all-time favourite subject. But as he began to describe the immense tedium of learning how to tie rope knots, he could see that Coby’s mind had wandered aimlessly away from him. Instead he sat and stared, past the bony hands that were clasped in his lap, directly into the floor. He was nodding off.
“Coby?” Coby yanked his head up almost violently.
“Hmm? Yes, Helmeppo-san?”
“What was I talking about just then?”
“You were…well…” faltered Coby.
“I was telling you about the day that I saw Vice Admiral Garp tap-dancing on his ship’s figurehead in nothing but a pair of snap-tacular underpants,” said Helmeppo, perfectly dead-pan. Dead-pan was not something that Helmeppo could express often due to him being in possession of a slightly dorky, easily excitable personality but when he got it just right, he felt that it was an achievement, a triumph to be celebrated by all those lucky to have beheld it.
“Oh, I see,” said Coby. His eyes were drifting back to the floor again.
“Coby, you’re not even listening to me!” snapped Helmeppo, “In fact you can’t even keep your damn eyes open.”
“Sorry, Helmeppo-san. I am a bit tired but I can stay awake,” said Coby after a cavernous yawn.
“Never mind, you’re obviously in no mood to talk. Ahh, I know…” - a slight glint of mischief had emerged in the midshipman’s eyes and could clearly be seen doing a merry little dance in there - “…this’ll wake you up! How about an arm-wrestling match? We haven’t done that in ages.”
“Yeah,” agreed Coby half-heartedly and allowed Helmeppo to haul him up by the wrist and slap his arm down on to the bedside cabinet that had separated their two beds when Coby had still been a midshipman. The arm-wrestling lasted out for only one match though. Helmeppo felt like he was battling with a damp scarf. An entire week’s laundry could have given more of an impassioned fight than the one he got from Coby, especially his socks which were well-renowned in the midshipman’s brigade for rendering comrades near unconscious after a particularly long march. So he then tried telling Coby all the least politically incorrect pun-related jokes that he knew. Coby bearly cracked a smile once.
“Come on Coby!” whined the blonde, “Since when did you become such a bore? I know you’ve had a lot of work but it’s over now, leave it behind, play a little! And it can’t have been that been that bad - was it?”
Coby ignored the prompt to talk and insisted that it wasn’t.
“Well then what the hell is it?” said Helmeppo angrily, suddenly inflamed, “I feel like I’ve been conversing with a corpse since you got here, you look like something dragged out of the bottom of an Alabastan tomb!”
At that moment, Helmeppo swore that he saw Coby visibly twitch. Perhaps it was even a full-blown flinch. But, like the swollen river that had burst its dams, now he’d started a rant there was no way he was going to stop.
“I’ve waited all week to see you and this is what I get - a complete dishrag? Some friend you are to me!”
A huge, trench-like frown sunk into the Petty Officer’s forehead and somehow he found the energy to jump to his feet. He was visibly shaking with some kind of suppressed rage, real unbridled rage, not the hyperactive bouts of leaping to his feet and shaking alternate fists that tended to constitute Coby irritation. Either way, Helmeppo knew that trouble was on the way. Whether angry or annoyed with his contemporaries, Coby was one of those types who maintain constant, unwavering eye contact and right now his eyes rested firmly on Helmeppo.
“Don’t you dare give me that rubbish Helmeppo-san!” he cried, aiming a finger at the midshipman’s face, “Not only did I keep my promise to come and see you but I came after working my socks off until they walked around the room by themselves! Helmeppo-san, it is nearly three in the morning, what do you want me to do? Balance books on my head and sing the Navy’s Official Anthem? Leg-wrestle you? I am not a court jester, Helmeppo-san, and after a hard day’s work such things lose their appeal. Not that you’d know that though.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” retorted Helmeppo. “And since when do you have to carry the burden of the entire navy on your shoulders? You’re a Petty Officer not Fleet Admiral!”
“Try doing some work once in a while, you too might even get promoted!” spat Coby, now equally ignited.
“Don’t you think I’m trying?” Helmeppo yelled then remembered that the walls were only so thick and wrestled down the tone. Waking up an entire building of habitual dawn risers in the middle of the night could only end in regimental bloodshed and in doing so, thanks to the set of sweaty socks incidents, he would be pushing his delicate luck quite swiftly over a high cliff.
“Coby that was low. Really, really low for you. What the hell has gotten into you? Are you really that stressed?”
“Yes I damn well am!” snapped Coby and clapped a hand to his mouth, surprised by the magnitude of his own voice. He turned away from Helmeppo and glared at his old bed instead, almost hard enough to burn a hole into it.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he muttered, “You’re not the one who’s going away.”
Helmeppo’s mouth gaped a bit and nearly dropped wide open like a goldfish. It was one of those dread sentences that renders all of the mind’s trivial little voices completely and utterly silent.
“Say that again,” he said after an awkward pause.
Coby refused to turn around but quietly said, “I’m going away. Away from the base. And I don’t know how long for.”
“Why?” said Helmeppo sharply, spitting the word out like a grape seed.
“It’s an exercise. You know all the stuff that’s been happening in Alabaster at the moment?” Coby wasn’t the slightest bit surprised when Helmeppo replied in the negative. “Well, as you should know, the Navy overthrew the tyrannical Shichibukai Sir Crocodile who had been causing drought in the area, and averted a civil war. Vice Admiral Garp has some investigative work he wants to do out there and he thought it would be good experience for me if I went along with his crew. We’ll return back here once we’re through.”
There was a brooding pause from Helmeppo. Coby wasn’t sure what kind of response he expected to receive at the other side of it. Shock - definitely not. Marines could be shipped away to the other side of Grand Line without the slightest bit of notice or explanation; it was all in their contract (not that Helmeppo would have bothered to read his, of course). Questions - perhaps. But at least something with a higher level of interest than the one he got from Helmeppo:
“What “investigative work” does Garp want to do? Seek out a brand new supplier for his doughnut eating marathons? I don’t know why you’re so stressed about it if you’re going to be coming back here.”
The petulant voice. The cold stare of resentment. Coby had seen this Helmeppo before nearly two months ago, just before his promotion to Petty Officer and it frustrated him to realise that nothing had changed since. Why could he just not be happy for him? Was he really that jealous? Coby spun round and fixed his glare upon the Midshipman once more.
“Well thanks a lot, Helmeppo-san, thanks for the sympathy. I don’t know why I even bothered coming here tonight…”
“There’s the door then,” said Helmeppo entirely without any trace of emotion, not even sarcasm. Coby emitted a growl of frustration, somewhere in pitch between a rodent and a small dog, and strode over to the door before firing his parting shot:
“You know Helmeppo, if this is your view of Regimental Responsibility then consider me out of the regiment.”
Shortly afterwards Helmeppo crawled into bed and made a half-hearted attempt at sleep, though it was neither the argument nor the volume of uncharacteristic spite that had come from Coby that kept him awake. He hadn’t even asked Coby how long he would be away for.
Back to Chapter 3
Overall Rating: Worksafe, if nothing else. So far there's a bit of swearing from Garp but nothing really naughty.
Word Count: Looooong.
Pairing: CobyMeppo <3
Summary: When Coby is promoted ahead of Helmeppo in the Navy, Helmeppo's reaction is strong to say the least. Is it envy...or something more?
Notes: Took too long to produce and not much happens plot-wise. I'm not happy with it. But I really wanted to push on with this after leaving it suspended for six months. ^^; I apologise.
Helmeppo had waited for Coby’s next visit with an almost painful anticipation. Not because seeing the little twerp brought any sparkling glimmers of glee into his heart, of course not. He was just something to break up the monotony of the week, another ear into which he could talk, the saucer upon which the mighty teacup rests, so to speak. He didn’t merit a coded mark on the calendar nor any impatient watch-tapping, of course not… Nevertheless when the planned day came, Helmeppo couldn’t deny that his eyes were constantly glued to the clock, so much so that the drill sergeant kindly offered to mount them up there for him. He rushed through the exercises that day with his heart raging away the entire afternoon. His stomach didn’t get off lightly either. His evening meal went down virtually whole, the resulting heartburn suppressed by a handful of chalk tablets. Eventually when the sun shuffled away behind the horizon and the sharp yell for lights out resounded down the corridor, Helmeppo was finally allowed to admit to himself that he was indeed very much awaiting Coby’s arrival. Sat in the dark under the covers with his knees pulled up to his chin, a stray smile had stretched itself across his face. How lucky Coby was to see him again!
Coby clearly didn’t know it though, the ungrateful little swine. He kept Helmeppo waiting for several long hours during which he rediscovered the underrated joy of harvesting the fluff off his socks and squashed a pair of bluebottles noisily engaged in an indecent act on the windowsill. (“Just because I’m not having any fun, doesn’t mean they can!”)
It had just reached about 2 am and Helmeppo was seriously considering sleep when finally a beam of light sprang forth from an open door and Coby stepped quietly inside.
“Helmeppo-san?”
Helmeppo sprang out of bed and was at the light switch faster than Bellamy the Hyena on some serious recreational drugs.
“Where the hell have you been?” hissed the blonde, straining to control the volume of his voice.
“Sorry,” muttered Coby, pulling off his balaclava as slowly as if it were made of lead. His hair lay flat and unwashed, his eyes ringed with the tell-tale signs of sleep deprivation. He walked over to Helmeppo’s bed and dropped himself on to it. His usual strength of posture was gone and he sat with his shoulders hunched forward as if two giant invisible hands were thrust upon them. Feeling his companion’s gaze upon him, he made an effort to sit up straight.
“Sorry,” he repeated, “I’ve just had a lot to do these past few days, paperwork and all. I couldn’t leave tonight until it was all finished; everything had to be wound up by tonight.”
Helmeppo sat himself down next to Coby with his entire body turned to his direction. Coby’s lacklustre appearance had stunned all the irritation in him and made him feel uneasy. Normally his friend was a chirpy, argumentative little sparrow with a pleasant demeanour and an extreme passion for apologising but in front of him now was a despondent sack of flour with a slight whiff of BO. He tried to question Coby further about the paperwork but Coby pressed a resolute smile on to his face and quickly changed the subject.
“Paperwork’s pretty boring - though you’ll have to do it all the same when you get to my rank - so why don’t you tell me how the midshipman’s training is going?”
At any other time Helmeppo would have Olympic high-jumped at any invitation Coby gave him to talk about himself, his number one all-time favourite subject. But as he began to describe the immense tedium of learning how to tie rope knots, he could see that Coby’s mind had wandered aimlessly away from him. Instead he sat and stared, past the bony hands that were clasped in his lap, directly into the floor. He was nodding off.
“Coby?” Coby yanked his head up almost violently.
“Hmm? Yes, Helmeppo-san?”
“What was I talking about just then?”
“You were…well…” faltered Coby.
“I was telling you about the day that I saw Vice Admiral Garp tap-dancing on his ship’s figurehead in nothing but a pair of snap-tacular underpants,” said Helmeppo, perfectly dead-pan. Dead-pan was not something that Helmeppo could express often due to him being in possession of a slightly dorky, easily excitable personality but when he got it just right, he felt that it was an achievement, a triumph to be celebrated by all those lucky to have beheld it.
“Oh, I see,” said Coby. His eyes were drifting back to the floor again.
“Coby, you’re not even listening to me!” snapped Helmeppo, “In fact you can’t even keep your damn eyes open.”
“Sorry, Helmeppo-san. I am a bit tired but I can stay awake,” said Coby after a cavernous yawn.
“Never mind, you’re obviously in no mood to talk. Ahh, I know…” - a slight glint of mischief had emerged in the midshipman’s eyes and could clearly be seen doing a merry little dance in there - “…this’ll wake you up! How about an arm-wrestling match? We haven’t done that in ages.”
“Yeah,” agreed Coby half-heartedly and allowed Helmeppo to haul him up by the wrist and slap his arm down on to the bedside cabinet that had separated their two beds when Coby had still been a midshipman. The arm-wrestling lasted out for only one match though. Helmeppo felt like he was battling with a damp scarf. An entire week’s laundry could have given more of an impassioned fight than the one he got from Coby, especially his socks which were well-renowned in the midshipman’s brigade for rendering comrades near unconscious after a particularly long march. So he then tried telling Coby all the least politically incorrect pun-related jokes that he knew. Coby bearly cracked a smile once.
“Come on Coby!” whined the blonde, “Since when did you become such a bore? I know you’ve had a lot of work but it’s over now, leave it behind, play a little! And it can’t have been that been that bad - was it?”
Coby ignored the prompt to talk and insisted that it wasn’t.
“Well then what the hell is it?” said Helmeppo angrily, suddenly inflamed, “I feel like I’ve been conversing with a corpse since you got here, you look like something dragged out of the bottom of an Alabastan tomb!”
At that moment, Helmeppo swore that he saw Coby visibly twitch. Perhaps it was even a full-blown flinch. But, like the swollen river that had burst its dams, now he’d started a rant there was no way he was going to stop.
“I’ve waited all week to see you and this is what I get - a complete dishrag? Some friend you are to me!”
A huge, trench-like frown sunk into the Petty Officer’s forehead and somehow he found the energy to jump to his feet. He was visibly shaking with some kind of suppressed rage, real unbridled rage, not the hyperactive bouts of leaping to his feet and shaking alternate fists that tended to constitute Coby irritation. Either way, Helmeppo knew that trouble was on the way. Whether angry or annoyed with his contemporaries, Coby was one of those types who maintain constant, unwavering eye contact and right now his eyes rested firmly on Helmeppo.
“Don’t you dare give me that rubbish Helmeppo-san!” he cried, aiming a finger at the midshipman’s face, “Not only did I keep my promise to come and see you but I came after working my socks off until they walked around the room by themselves! Helmeppo-san, it is nearly three in the morning, what do you want me to do? Balance books on my head and sing the Navy’s Official Anthem? Leg-wrestle you? I am not a court jester, Helmeppo-san, and after a hard day’s work such things lose their appeal. Not that you’d know that though.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” retorted Helmeppo. “And since when do you have to carry the burden of the entire navy on your shoulders? You’re a Petty Officer not Fleet Admiral!”
“Try doing some work once in a while, you too might even get promoted!” spat Coby, now equally ignited.
“Don’t you think I’m trying?” Helmeppo yelled then remembered that the walls were only so thick and wrestled down the tone. Waking up an entire building of habitual dawn risers in the middle of the night could only end in regimental bloodshed and in doing so, thanks to the set of sweaty socks incidents, he would be pushing his delicate luck quite swiftly over a high cliff.
“Coby that was low. Really, really low for you. What the hell has gotten into you? Are you really that stressed?”
“Yes I damn well am!” snapped Coby and clapped a hand to his mouth, surprised by the magnitude of his own voice. He turned away from Helmeppo and glared at his old bed instead, almost hard enough to burn a hole into it.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he muttered, “You’re not the one who’s going away.”
Helmeppo’s mouth gaped a bit and nearly dropped wide open like a goldfish. It was one of those dread sentences that renders all of the mind’s trivial little voices completely and utterly silent.
“Say that again,” he said after an awkward pause.
Coby refused to turn around but quietly said, “I’m going away. Away from the base. And I don’t know how long for.”
“Why?” said Helmeppo sharply, spitting the word out like a grape seed.
“It’s an exercise. You know all the stuff that’s been happening in Alabaster at the moment?” Coby wasn’t the slightest bit surprised when Helmeppo replied in the negative. “Well, as you should know, the Navy overthrew the tyrannical Shichibukai Sir Crocodile who had been causing drought in the area, and averted a civil war. Vice Admiral Garp has some investigative work he wants to do out there and he thought it would be good experience for me if I went along with his crew. We’ll return back here once we’re through.”
There was a brooding pause from Helmeppo. Coby wasn’t sure what kind of response he expected to receive at the other side of it. Shock - definitely not. Marines could be shipped away to the other side of Grand Line without the slightest bit of notice or explanation; it was all in their contract (not that Helmeppo would have bothered to read his, of course). Questions - perhaps. But at least something with a higher level of interest than the one he got from Helmeppo:
“What “investigative work” does Garp want to do? Seek out a brand new supplier for his doughnut eating marathons? I don’t know why you’re so stressed about it if you’re going to be coming back here.”
The petulant voice. The cold stare of resentment. Coby had seen this Helmeppo before nearly two months ago, just before his promotion to Petty Officer and it frustrated him to realise that nothing had changed since. Why could he just not be happy for him? Was he really that jealous? Coby spun round and fixed his glare upon the Midshipman once more.
“Well thanks a lot, Helmeppo-san, thanks for the sympathy. I don’t know why I even bothered coming here tonight…”
“There’s the door then,” said Helmeppo entirely without any trace of emotion, not even sarcasm. Coby emitted a growl of frustration, somewhere in pitch between a rodent and a small dog, and strode over to the door before firing his parting shot:
“You know Helmeppo, if this is your view of Regimental Responsibility then consider me out of the regiment.”
Shortly afterwards Helmeppo crawled into bed and made a half-hearted attempt at sleep, though it was neither the argument nor the volume of uncharacteristic spite that had come from Coby that kept him awake. He hadn’t even asked Coby how long he would be away for.
Back to Chapter 3