Chapter Text
There wasn’t much left in the world that could surprise him after spending half a decade in veterinary medicine. Law’s clinic was still small, rather new to the area, and so he spent most of his days performing routine physicals and doling out vaccines. The most interesting cases he handled were usually from pet owners who had no business taking care of any living thing. People, he eventually came to realize, were idiots.
He’d poured his life savings into opening his own clinic. It was the physical manifestation of years of hard work, sleepless nights, and picking up non stop shifts at shitty jobs. He had a small and trustworthy staff filled with talented individuals. The clinic was his whole world. Perhaps that was why he had become so disillusioned with the field of veterinary medicine. He was approaching his 30s, sacrificed so much, achieved everything he’d ever wanted, yet there was a clear divide between himself and his peers.
But Law liked animals more than people. That was true for most veterinarians. Unfortunately, the sentiment was rarely shared amongst the general public. He had sent far too many animals back home to people that didn’t deserve them. He was shaving matted doodles every day of the week just for their owners to spit in his face. That sort of shit breaks you after a while.
So when it’s five minutes to closing and the door is swinging open in a cacophony of bell chimes, he expects to be greeted with another angry client bitching about their billing statements. Instead, there’s a young man, standing in the doorway, clutching onto a small bundle of towels. He’s pale with panic and messy black hair tucked wildly under his beanie.
“Can you please help this cat?” the young man pleads with ragged breaths, as if the air in his lungs has frozen from the bitter winter.
They’re not a walk-in clinic, he reminds himself. He has every right to lock the doors and send the kid off to the emergency vet clinic in the next city over. It’s been a long day filled with aggressive dogs and even more aggressive owners. He has every right to go home… but the concern in the young man’s wide eyes is palpable. He sets his damn coat down with a sigh and unwraps his scarf anyways. With a less than enthusiastic tone, he ushers the panicked patient into the nearest exam room.
Law politely introduces himself as “Dr. Trafalgar” and the kid absolutely butchers the pronunciation as he lays the swaddle of cloth down. He sets about washing his hands in preparation, sliding on a pair of black vinyl gloves. After catching his breath, the young man introduces himself as Luffy. He’s standing over the cold metal exam table, fretting over the loose towels, gently patting the little lump with nonsensical words of reassurance.
“So can you explain what happened?”
“Well, I’ve been feeding this stray cat for about a week now. It comes to my door every night,” Luffy explains shakily. “I thought it would trust me enough to bring it inside. It’s super cold, y’know, but the moment I grabbed it, it just collapsed and-“
He’s still talking, but Law is only half listening now. He sees that the kid’s heart was in the right place, but he’s too exhausted to get invested. It’s his job to diagnose and treat the problem, and he absorbs only the information he needs: stray cat, cold, collapsed. He unwraps the bundle while Luffy’s voice drones on. Law peels back the first layer of towels. Buried inside is a small heap of coarse gray and white fur and-
“You… you’re joking, right?”
Law can feel the bags under his eyes grow a shade darker. He stares at the little creature for what feels like an eternity, then back at the doe-eyed man standing by his side; concern practically dripping off of him, clutching the side of the table with white knuckles. The diagnosis is simple.
“…This is not a cat.”
Wrapped in threadbare towels and terry cloth is not anything even remotely feline, but a juvenile opossum, feigning death. Its beady black eyes are wide, little pink tongue lolling out of its mouth. He gives it a quick nudge and confirms that, yes, it is indeed alive.
“It’s an opossum. It’s playing dead,” he explains. “It’ll wake up eventually. Just… go put it back where you found it.”
Law expects the young man to feel embarrassed, expects him to have at least a tiny bit of shame for barging into a closing clinic with a goddamn opossum of all things. He’s met a lot of idiots in his time at the clinic, but this kid is currently topping the charts. Luffy gently scoops the scruffy marsupial up into his hands, shoulders trembling as he presses its little body into his red coat. Then his whole body shakes and the room is full of laughter.
“Pfft! Thank god! I thought it was just a really ugly cat,” Luffy howls, tears pricking his eyes as he throws his head back in laughter. He’s stroking the back of the creature’s head lovingly, as if it’s a docile kitten instead of a wild animal.
It’s been a long day and Law is simply exhausted. By all means, he should be annoyed. He should be… but he can’t take his eyes off of the idiot with the possum. The relief, like liquid sunshine, rolling off of him is positively contagious, and even the stoic vet’s lips betray him. He smiles. Then his voice, the traitorous thing, joins in too. It’s nothing more than a chuckle at best, but he’s still surprised at the sound of his own laughter. After a long day of ungrateful pet owners, at least this kid cared.
“What do I owe you?” Luffy asks, breathless with laughter. The ragged little thing has been wrapped in the old towels once more, now pressed limply against Luffy’s grinning cheeks.
“Don’t worry about it,” Law snorts, waving his hand in dismissal. “Just… brush up on your animals. Okay?”
The laughter slowly fizzles out as he leads the eccentric young man out front and locks up behind him. As Law watches him sidle into his old red sedan, Luffy flashes him one last smile, bright enough to outshine the half-moon hanging low in the cold winter sky. It catches him off guard, and Law can’t help but crack a smile back. His employees, Shachi and Penguin, are wearing shit-eating grins behind him as they lean over the reception counter. He shoots them a warning glare, but its effectiveness is dulled by the rosy tint on his cheeks.
“Shut up,” he hisses as he pulls on his coat. “Go home already.”
The idiot with the possum remains the talk of the clinic for the next week, much to Law’s chagrin. Luffy gains a reputation as the mysterious ray of sunshine warm enough to melt the cold doctor. The teasing is relentless, only serving to chill his icy heart further. He’s in a piss-poor mood when he opens the door to his final appointment of the day. He never schedules clinic visits this late on Fridays. He makes a mental note to assign Shachi to kennel cleaning duties as revenge.
That is, until he sees the young man clutching onto a bundle of towels, standing over the exam table: Luffy, the idiot himself. Without the chaos of their previous meeting, Law actually gets a good look at him for the first time. His dark tousled hair is still tucked beneath his red beanie, with a few strands falling loose, framing his boyish face. He smiles up at the doctor with dark brown eyes, still impossibly bright, as if the world hasn’t had a chance to dull their sparkle quite yet.
“Another possum?” Law jests as he sidles up to the sink to snap on a pair of gloves.
“I’m positive it’s a cat this time,” Luffy chuckles. Somehow, even the cold clinic room stands no chance against the warmth that radiates out of him. He unwraps the bundle and-
Yes, this time it is a cat; though it’s in terrible shape. The kitten is small and gray, severely underweight and shivering. Patches of fur are missing from its pelt, exposing the scabbed pink skin beneath. Its tail, completely hairless, is bloody and mangled. Law doesn’t even know where to begin.
“It’s got a bad case of fleas… that’s what’s causing the fur loss. We can give it a medicated flea bath and start it out on a preventative regimen. The tail though…It’s going to need surgery,” he drawls, jotting down prescriptions and care instructions. He watches the tiny kitten melt under Luffy’s touch as he gives it a fond scratch behind the ears. “Where’d you find this one?”
“She was eating trash in an alley.”
He wonders if the man has any pets of his own, or just a penchant for strays… if the possum can even be counted as such. Most people would have left such a filthy kitten behind. He imagined another day or two in the snow would have certainly marked the end for the poor thing.
“Does it have a name?”
“Possum.”
Law sets his pen down and stares at the kitten. Luffy has the mangy little thing pressed into the crook of his neck now with its naked pink tail curled languidly against his collarbone. He recalls the filthy opossum from a week prior, and he can sort of see the resemblance. He exhales a soft snort.
“Possum,” Law repeats and Luffy only chuckles in reply. It's a softer sound than he’s accustomed to: sort of like shishishi, raspy and warm. He exhales a resigned sigh, the faintest of smiles tugging at his lips. “That’s a terrible name.”
“So, can you help her?”
“I can send you home with medication for the fleas, as well as something for its pain. The tail on the other hand… It needs to be amputated. Quickly. We could squeeze it in on Monday,” Law prattles on, pausing briefly as he prepares to breach the sensitive subject of payment. “It’s about $650, maybe more depending on anesthesia or complications. I can splint it for now to get it through the weekend. Do you want to schedule the surgery?”
This was the part where people tend to show their true colors, Law found. He had met plenty of well-to-do people who had denied life-saving medical treatment to their animals just because they had deemed it inconvenient. Some people even chose to jump straight to euthanasia, choosing to end a life rather than prolong it. He could only assume that Luffy was in his early 20s from his boyish face, and with that youth often came empty pockets. Luffy didn’t so much as flinch.
“When can I bring her in on Monday?” Luffy asks almost immediately, voice thick with profound relief.
Even the kindest of people would have immediately turned tail once they’d heard the cost of surgery. It was rarer still for someone to willingly pay up for a filthy alley cat. Maybe Law had got him all wrong. He doesn’t hold back his smile this time, just lets it spread across his lips, cheeks warming with fondness. At least one person in this world was still kindhearted.
After explaining the surgery process, Law directs Luffy to fill out paperwork with Shachi while he tends to the mangled tail. The kitten mewls pitifully as it watches the young man go, squirming under the doctor’s cold touch. Surely his fingers felt like ice on its bare skin. Luffy’s hands were probably warm, he reasons. He swaddles the kitten in cloth before handing him back. He waives the cost of the medications for the visit, the least he can do with the costly surgery upcoming. As the red sedan pulls off down the street, Law lingers by the window just a bit too long.
For the first time in years, he was looking forward to a Monday.
On Monday, it seems like the entire universe is hellbent on making him late. It succeeds. His dog pukes on his shag rug and he gets stuck in morning traffic. Law doesn’t even have a chance to pour himself a cup of coffee before he’s rushing into his first appointment. Penguin and Shachi are already doting over the little gray kitten when he arrives; its owner is nowhere in sight. He tries to hide his disappointment, tries to hide the fact that maybe he has warmed up a bit to the idiot with the possum (and a good heart.) Law instead blames his poor mood on the lack of caffeine.
Penguin prepares the kitten for surgery while he tends to the first few clients of the day: an overweight dachshund with allergies and quite possibly the meanest cat he has ever met in his life. He goes into the surgery with a couple of new scratches and a raging headache. Despite the morning’s rough start, the surgery is a relatively easy affair. The tail is amputated without a hitch. He leaves the vet techs to monitor the kitten and excuses himself just in time for his lunch break.
Law barely has his foot through the door when an entirely too cheerful voice splits through his aching skull.
“Torao!”
“Who?” He turns on his heels to see Luffy bounding towards him from across the parking lot, all bundled up in striking red wool. When he notices the little paper cup extended out to him in his gloved hand, Law’s caffeine-addled mind wonders if he could be an angel.
“I made it just in time,” Luffy pants. He presses the warm cup into Law’s cold hands, grinning up at him with cheeks red from the bitter wind. “Penguin said this is how you liked it.”
“Torao?” is all he Law can muster up, a bit dumbfounded, staring down at the messy black handwriting scrawled on the side of the cup. Dark roast. Extra hot. He takes a sip and the cold air has cooled it down significantly, enough for the sip to become a greedy gulp.
“Ah, sorry, sorry! Your name- Traffy- Torafal-“ Luffy stumbles over each syllable. “Torao works, right? It’s cute.”
“Okay, okay, don’t strain yourself,” Law breathes out a small snort, and he’s too grateful for the caffeine to protest further. He even decides to let the ‘cute’ comment slide. “… thank you. You didn’t have to do that. I’m sorry but the cat won’t be ready for a while. We need to monitor her for a-“
“It’s okay, I know!” Luffy interrupts. There’s little flecks of snow clinging to his dark lashes as he stares up at Law, looking a bit hopeful. Luffy cranes his neck to look up at him, considering their sizable height difference. “You didn’t let me pay you the other day. Yknow, for the possum. Can I take you to lunch?”
“I-“ Law opens his mouth, gaping like a fish, then closes it as he glances down at his watch. He shouldn’t… Really. His break only lasts for half an hour, and even without time constraints, fraternizing with a client was completely unprofessional. He would do best to avoid any friendships with-
“Law!”
The door swings open again behind him. Shachi is staring, eyes flicking between the doctor and his guest, and Law wants to wipe the smug smile clean off of his face. This bastard was scheming against him. He sees it in his eyes.
“Your 2’o’clock just canceled,” the traitor hums. “Why don’t you take a longer lunch?”
Luffy is practically glowing when he looks back at him and it stops his defeated sigh in its tracks. He swallows his complaints down, feels something warm flutter inside him instead. Between delivering clients bills or bad news, he can’t recall the last time someone had been truly happy to see him. Aside from his dog, that is. Shachi doesn’t even wait for him to answer, only turns their window sign to “out for lunch” and disappears back into the building. His fate had been decided for him.
“Okay,” Law breathes, takes another sip of coffee. “Where do you want to go?”
Luffy takes him to a quaint cafe not far from his clinic: The All Blue, he calls it. The atmosphere is casual and warm, yet more upscale than he was expecting. He’s surprised that he’s never noticed it before, but then again, his lunch plans usually consisted of eating alone in his car. In fact, he wasn’t familiar with Grand Line’s local haunts at all, despite having lived there for two years. His world was limited to his clinic, the grocer, his own apartment complex, and whatever places were most convenient along his commute.
“Everything is good here!” Luffy chirps, leaning over the table to press a finger to the left hand side of his menu. “But you have to try Sanji’s ribeye.”
“Well, I usually prefer fish,” Law replies, then raises his brow. “Sanji?”
“Yeah, he’s one of the cooks here! Most of my friends work here, so really, order whatever you want,” he grins back. He moves his finger from the red meats to the list of seafood dishes. He navigates the options without even looking, as if the paper had been committed to memory. “I work here too. Kinda.”
It explains the prickle he feels on his skin coming from the overly curious staff. He’s felt a similar meddling presence from his own employees, though he can’t put his fingers on why they’re all being so persistent. Their teasing over his grumpy attitude had only served to worsen his mood thus far.
“So you’re a server?”
It suits him. He’s young and bubbly with a smile that could warm even the coldest heart. Law sips his coffee, practically empty, just to fill in the pauses. He’s not used to casual conversation, especially not with strangers, and that’s essentially what Luffy was to him. Aside from his name and his unusual affinity for picking up strange animals, he knew next to nothing about him.
“Oh, uh- kinda?” Luffy stumbles over his words as if he can’t decide how to answer. It’s a drastic change compared to his usual confidence. He seems slightly sheepish, maybe something else, something darker buried deep beneath that endless smile. “I’ve only been working here for a year. I just pick up shifts sometimes for the extra money-“
“Are you ready?”
They both look up to see their server, Nami, smiling sweetly at them with two glasses of water in hand. She shoots Luffy a concerned look, almost questioning, and he averts his gaze just as quickly. “I already know what you want, Luffy. But who’s your friend?”
“Not a friend, necessarily. I own the animal clinic down the road,” Law replies. He rattles off his order in hopes that it will quell further interrogation. It does not.
“Oh! So you must be Torao? He hasn’t stopped talking about the nice vet from down the street,” she teases, mostly towards Luffy, who shows no signs of embarrassment. He only laughs and rattles off a fond introduction on Law’s behalf, before another table thankfully calls the server away.
Law can’t fathom why Luffy would mention him to his friends. He was often cold and detached with clients, like he should have been acting right now. Instead, thanks to Shachi’s interference, he had let the idiot with the possum drag him out for lunch. Even worse, he doesn’t particularly mind. He even finds himself a bit pleased that he had been on Luffy’s mind at all. It was baffling, really. Luffy was all warmth and sunshine where Law was icy and far removed.
After settling, he removes his coat to hang on the back of his chair. He rolls up the sleeves of his black scrubs to the elbow, exposing his tattooed forearms. He flinches when he feels fingers pressing against his freshly exposed skin.
“Owww! Did Possum do that?” Luffy exclaims, thumb just barely tracing the angry red scratches he’d received earlier in the day. Law feels tempted to pull back, to reclaim personal space, but he’s distracted by how warm Luffy’s hands feel against his skin (just like he expected them to be.)
“No, just another old bastard of a cat,” Law assures him, hissing slightly as Luffy applies just a bit too much pressure to a particularly sore scratch. There’s really no need for them to be touching, for both of Luffy’s hands to be wrapped around his forearm, but he can’t bring himself to stop him. How long had it been since someone had touched him, even platonically? His fingers are a bit calloused in places, and it strikes him as odd for a server to have such well-worn hands.
Luffy is absolutely oblivious to the rising tension, to the giggling servers watching the exchange from the kitchen. His fingers trail down his wrist until he’s gingerly holding onto Law’s palm. “Wow. You have a lot of tattoos, don’t you?”
“I have my back and torso done too,” he admits. His extensive ink and piercings were partly the reason he’d decided to open his own clinic in the first place. The snobbery of the medical field, human or animal, was often unwelcoming to anyone who stood outside of the social norm.
“You’ll have to show me sometime,” Luffy murmurs in a low voice, looking up at him with something mischievous glittering in his warm brown eyes. That look sparks a dangerous and unfamiliar feeling in Law’s gut.
“How many times do I have to remind you to keep your hands to yourself?” Nami scolds. The server saves the day, sliding their plates in front of them and playfully swatting Luffy over the back of the head. “Sorry, Torao. Don’t be afraid to slap him around a little. He can take it.”
Luffy protests, claiming his innocence, but their back-and-forth turns to radio static in Law’s head. He’s too busy keeping his head down, trying desperately to hide the flush in his cheeks. He focuses his attention on the meal, the flaky fish and decadent white wine sauce, anything to distract from the fluttering sensation in his guts. He’s a grown ass man. He shouldn’t be so weak to a little flirty banter. If it even was flirting. Law uses each bite as an excuse to just listen as Luffy cheerfully rambles between mouthfuls. (And god, for how skinny he was, that man could eat.)
After their plates are scraped clean, Luffy encourages him to stay for coffee, though he doesn’t order any for himself. As Law sips on his second mug, glances down at his watch, he realizes that this kid is dangerous. An hour and a half has passed, and it only feels like minutes in the grand scheme of things.
“Luffy! Since you’re here, do you think you can help in the kitchen for a bit? The busboy called out again.”
A well-groomed blonde, dressed in black, stands in the revolving doors of the kitchen. Luffy perks up, pulled out of his cheerful rambling. He glances back with a bit of reluctance in his eyes.
“It’s alright. I really should be getting back.” Law doesn’t want to admit that he wouldn’t mind a third cup of coffee, or even a fourth. His pulse is buzzing and he’s not sure how much of it he can blame on the caffeine. “I’ll see you at 5 to pick up the kitten?”
Luffy’s face brightens as he collects their empty plates. “Yeah, I’ll see you then!”
As Law pushes open the door into the cold street, he chances a glance back at the kitchen, heart skipping when he finds those dark brown eyes staring warmly back at him.
Luffy shows up a few minutes after five, apron still tied around his waist beneath his thick red jacket. His freckled cheeks are rosy red with the cold that rushes through the door behind him. For once, he seems to be in a rush to leave, hurriedly scrawling his signature on paperwork. Law explains the aftercare procedure as Shachi rattles off the amount. He pays the bill in full with rumpled bills and change. Law can’t help but notice that he has to dig to the bottom of his wallet for the last nickel and dime.
“Do you want to schedule a spay for when she recovers?” Shachi suggests but he pulls up the calendar without waiting for confirmation.
“Oh, uh, I can’t keep pets at my place, actually,” Luffy admits a bit sheepishly. The kitten blinks lazily up at him, dazed from the anesthesia. He adds, “I already found her a home. That’s where I’m taking her after this, so I’m sure they’ll call you. I’ll give ‘em your card!”
There’s a frown just barely threatening to tear down his smile but Law watches him force the corners of his lips up just a little wider. He tucks the kitten into his coat, closes the zipper over it, and pulls open the door. He pauses there for a moment, thinking, then turns to offer a handshake and a bright grin. Luffy holds on a bit too long. The gesture feels… wrong: too stiff, almost sterile. He wants more, but he’s not sure what, and the door swings closed before he can work out what he’s feeling. Suddenly the clinic feels entirely too cold without him.
Law’s Great Pyrenees practically bowls him over the moment he opens the door to his flat. He’s raised Bepo since he was nothing more than a runt. Law groans as the wind is forcibly knocked out of him, and he knows he really should work on the jumping, but he’s a pushover when it comes to the gentle giant. It’s not like he gets many guests anyways.
The rest of his night is routine as usual. He feeds his dog, then himself, works out for an hour, washes up and brushes up on a medical text before bed. Bepo is already curled up beside him, taking up nearly half of his queen-sized bed. He shuts off the lamp and turns onto his side, long white fur brushing against his cheeks. He’s always had trouble sleeping, evident by the perpetual dark circles that haunt his face, but it’s worse than usual.
As he closes his eyes, he tries to wear himself out by mentally running through the next day’s appointments, planning out his errands accordingly, but the resulting schedule is painfully mundane. He wonders when his life has become so dull. He was already 29, well-established in his field with a clinic of his own. He had money, a nice car, a cozy flat- Many people would kill for his position.
Yet every day, he clocks into work, clocks out, and passes his remaining few hours in an empty home: just him and his dog. He knows now what's been missing from his life. He hates to admit that the most exciting thing to happen to him in years was the bubbly server with the everlasting grin that crashed into his life on a snowy night: an idiot (with a pretty smile and a good heart.)
As he closes his eyes, he remembers warm fingers trailing up his forearms, and there’s that feeling again. It’s a warm flutter that starts in his chest and swells so that his next breath catches in his throat. It’s something he hasn’t felt since he was a carefree teenager, pining after the pretty young girls in his class. He tries to squash the feeling down. It’s too late anyways. The mangy gray kitten was the only thing that had tied him to the bright-eyed server. There was no longer a reason for them to meet.
He hates how empty it makes him feel. After all, he is definitely not lonely. He had his dog to take care of. He certainly wasn’t thinking of that bright smile and warm hands on his skin as he drifted off to sleep.