Chapter Text
A scalpel in one hand and a slow beating heart in the other.
Law pressed into the man’s chest, palm over the organ and fingers rooted into the wet pockets around it. Arteries struggled to expand, blood slicking latex gloves and the kitchen table, disinfectant sinking past Law’s surgical mask; the patient stiffened, unconscious but struggling, against the weight of an elbow to the gut. Defensive shakes wracked the body the deeper he speared his fingers.
Black blood slinked down the table leg onto the plastic tarp.
Law’s hand suffocated the spasming, watched the heart pull what it could from its doped up, dying host. It’d been an hour since he’d started, night stuttering into an early sunrise, dusk catching on the open skin fold. His patient had been an easy enough target; Law laid out a lure for a lonely loser and pumped him full of ketamine. He’d been a graceless bastard, with a diabetes diagnosis and a penchant for killing stray animals, three sheets to the wind behind a casino.
Law smiled and put the scalpel behind the man’s head. Angling his hand, Law tucked fingers under the organ until the pulse in his wrist met the pulse on the heart’s side. For a moment, he closed his eyes, manually counting the disparity in beats per minute.
Then he yanked.
Arteries tore, snapped, a whip of blood catching him on the mask as the body vaulted, gore forced from its mouth. The heart tightened and trembled and stopped. Law watched the promise of postmortem lividity settle all movement. How small, he brought the heart up an inch from his nose bridge, eyed the veins mapping its outer volume, the flowers of fat thickening the top. Heart disease. He didn’t make it a habit to pull apart live patients, not unless the hypothesis called for it. Exsanguination made for better analysis, drained the body of its mess, and gave him the opportunity to see how organs folded together in divine arrangement, the colour of disease without tint.
Law lobbed the heart sideways into the sink.
Plastic-covered, taped at the edges.
Glove tacked with fresh blood, he picked up a pen, a small leather-bound, and began writing. Watched his hand through the white glove, the shine of a fresh murder moving over tendons and the only-just visible black of his tattoos. Adrenaline disappeared years ago, with his first kill, but curiosity never waned. Each body he’d cut open had been different—a familiar composition, riddled in unfamiliar story: cigarettes and alcoholism, ulcers and aged catheters, surgery scars on the underside of skin. Whole worlds buried behind a chest cavity.
Extrapolation called for mortal excavation.
His pen scratched paper, quick, unintelligible, and Law didn’t read as he wrote. After a few minutes and three pages full, Law pulled off his mask and set down the notebook on the kitchen island. He needed a shower.
The corpse’s eyes were left open.
✦
It stayed, the body, where he’d left it.
His appointment was at noon, penned far enough from his five a.m. oblivion to keep Law punctual. The morning was crisp, uncareful in its cold, spat winter in mist and low-hung misery; Law sunk farther into the leather of his car as the heater pushed out stale air. It’d become routine, in the way most things were when put on a calendar; he’d wake up once a week, jot down the points of consciousness he wanted to discuss, then wade his way to Baroque Works to voice sicknesses—curiosities—he had no intent of fixing.
Sickness wasn’t sickness if he was aware of it.
Sickness couldn’t be sickness if it was choice.
The ride took its time, and the drift of the car was a consistent tethering point. Sunlight fogged windows, winter garrotting the likelihood of a soft, warm morning. Law preferred it that way. Cold made the edges of his body thrum with awareness, the lines of his body ridged and tense enough to sit neat in a chalk outline. It’d been a pretentious realisation when it registered. Law’d grown up in frost, abandoned parts of him in the dirt-slick snow of Flevance and even more of himself on Minion. Whatever remained, then, could withstand Sabaody’s brittle, indecisive cold—which never imposed itself enough to hurt his joints, but bit hard enough to stiffen them.
Law’s fingers sat lax on the stick shift, pushed with slack precision. Yes, the cold introduced sobriety, made every item in his mind sit with sharp, stinging clarity, and what better way to head to therapy?
Baroque Works was sententious, a pseudo-intellectual establishment that balanced itself between lecture halls and casual pay-to-play mind fuckery. He knew the spiel well enough—its foundation in Alabasta, the new offices and annual, award-winning speeches that drivelled on about mind over matter, the contemporary human condition, the state of self and the funny pills that could somehow undo evolution at its roots.
Psychiatrists, some called them.
Barracudas was more apt.
Pretentious, exploitative.
An ideal arrangement.
He pulled into the building’s parking garage, underground and accessible via keycard. Fluorescents swelled and bubbled against his windshield, and Law parked at a spot right by the elevators. It was muscle memory that directed him to the seventeenth floor, moved his weight over moquette and through thick detergent and jasmine excess. Law was accustomed to the halls of hospitals—the white, sanitised by LEDs, and the blue, vilified by patients’ families. Hospitals were humble in their modernity, never overindulged themselves. Human bodies were bodies, and hospitals were bodies too: composed of only the necessary elements to keep death from baying.
Those who treated the mind, he came to understand, carried themselves much differently than those who treated the body. Psychiatric offices metered elegance and glut, cost too much and wasted the surplus on fancy hardwood, on an environment designed to intimidate. Pale furs and leather, walls pinched with plaques carrying unpronounceable names and incomprehensible titles. Law smelt it in the air guiding him down corridors, on the cologned cuff of every three-piece who walked by, sense of purpose inflated. This place didn’t promise healing or happiness, it promised redemption for the filthy rich, by the filthy rich.
His appointment sat one door from the end of the hall. Law made his way there without more steps than needed, didn’t greet the bored receptionist who no doubt earned more than the job deserved. Slipping past, Law settled a two-tapped knock on the door.
Before the second could land, a command sounded behind it.
“Come in, Dr. Trafalgar.”
✦
A coffee mug and an Alabastan rug: the constituents of every session. Law leant back into his seat, Nico Robin across from him on an identical burnt-orange couch, its leather tender enough not to sound under their movements. She had one knee over the other, ankles tucked like delicacy would help her seem more approachable. It didn’t, and Law was certain it wasn’t her intent. Nico was not an approachable figure by most held standards—had eyes elevated with awareness and no detail to them, a blank slate that didn’t judge, but in equal measure, gave no grace. Terrifying, Law thought, once, when he’d first walked into her office. There were few people he’d describe that way, but she was the second, and in due time, second to none when it came to that description.
Nico adjusted her own drink, a loose-leaf sencha loaded with too much fragrance. The initial interaction had been routine. A brief welcome back, matched with a grunt from Law, that saw them to where they sat now.
A desk was abandoned to the right of them, the centrepiece of her exorbitant office, a studio too large for just two people. Overkill. High ceilings and clouded noontime dimmed the morning, sending muted light across hardwood and bookcases. Despite Baroque Works’ usual modus operandi of intimidation, Nico’s office didn’t lean into it. It was microcosmic of who she was as a person. A typewriter sat on the desk, the room stinking of its use: wet ink and paper, the headiness of a book freshly pressed, and every detail spoke to her interests. The studio was a sensory deprivation tank for modernity, loaded with relics of the near past. An old, well-used radio silent on a side table. Nail-struck desk toed with copper bases vining upward. Bookcases replaced the two widest walls, one behind her, the other behind him.
Beautiful and beautifully outdated, he’d say—if Law had any love or appreciation for the finer things.
He didn’t.
The office was misremembered nostalgia, romanticised eras neither of them lived through nor would ever experience. Law wasn’t interested; his present was the latest in medical tech, the reek of antiseptic solutions and complex toolkits, lights so bright they summoned migraines. Nights puking his guts out in white-white-white toilets just down the hall from an operating room. He’d spent his university years catching up to the present, and even now, spent most of his days at the hospital still trying his best to pretend he understood every innovation. If Nico wanted to live in a pocket of history no one remembered with kindness, well, Law didn’t have a fuck to spare her.
No sentimentality for delusion.
“How was your week?” Her voice brimmed with a knowing he didn’t appreciate, long fingers cupping the tea. “You seem less distracted than usual, and I’m happy to see it, doctor.”
Doctor.
He’d given up on talking her out of using the title. She did it to get under his skin, and is that not the whole point? Growth, mental and physical, stipulated discomfort. Or maybe Nico couldn’t shake her sadism, enjoyed his squirming annoyance. Psychiatrists and surgeons were one and the same in that regard, only regard; there was trauma of the body and trauma of the mind, both often irreparable, and yet we play with lives for a profession.
“Sure,” he took a silent sip of coffee. It was bitter and biting and utterly unenjoyable. She never offered him milk or sugar, and Law never asked for either. Law didn’t like coffee, not the way most intellectual cocksuckers claimed to—found no love in staining his teeth, or the inevitable crash that came from abusing it. Still, it was at least more useful than flavoured water. “I’ve had a good week, all things considered.”
“Work going well?”
“No one died on my operating table, so if that’s the barometer, then yes. It’s been good.”
She hummed. “A low bar, but we’re built to latch onto positivity where we can find it. The smaller things are good.”
“You think so?” Law scoffed, soft and unbothered. “I doubt a casual hello from your neighbour is going to fix crippling debt and unmedicated daddy issues.”
“Are you in debt?”
“No.”
“And your father figure, is he problematic?”
Law stared at her, trying to gauge the point she was making without waiting to hear it. The lie was easy enough. “Not particularly.”
“Then a good work week can be enjoyed for what it is, don’t you think?” Nico chuckled into her glass, upturned it into a brief sip. Her ankle rotated, idle, as she spoke. “There’s no need to overcomplicate it.”
“Aren’t you paid by the hour to overcomplicate it?” Law smirked. He clicked his teeth on the rim of the coffee mug, looking to the side into tall, skinny windows. Classic wood-cross windowpanes sat on either side of Nico’s desk. “I’m starting to think I’m wasting my pennies here, Nico-ya.”
She laughed, low and melodic, the hum birds made before chirping. Conversation was simple when it didn’t breach Law’s personal life. It was a formula they devised early on, when she realised Law had no real desire to air out his feelings, only his thoughts—mild, abstract. Tangents about history and philosophy, ones he’d link back to his behaviour on his own time. Because Law didn’t have anything to heal, nothing was wrong with him; he was well-adjusted enough to know his actions were morally reprehensible, he was just indifferent towards those implications.
I’m a bad man, he eyed the morning, then the desk. Not a sick one.
Nico’s eyes knew more than her tongue cared to juggle, anyway.
After all, she’d been in the business too, even though they never once spoke of it. She had a keen instinct and a propensity for talking in riddles. Everything she said was doublespeak designed to indulge its own smartness, without humility. Not that Law minded. The mental gymnastics were an enjoyable exercise in the deep winter, with useless studio radiators fighting off the cold around them.
He didn’t call himself a killer, either, and she called him a doctor with enough insinuation that he didn’t need to. He was one, but he was also more than a doctor—did so hate to be lumped into a bracket with general practitioners and paediatricians. It wasn’t even conceit, but a stinging realisation that his job was far more unkind, more unsympathetic than doctor implied. Law wanted people to understand the breadth of apathy a job like his required, don’t look at me like I save lives.
He did, though that was a tangential outcome, not the driver.
Because he also made a habit of taking them.
You did too, I know it.
She must have, because Law found Nico through one of Doflamingo’s more bearable acquaintances. Not that the insufferable bird would ever call the man an acquaintance; Crocodile was, as far as Doflamingo was concerned, a dear friend.
To Law, it was an affective hostage situation and dick-measuring contest. From the interactions he’d had the misery of bearing, the men seemed to hate each other. It was the most genuine Law had ever seen Doflamingo’s dislike, but it never kept him from trying to trap Crocodile with loaded praise and promises of affinity—and Crocodile, to his own credit, took it in condescending, dismissive stride. He stayed through the meetings, answered the calls, acted every bit the metaphorical hostage who was more keen on disembowelling his captor’s ego than escaping.
Rich man’s burden.
A Baroque Works gold plaque sat on the desk, and the walls were tiled with small paintings of ships in storm and replica renaissance pieces bloody enough to do more psychological damage to a patient than their trauma. Law’s eyes pulled back to Nico.
“I tried to pray, two days ago.”
He had, even though the statement carried its weight in cynicism. Nico’s smile widened, a slight, pursed twitch. Amused. “And how did you find it?”
“I didn’t,” Law mused. “Wasn’t sure what words to use. It was a quick affair, and god didn’t chase me to bed with a metal pipe for fucking it up. I’d call it a contained experience, all things considered.”
“He’s not known to do that, no.”
Law hadn’t been raised religious, at least not during periods when mattered. His formative years remembered the inside of a Flevantine church, one that burnt down and singed the face of every statued saint, buried alive the nun with the kind eyes and soft, small hands, and eight bullets to the chest. Guess the holy aren’t impervious to guns and heretic arson.
But then faith had followed Law from one misery to another, unpracticed.
“In my experience,” he droned, “that’s what god’s best at.”
Doflamingo’s gold cross hung in his present mind the way it hung in memory.
When Doflamingo had leant over him as a child, large and powerful, crucifix swinging to hit Law’s nose bridge like god himself was suspended between them—like that little, hammered thing could hold Doflamingo back by the throat if Law prayed hard enough, sweet enough, loud enough. It never did, and never mattered.
Those moments were the only times Law and heaven saw eye to eye, literal and metaphorical—because Law knew he wasn’t worth divine intervention anyway. Even when it came, it posed nothing to Doflamingo’s hurricane.
Rosinante had been that intervention, and it’d done fuck all but give Law someone to disappoint. Celestial irony, maybe. Cosmic karma. Down on the veranda of a Dressrosan villa, in sweltering summer, watching his father and his uncle trade fists at midnight, trade lighter and cigarette, and bleed like bleeding was the whole point. Rosinante bled more. A young Law hid behind high wooden shutters, trying to assess damage he didn’t yet understand.
Yes, Rosinante bled to make a point.
No, Rosinante never wore crosses.
I wonder if Doffy wears god in gold to prove a point, too. That even on his collar, it was Doflamingo who had the lion’s share of power and no will to obey, aiming all his dares up at paradise. Or maybe, like Law, god was a childhood habit Doflamingo never outgrew even when the choir faded and guns rattled instead.
Or maybe it was all just a fucking joke.
Yeah.
Nico nodded, reached forward to set down her glass. Tea leaves sunk to the bottom, and whatever water remained had become dark and no doubt bitter. “Some say you don’t need words. I don’t suppose gods have a preference or pretension for how you address them at your lowest.”
“What humble gods, then,” Law’s coffee was colder, not because he hadn’t sipped fast, but because the old studio wasn’t insulated enough to keep winter from hissing through gaps in wood. He drank from it, kissed his teeth. “What a waste of gospel.”
Nico’s smile never lost its edge, and Law didn’t mind cutting himself on it if it meant winning an argument. “Spirituality serves as a sanctuary for many.”
Law deadpanned. “Medication’s a bit more reasonable.”
“Empirical, yes, reliable for the mind,” Nico uncrossed her legs, leant forward on one elbow and tucked her cheek into its palm. “Not the spirit.”
“I’ve got no interest in pretending I have one.”
“How theatrical,” she laughed and no sound came out. “I don’t think we have a choice in the matter, or any proof it doesn’t exist somewhere inside us, doctor.”
Law stared, and cold coffee whirled in his hand. “I’ve cut people up enough times to know nothing special or undiagnosable lives behind lungs.”
“You’re right,” she conceded, and she meant it—because her smile shifted from provocative to melancholy. “But does it need to? I’ve met plenty of people with soul. More than the body can bottle up.”
She sounded like she had someone in mind.
“Metaphorical,” Law dismissed anyway.
“Metaphysical,” she corrected, challenge for the sake of challenge. “There’s more to people than the guts you pull out of them—but I digress, doctor; it’s indeed a lot more fun to slice them up.”
✦
Someone died on his operating table that night.
There was no shift in the air when it happened, and the blearing monitors didn’t core his mind from its focus. Residents panicked around him, nurses huddled in a corner readying a defibrillator Law knew wouldn’t bolt life back into someone who’d lost this much blood, whose brain had shut down. The woman was young enough to be a tragedy, old enough to be a mother, still enough to be dead already.
The body rocked up into the counter-shocks, his own voice shaping orders he knew were good for nothing except soothing his team into thinking they did all they could. But the body jerked and twitched and never moved muscles on its own accord. It took too long to raise his hand and call it off.
Law stepped back, announced the declaration of death to staff on standby and muttered careful condolences to those present.
The room heavied with shame, as it always did, and the woman’s monitors were switched off with gruelling hesitation. Law scowled, dissatisfaction waving; the case was doomed from point of admission, but even so, it bruised his pride to know he’d been the one stood there as it happened.
There were no family present, and no emergency contact they could reach—the intern had tried, with shaking hands, for hours.
Four hours.
The kid was smaller than most his age, with auburn hair and round doe eyes, spoke when spoken to and always silent when Law moved past him. Tony, he’d once introduced, and Law hated his habit of remembering names. He barely interacted with the kid, got handed an occasional coffee when Tony tried to curry favour, maybe voice admiration, as he skittered behind Law’s wide strides.
Naive enough to try, anyway.
Law walked through the halls, down to the vending machines for a midnight granola bar, then to his office to document procedure failure, beat by beat, incision by incision. The whole process took an hour off his life, one more off his patience. When he was done, a knock settled at his open door.
“Oi, Trafalgar.”
Law looked up from his computer, watching Marco lean against the doorframe with no hesitance in his posture but all of it on his face, arms crossed. He looked as exhausted as Law felt, eyes sunken behind glasses, hair slicked with sweat and grease. A scrub cap puckered out from between elbow and hand. “I heard.”
“I’m sure you did,” Law said easily. “I thought your shift ended two hours ago?”
“It did,” he nodded, “but emergencies needed an extra pair of hands.”
“I’m assuming you fared better, then.”
“Well, they’re alive.”
“Good job.” Law didn’t mean it. “You’re certainly reliable.”
“You are too.”
“My patient’s being wheeled to the morgue as we speak,” Law’s smile was snuffed of amusement. “Reliability doesn’t mitigate cardiac arrest.”
“Doesn’t it?” Macro scoffed but didn’t enter. “The whole point is being there to stop a tragedy, or being there as support when tragedy happens. That’s reliability.”
“Sure,” Law agreed without really agreeing. “I’ll let Kureha know I was reliable, and my case is reliably dead. She’s quite reliable herself, so maybe I can rely on an end-of-year bonus.”
Marco sighed, turned his back and started moving out. “You’re a fucking asshole.”
Law didn’t call after him, spoke it to the room.
“Reliably so.”
✦
Night swung in faster than the evening had—deep, black, a checklist of hours nearing their metaphorical eleventh. Law had waited the majority of it in his office, switched his scrubs out for a hooded sweatshirt and jeans. When he'd left, it was late enough to pretend hard work was what kept him after hours. The file had been finished, compiled, and proofed long before he’d sent it off. A non-alibi, Law spun a loose hand over the steering wheel, but a character enhancement.
If anyone came asking, there would only be one consensus: Law was a dedicated man, excellent at his job.
He turned the corner, drew into an alley and switched the car off. Any inadequacy and annoyance stemming from his operation faded into apathy. It was always apathy, as if scheduled, on nights like this. There was no incentive to get emotional, because no one’s invented an emotion that could bring back the dead.
Be it euphoria or frustration, two people bit dust that day, with and without intention, and no feeling would change either outcome.
He got out of the car, yanked the hood up over his head and started walking. Night was a thick, dark yolk, too cold to be pleasant. Perfect, no one would subject themselves to this weather, and the fewer people around to see him wander, the better it’d work out for everyone involved. Law’s mind drew back to the body on his table—trussed with tourniquets to keep the mess at bay, no doubt starting a stink.
I need to get back soon.
Errands came first.
The convenience store was a long walk from where he’d parked, by design. Sabaody was enormous in its own right, sprawling buildings akin to electric groves, highways stitched into incomprehensible systems only lit by chatty billboards and neon. Bridges linked the archipelago’s dozen islands, each housing its own municipality, little pods of government.
It was ideal.
As a hunting ground and burial site.
No two districts share information, Law tucked hands into a short puffer jacket, taking each step as it came. Cops never tracked much past their own bubbles, be it out of ego or laziness, and it suited Law just fine. He’d never needed an exit strategy, never gotten so much as a parking ticket. Satisfaction settled, worked itself over into smugness. Law’d never gotten a fucking lick of anything he hadn’t planned for.
The convenience store came into view, fluorescents wet against concrete and open sign blinking through tremors. It sat deep and forgotten in the lawless part of the archipelago, by a set of liquor stores with metal gates rolled all the way down. The type of place where guns sat sweet by cash registers and coke powdered gas station toilet seats. Home to men who walked too fast.
Everyone’s a criminal in this part of town.
Law pushed into the store, dragging gravel and rainwater in with him. A thin chime announced him and no one greeted him. The lone cashier leafed through newspapers, sifting impatiently to see which he could toss. Freezers droned a continuous bass, ice clicking in fat, slouching bags, piled at the bottom. Law pulled himself into an aisle and began there.
Light muted everything into even tones, cheap but bright, dulled the reds of chip packs and lollipops, deepened the dirty white of the tiles. Law walked around without a basket, pulled a jug of bleach from the shelf and two packs of razors, one full of loose blades, the other a common brand set of shavers.
A pop came two aisles down, loud and short, like a cracked knuckle.
Law wasn’t familiar with the store layout, though it wasn’t much different than any other night shop; he didn’t frequent the same one twice, and never those in affluent areas with functioning security cameras. Law didn’t make it a habit to run out of cleaning supplies, either, and the extras he picked were more insurance than necessity.
The store was compact, a front for something sinister—had four aisles, padded by a long wall of fridges at the back, and too many expired items. Stunk like weed the cashier smoked on the job and floor disinfectant that didn’t do its job. Law’s mouth curled, annoyed; all canned food, cat food, colourless food, packed and pre-fried. Walking to the fridges, Law pulled out an inoffensive cherry soda and tucked the cold of it into his elbow.
The final aisle was stacked with candy, porn magazines, and a man staring straight at him.
Law stopped.
Synapses fired.
He hadn’t turned to look at Law. Eyes had been fixed on the spot, as though he’d followed the knock of Law’s heel around the store, tallied down the distance, and loitered in wait. He was leant back against the display stands, ankles locked and figure relaxed but unmoving. An electric second pulled between them, drawn back and primed to snap.
A smile flashed, pricked a dimple into the man’s cheek and thinned the scar tissue under his eye; young and uncanny, with a straight nose and eyes without pupils—too black, solid, high off pills sturdier than his body. A magazine lay open in bandaged hands, Hancock and a set of crossed white thighs on the cover.
One thumb brushed the pages, paper whirring.
The kid chewed his gum with bare teeth, popped it.
Like a cracked knuckle.
No blink, no discernible intent apart from the maddening click of his jaw.
Law broke eye contact. Turned to the chocolate section with practised stoicism, chest catching on each pump of the heart. He was lucid of the attention. It was difficult to ignore unspoken oppressiveness. How long has he been in here? Thoughts stacked one over the other, separated by membranes of unease. The door chime hadn’t gone off, and the man was too close to the exit for Law not to have seen him. Not to have heard him move through the aisles.
Long enough to keep track.
A predator that didn’t need to lunge to eat.
Questions dissolved. Law picked up a bar of dark chocolate, turned it to eye the label. It was a mild movement, designed to appear that way: mild, casual, like antagonism wasn’t churning in his chest, waxing the back of his teeth.
What the fuck are you looking at?
He dropped the chocolate bar back in place.
Smiled to himself, small and a little manic.
I’ll kill you.
Soft sounds of flipping paper followed him, as did eyes, and Law wasn’t aware the bastard could read without looking at the page. Law hung his head, letting the hood hide more of him. An insect pinned to cork, curiosity. Knife through the hand and into the table, possessive.
Which one’s me, and which one’s you? Law settled his face into neutrality.
Wet chew, pop.
He walked past the kid, ignoring the anchored gaze and the shameless, stalking turn of the head that moved with him. Law wasn’t prone to paranoia—couldn’t translate the feeling into familiarity, even so, recognised it scratching at his apathy. Attention was commonplace for Law, but his tattoos were hidden under winter clothes and leather gloves, his position as a surgeon undisclosed.
And his most unsavoury hobbies couldn’t be x-rayed under some cheap, night shop LEDs.
Why is he—
The trek to the cashier needed eleven steps and a saint’s god-branded patience. Took too long to escape the attention, not long enough to understand it. Law set down his items, and before the cashier could touch them, he arranged them in a way that satisfied him. Stepping back, Law gave the cashier space to start swiping, all nervous hands and silence. No questions asked, but an understanding of exactly what these things were for. Not the first time you’ve seen this grocery list, is it?
“11.50.”
Dropping cash on the counter, Law didn’t look at the cashier on his way out.
Or the man.
✦
A lack of subtlety followed him outside.
Shoes smacked on concrete, and Law didn’t turn to face the figure. He followed me out? He must’ve been stupid or reckless, and if Law didn’t have an existing body to deal with, this would’ve been an opportunity like no other to snuff a fool. The street was deserted and sparse of light, rain coming down in spittle and the promise of snow hanging in his nose.
“Hey, hey!”
Law’s hand twisted its hold on the plastic bag, head hung and features contorted. He wasn’t planning on shooting the breeze with bastards well into the night, had even less of a desire to humour genuine conversation. Socialising was a cardinal fucking sin when he was carrying home a deadman-cleanup kit, but whatever the man wanted, he seemed persistent about getting it.
And soon enough, he did.
He pulled up beside Law, a periphery blur of red and black—hair undisciplined, eyes dense, and teeth carved out on a smile Law refused to face. He waved, lacking any of the hostility he'd had before, and slowed his running to match Law’s pace. Law’s eyes flicked to their corners, sharp and unblinking, and he was met with equal force when the man looked back with bright, vicious interest.
“Hey, you walk stupid fast, did you know that?” his voice was casual, lilting, hooked on a grin. Law's malice overtook his apathy, and whatever stoicism he'd tried to maintain, became a loaded threat. If the man got the hint, he didn’t show it. “Must be the long legs, huh? Man, I’d trip on those if I had some. Feels like I’d take major brain damage just trying to walk straight.”
Is he serious?
Law gave him a once-over, mind flying in unseen binaries. A loose, large red leather jacket made wide shoulders wider than they no doubt were, and the t-shirt under it didn’t match the thin sleeves pulled out from jacket cuffs to hook over his thumbs. A pair of cargo pants dragged under his shoes, soaked, filthy, torn where his feet braked against the ground. Law’s lip curled; the weather was too wet for the choice to be anything but disgusting.
The man swiped a hand from his own forehead, measuring where he came up to Law—at his neck—and Law jerked back, venomous.
“Shishi, ease up!” The laugh made something ugly and volatile gurgle in Law’s gut. “I’m just checking to see how tall you are, and you’re tall!”
“Keen assessment.” Law didn’t intend to speak, but the intonation came out with an instinct to humiliate.
There was a vacancy to the kid when he flicked hair off his forehead, switching off his brain on command. It was far removed from the character—thing—Law encountered between aisles; he was disingenuous, or at the very least, able to shuffle through faces without compromising the primary mask. The primal one, the violent one.
Black, black eyes.
Slit smiles.
Reeked of a personality disorder.
“So you can speak!” He laughed again, and when Law sped up, he followed. Agile, his steps didn't make noise when he shifted rhythms. “You’ve got a nice voice too, nature-documentary-narrator nice. Used to watch those as a kid, loved the bugs, not so much the gazelles. They always died anyway. Who dies like that? No fight, no bite, no nothing. Pretty pathetic, right?”
The magazine was rolled and tucked into his waistband; you didn’t pay for that, did you? The bastard must have swiped it while Law terrorised the lone shop worker.
“You look lonely, you know,” the man settled into his own body, and Law belatedly realised that no, it wasn't pills or powder. He was high on adrenaline—let it thicken his blood and blow his eyes out, had him striking conversations with unsavoury figures. The self-preservation instincts were non-existent. Or maybe, Law kept walking past the turn he was meant to take, not wanting to lead them back to his car, you see yourself as the bigger threat. The man's voice lingered. "Loneliness is really ugly."
“Are you soliciting me?”
“Eh?” Genuine confusion found dark features. “As in, to fuck?”
“That’s the implication,” Law snapped, agitation roiling. “I’m not interested in paying for what I don't need.”
“Can’t buy what I’m not selling, can you?” he shrugged without dwelling on the subject for much longer. Whatever offence Law'd geared at him, he either didn't recognise it as offensive or didn't care enough to be offended by it. His head lowered, peering into the black plastic bag Law held between them. “Did you get somethin’ on the carpets? You don’t look clumsy enough to spill.”
“You don’t know me.”
“You’re right!” Without straightening from his lean, he smiled up at Law with cutting eyes and a cocked head. A trial by ignorance. “I’m Luffy, like Monkey D.”
Law walked faster, further, and no distance ever made it between them.
“Oi, come on! I told you my name, you owe me yours!”
“Not interested.”
“Get interested,” Luffy joked, but the black of his eyes shifted, a lid drawing them to half-mast. The streetlight did nothing to define his pupils, lifted the solid colour like stone—poreless, reflective. Unsettling, to a better, less violent man than Law. “So, what did you spill?”
Law didn’t answer.
“Wine’s the worst,” he continued, undeterred. “Red’s even worse than that.”
Law’s eyes narrowed on the shapeless horizon. Luffy’s voice had a quality to it, empty but barbed; the inflection was indifferent, though the words sat too close to reality to have been a coincidence. Does he know something? Even if he did, it meant nothing. The cashier had likely known too, and between the two of them, Law didn’t think authorities would believe a stalker. Unstable, dressed like spring spat in his mouth, with bloodied hands and a complete disinterest in social cues.
“Must be red, no way it’s not—”
Air stirred behind him, subtle and soundless. Law’s unoccupied hand flew back to latch onto Luffy’s wrist. They were close, close enough that the stretch of Luffy’s arm had been hidden from sight, fingers hovering close to Law’s back pocket, his wallet. Law stilled, turning to the kid with silent, blood-on-blood fury.
Provocative on purpose—iced, narrowed eyes, lip hiked over his teeth—drew my focus to the accusation so you could—
“Holy smoke, you’re crazy quick!” Luffy snickered, and this time, it was mean, loaded, satisfied, like he didn’t get caught trying to pickpocket him, like he didn’t mind either way. Luffy stepped closer. Law threw his wrist, not before twisting it, in an attempt to put distance between them. Enforce that distance, unsummon the son of a bitch. It didn’t work, and Luffy leant forward at the waist, head craned to line their profiles at a downward angle. He popped the gum he’d never stopped chewing, and Law grimaced at the chemical scent of watermelon.
One of his canines was snapped, flattening its bite.
“You’ve got killer instincts, don’t ya? You’re the second person ever to catch me doing that.”
Luffy wound down from his high, straightened his spine. Law wasn’t sure if the vapid loser understood the irony of his words—or maybe you’re messing with me. He stared at Luffy, long and drawn, nerves firing with starved, unexorcised anger. I’ll snap your neck, try me, Law couldn’t breathe, trapped wind in his lungs until they ached. I’ll rip your kidney out and stuff it into your limp-jawed mouth.
With slow, pointed movements, Law walked away.
That same lack of subtlety followed him, in a yell, even when Luffy himself didn’t.
“Hope you get those stains out!”