Can I Steal Your Heart? - A LawLu fanfic

(Luffy) Chapter 40 - Scars

"Dangit, I almost forgot! I gotta go back to the Sunny real quick. There's something that I was going to bring over when you came!" Luffy pulled himself out of Law's arms with a suddenness that seemed to surprise the other. He followed it with a hasty peck on the cheek. "I'll be right back!"

He ran to the deck and jumped across easily. Law's clothes were a little hard to run well in, but it was just a quick trip. He dashed into the kitchen. "Sanji, I forgot the-"

Sanji turned around with a smug grin and a full tray of slightly wonky onigiri in his hands. "I thought about bringing it to you, but didn't want to interrupt... And I see it would've been quite the interruption~!" Sanji gave him a once-over that told Luffy money was going to change hands at his current outfit.

"Shaddup. But thanks!" Luffy took the tray from his hands and darted back across the decks with it, then back to Law's room, where Law was waiting in the open door.

"Onigiri? That's what was so important you had to run off like that?" Law asked with a raised eyebrow.

Luffy grinned proudly. "I made it. For you. No umeboshi, and Sanji helped just enough to make sure I didn't do anything that would poison you. I thought, since you cooked that big breakfast for me last time, I should try to do something for you." He wouldn't mention that it had taken about 8 attempts over the last three days and that Sanji had still been watching him like a hawk this morning as he made them.

Law motioned him inside again and shut the door. Luffy sat the tray on the table and then took a seat in one of the chairs as Law took the other.

"Try one!"

Law looked at them skeptically, but grabbed one and took a bite. Then, after careful consideration, another. He smirked at Luffy after the third bite. "It's good. You did well."

Luffy grinned again. "Mission accomplished, then!" He grabbed one of them for himself and downed it in a single bite. "So, I noticed earlier that your skin was cooler than most people's. Do you always tend to run cold?"

"Yeah. It's a medical condition. Bradycardia. Remember before, when you had your nightmare and had trouble locating my heartbeat because it was so slow? It's that. Slower heart rate, less circulation, less natural body heat. Especially in my arms and legs," Law explained between bites. "It's worse when I'm sleeping, which may be why I don't sleep well — my brain wakes me up when my heart rate gets too slow. It's the only symptom of the white lead poisoning that didn't go away after I removed it all.... Did I make you chilly?"

"No. It felt nice. I was just curious. Do you feel cold more easily, then? Like when it snows?"

"Actually, I seem to handle cold weather better than most of my crew, except Bepo. Still, I'm always cold at night, except those times you've been next to me."

"Can we do that again while we're together? This time and every other?"

"Under the same conditions as last time. At least for now."

"Cuddling only, no commenting on erections that may or may not occur due to closeness and body heat, and somewhere more open?"

"Yep. Exactly those."

Luffy tilted his head in consideration for a second before grinning. "I can live with that. For now. But you know, you don't have to work so hard to get my crew's approval. They already like you fine, they're not going to kill you."

"Are you sure Nico-ya knows that? I think she'd have killed me via snail if she could have after our fight...."

Luffy set the onigiri he hadn't even realized he'd been munching on back down onto the tray. "... She called you? That's why you came back?"

"No. I came back because she was right and I'd been stupid. I needed to fix what I'd done."

"... Would you have still come back if she hadn't called?"

Law fell silent at his question for so long Luffy was afraid he wasn't going to answer. "Eventually, probably," Law finally sighed softly. "I... thought I needed space. Even if I knew you better than to think you'd truly offer a pity-fuck, I still thought some of what had motivated you to offer that the way I understood it was... Sympathy. Curiosity. I thought... I thought if I stayed away for a while, I could get over you, and come back and be friends, like you – like I thought you really wanted. But then she threatened to make me enemy number one on your ship. And for a brief moment, I thought maybe that'd be for the best for you, too. Keep you safe from me. But... I didn't want to be your enemy. Not ever, for any reason. And I didn't want to be the reason for your pain."

It was Luffy's turn for a prolonged silence. He didn't quite know what to make of that. It hurt a little, to think that Law had wanted to leave and stay gone. But... "Well, however it happened, I'm just glad you came back."

"Me, too."

"And... curiosity was definitely part of it. I'm definitely curious about... well, all of it. But I'm curious because I never tried it, and I never tried it because I never wanted it before. I was never even curious about it... until you."

Law turned red. "... that's, um... good to know." He shoved the last bite of onigiri in his mouth, and Luffy's gaze caught on the dark ink on his hands, reigniting another curiosity he'd shoved aside a dozen times.

"Can I touch your tattoos?"

Law turned impossibly redder, but nodded slowly and removed his shirt. Luffy came around behind him, tentatively touching the Heart crew's Jolly Roger that was so stark against Law's tan skin. He didn't quite know what to expect the inked skin to feel like, but he didn't expect... "Scars...?"

"Yeah. Most of them cover up one or more."

"From what?"

"My clumsy first attempts to get rid of the white lead poison, mostly. I didn't know that my new powers could do it without actually cutting the skin most of the time. I'd studied medicine some, but... not devil-fruit-style. The first six months or so was trial-and-error. The deeper, uglier ones are where it was hurting me the most."

"They're not ugly. Nothing about you is." Luffy's hands moved to the heart on his right shoulder, then stopped at another scar, this one much more recent. "I should've killed Mingo for this..." He let his fingers trace around that bicep scar, where Law's arm had been chopped off and reattached.

"No. It's better that he's in jail. You're too pure for the taint a murder leaves on one's soul." Law spoke like he knew that taint personally. He probably did, but Luffy found he didn't know how to lessen that pain.

"Does it ever still hurt?"

Law shook his head then watched, his face inscrutable, as Luffy moved down the arm further, to the strange cross on the forearm. He seemed to jump a little when Luffy kissed the one on the back of his hand, right over the scar it covered.

"And why Death? Did these come before or after the nickname?" He asked as he moved in front of Law, grabbing his hands to examine the tattooed knuckles.

"Before... one hand for Cora-san, one hand for me. Because every surgery I do, I can only do because of his death."

Luffy nodded his understanding, then straddled Law's lap so he could touch the scarred tattoo on his chest more easily. His fingers traced the dark outline, counting the scars under the ink. Law shuddered a little under his touch, still beet red. "You must have been hurting a lot." Ten scars, most of them puckered. Ten surgery attempts where a teenaged Law had cut his own chest open. And that wasn't even counting the scars Mingo had left on him in Dressrosa, the cuts and bullet wounds. Luffy leaned in briefly to kiss the biggest one, hidden by one of the spokes on the right side of Law's chest.

Law grabbed his hand, pulling it away while sliding a hand under Luffy's chin. "Yeah. But not anymore." And Law pulled him in for a kiss that Luffy found himself leaning into.