Titled: Midwinter in Four Stanzas
Pairing: Law/OC
Setting: Roommate!AU, slightly older
Length: 2000 words
Genre: Friendship, emotionally stable relationships
Summary: Baby, it's cold outside.
Notes: I LOVE CHEESY WINTER FICS. Another headcanon ask from Tumblr that imagined itself into a oneshot. Some religious headcanons because a sprinkle of diversity here and there makes the pudding taste better :)
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midwinter in four stanzas
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i. deck the halls
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Wintertime festivities are a quiet occasion in the Strangways-Trafalgar household (which isn't so much a house as it is a cramped, single-bedroom apartment above a Chinese bakery, and they aren't so much a household as they are two broke graduate students who found each other through Craigslist. Wanted: Roommate, non-smoker, quiet. Must be able to ignore suspicious noises at night. Cannot ask questions about unconscious/bloodied person(s) seen around apartment. No sharing beer.
"Hi," said the cloud of smoke upon opening the door, a lit cigarette held snazzily between two fingertips, "so, I could get a search warrant slapped on this place because of your stupid ad, but I kind of need a place to hide—stay, I mean, stay. Anyway, you know me." She waved the smoke aside, and a shock of frizzy yellow hair and ocean eyes greeted him. "We have O-Chem together."
She shoved her foot between the door when he tried to slam it. It's been three years since then.)
Every day is hectic up until their actual holiday break begins. Exams, work, projects, papers. Sophie rolls out of bed for her 7 AM lab shift, grabs her coffee and mango slices to go, and gives Law's butt a firm kick to make sure he gets up before climbing down the fire escape to her moped (the front door being, of course, blocked by haphazard science experiments). Law makes coffee for three, swings by her work to drop off two, and spends all day at class and then his shift at the hospital. On some nights when they're both too tired to make food he'll hustle the cooks from the tiny French place down the street. But they get nicer as the holidays come around, and sometimes all Sophie has to do is look as sad and pathetic as possible and one of the chefs will sprout hearts for eyes and slip her a free bottle of Merlot.
When their finals wind down and they have a weekend to spare, they compromise on decorations. Sophie likes cheesy embellishments and explosions of glitter. Law likes his corners dark and menacing to brood in. He reasons that a tree would make their already cramped living situation even worse, so he buys a small poinsettia from the local supermarket, a bright red thing with gold foil. She lights a hanukiah by the window and hangs up fairy lights, blue tinsels, and reindeer garlands. (Christmas is whatever but Santa is terrific; she aspires to break into as many houses as he does, worshipped by tiny humans who give you offerings of cookies and milk.)
It comes together in a semi-nice, eclectic sort of vibe: their apartment glows chocolate-chip, fresh-from-the-oven warm, and it makes her want to eat soba with the good dipping sauce, huddled under the canopy of a blanket fort, forever and ever.
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ii. a warm hearth
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Their first day of break is also the first day that it snows. Fort Sophie is an optimistic attempt, a big blanket draped over three chairs, textbooks holding it in place, in the alcove of the bedroom window. Law brings in hot apple cider and Sophie heats up sugar cookies using a blowtorch. She sticks her cold feet on Law's lap. Her sneaky toes crawl under his sweater, searching for the warmth of his stomach.
He glowers, but otherwise lets her use him as a personal foot heater. Law, Mighty Unmovable Mountain. You could stick a scalpel into the palm of his hand and he'd growl is that the best you've got in the deepest, most toe-curling voice that makes you want to ask if you can do it again to his other hand, but slower.
Sophie flexes her toes against his abdomen. "A party? I dunno." She bites off the head of a Pillsbury snowman. "I do better mano-a-mano."
"When people are forced to talk to you."
"And can't escape or talk to someone else, exactly."
"I'm not really up for it, either. Besides, Penguin and Shachi are going to stumble in here stone-cold drunk and we have to make sure they don't set this place on fire like last time." Law sticks his head out the window, catching snowflakes on his tongue. White flakes fall across his hair. His black hair looks almost darkblue in certain light, like the bottom of a deep deep well where only fluorescent mushrooms and prehistoric kelp live. Sophie reaches up and brushes the snow from his forehead, then wriggles to peer out the window. The air is so cold she can smell it. "I'll text back Kid and Luffy."
She looks out into the bewintered city, the frosted roads and the people below wiping snow off their cars. Her breath comes out in big white puffs. She blows into his face, open-mouthed, hot and smelling like apple cider and old cigarettes. He lets her for a few moments. And then he wraps his freezing fingers around her waist, right on the skin.
"Law!"
Sophie beats his shoulders with her palms, wailing about the sanctity of warm flesh and betrayal of trust and letgoletgoletgoooooo you big lame fart! He is laughing helplessly, his face all chill from winterfrost and his nose runny from the cold, and she kisses him hard on his sticky-sweet mouth while reaching around for an unforgiving fistful of snow to shove in his face.
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iii. with a red bow-tie
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"Hai Xing gave us presents!"
Law looks up. "Who?"
"The guy who owns the bakery downstairs." She clambers in from the fire escape, shivering and slamming the window shut, and investigates the contents of her package. Pineapple bread, egg tart, rousong bun, boba tea. Their favorites. "He's right down the hall. Lived here three years and you never said hi?"
"I say hi." Law accepts an egg tart.
"Grunting when you pass by each other does not count."
"He gives me fortune cookies with the bad luck warnings in them. I'm pretty sure he thinks we make meth for a drug trafficking ring."
She hangs up her coat and sits next to him on the couch, texting Hippo—who is working with Doctors Without Borders in Swaziland, but not before vacationing in South Africa and sending her a picture of the orphanage he grew up in. "Why would you say that?"
"He asked me if we make meth for a drug trafficking ring."
"We should dress like Walt and Jesse and invite him over."
"Sounds good, yo."
"Does this make me Walt?"
"Well. Yeah. You're the one who actually knows how to make meth."
"That was years ago. I've turned over a new leaf." Sophie flips her hair back in some semblance of tumbling gold locks and her scarf gets caught on her wrist and she nearly chokes.
"…"
"I have."
"…"
"Gawd, that's your response to everything, isn't it?"
"Dot dot dot," says him.
He gets her a crate of illegal-to-own chemicals (there are blood stains on the side; she blushes to her ears, how sweet) and a pair of new mittens for Hannukah. Sophie admires her fuzzy Chopper Man mitts in the firelight and Law spends the rest of the evening playing with his handmade obsidian scalpel. (Happy late Mawlid, you pineapple. Who wants to open holiday presents by themselves, anyway?) They talk about birthright and hajj and pilgrimages. She is twenty-three with three more years to meet her motherland's eligibility requirements; Law is twenty-seven, and he's been to Mecca and Medina, a twofer on divinity. They're agnostic, most of the time. God is like the poinsettia on the kitchen table. They water it only when they remember, and yet, it persists.
God is genderfluid, says Sophie. God is a black woman, says Law. You know what, it's fine either way.
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iv. the longest night of the year
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Law is twenty-seven, and Sophie can taste his melancholy. The cemetery he visits is a bleak field of white, weepy iron angels staring at you from beyond the grave, and she wants to string electric lights all over and holler loud enough to wake the dead, except it's not appropriate only what's appropriate anyway when you're twenty-seven and you've got a trifecta of tattooed hearts to mourn the one you lost.
(Except it doesn't ever make up for it, she thinks heavily, leaning against a frost-bitten tree and watching Law kneel down on the snow, speaking softly—she can see the puffs of breath leaving his mouth—gold earrings and a black coat and blacker tattoos in the silent graveyard, hands empty but full of fiercely-whispered promises.)
Winter in the city is surreal. Sophie is pretty sure she bums a cigarette off a yellow-haired angel on the subway. Ghosts play for loose change and pocket-flint on the sidewalks, smog streams slowly by cathedral windows, and its bells toll a lonely staccato hymn that feels like the last vestige of an ancient hiemal ritual. Somebody somewhere is reciting The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep. Getting lost is easy when everything's the same color. Adonai took their white-out marker and scribbled over the whole city, so she wears her most colorful socks as a homing device and navigates by candy-floss Christmas trees. And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.
As promised, Penguin and Shachi stumble in from the fire escape, consumed by champagne-fizzy giggles. Bepo follows, a big white-haired boy with the sweetest eyes you've ever seen. They come in search of warmth and haul along presents: beer and hot melty cheese pizza, still steaming when she opens the box, and Law provides a tower of different-flavored rice balls, Sophie the lemon-meringue pie. Carolers come by and Bepo opens the window to sing along, his voice a lovely baritone lute that floats through the creak-hiss of steam radiators, until Shachi puts him in a headlock and hoots that he's upstaging those poor kids, ya nerd!
Law doesn't get drunk, but when he does, he gets drunk. He drops his head on Sophie's shoulder, mumbling in her ear osteoblasts are responsible for bone formation, and it would've been embarrassing to all heck if everyone hadn't been so bubbly with post-dinner satisfaction they could've floated right up to the shining gates of heaven itself before popping in a burst of lemon-meringue-pie laughter. He falls asleep on her shoulder and Penguin topples over Bepo, and Shachi follows suit, and they're all huddled in a circle in front of the fireplace, drunkenly kicking each other and whispering, eyes half-closed.
Sophie cracks open the window, listening to the faint hallelujahs in the frosty air. Law stirs in the cold draft, wakes up briefly to wrap his fingers around hers, and settles back on her shoulder.
She looks out the window and breathes, slow and quiet so as to not disturb the yellow-haired angel sleeping on the fire escape. His wings are stretched out, nearly blocking her view of the snowy skyscrapers and the perpetual exhaust hanging low over the city. The nights are long and filled with twinkling lights and she sings drowsily, l'chaim, l'chaim, l'chaim.