Day Two Prompt: Flowers
Rating: PG-13
Other Notes: Modern!AU

Flowers

"Please tell me you didn't buy those."

"Unless somebody's broken into our apartment for the sole purpose of placing a vase of flowers on the kitchen table, I'm pretty sure I did," Sanji barely glanced up as Law slumped out of the bedroom, his feet dragging along the tiled floor as he went to pour himself a cup of coffee.

It was…Sanji glanced at the clock…nearing midnight, but he was guessing Law had just woken up and he himself was about ready to collapse from exhaustion.

"Why?"

"Why not?" Sanji asked, yawning and leaning back in his chair. He scrubbed his hands over his eyes to blur out the images of numbers and numbers and more numbers that had swam in front of them for the last several hours.

"Considering the only time either of us are in here is to sleep, I highly doubt they'll be appreciated," Law grunted, downing the entire cup of coffee in one swallow and grimacing immediately afterward. "Ugh."

"Sorry. Made it a few hours ago. It's probably cold," Sanji probably should have said something sooner but he could barely form a coherent thought at the moment. "Anyway, they're just flowers."

Law grunted but didn't say anything and Sanji opened his eyes with a rather large effort and fixed him with a glare. "Look, we've lived in this fucking place for six months and there's not one thing that would make anybody visiting think somebody actually called it home."

That, at least, wasn't something Law could deny. The decor was minimal, there were no pictures or paintings or even knick-knacks out - everything past furniture, clothing, and personal items was boxed up in storage and unlikely to be taken out anytime soon.

So when he was coming home from the restaurant and saw a street-corner vendor selling bouquets, he'd bought one on impulse, and the splash of color it added to their stark kitchen was already doing wonders to improve the feel of the place.

Or, at least, it had been until Law and his fucking dark cloud of a personality had stormed into the room.

Fuck.

"I'm going to be on duty until eight or nine," Law threw his next cup of coffee in the microwave for a few seconds before downing it in a similar fashion to the first. "I'm guessing you'll be gone by then?"

"Yeah, we've got a big banquet tomorrow…with the holiday season coming up we're booked almost every night and everybody else is too fucking incompetent to actually make a list of how much food we're going to need for each one," he rubbed his temples and rolled his shoulders back, even that simple motion leaving him feeling more tired than before.

"Well. I'll see you when I see you," Law finished off the coffee and threw his cup in the sink, going to shrug his coat on. He barely spared Sanji a glance before he grabbed his keys and left the apartment, and his only look back was reserved for a rather nasty glare toward the flowers.

Sanji dropped his head into his hands and groaned, wondering when both of them had become so consumed by work that anybody viewing them from the outside wouldn't even realize they were together. Law had been pulling night shifts at the hospital lately so his and Sanji's schedules were exact opposites and more often than not they didn't even get to sleep in the same bed together, and Sanji considered himself lucky if he got to have more than a basic conversation with Law about how their respective days had been.

It wasn't healthy, not for either of them and certainly not for their relationship, but it wasn't as if he could do much about it.

He looked at the flowers one last time, leaning in and inhaling to get a whiff of something other than the smell of kitchens and food cooking, and dragged himself off to bed before he fell asleep at the kitchen table.

000

The next time he remembered the flowers was days later, and when he walked into the kitchen to see the water in the vase gone and the flowers wilted and drying up because he'd gotten too busy to remember to refill it, he somehow felt it was only appropriate.

After all, if he couldn't even keep fucking flowers alive, what hope did he have of maintaining a functioning relationship?

He chucked the flowers in the garbage and left the empty vase on the table, waiting for Law to notice it and gloat that he'd been right all along.

It didn't happen.

But that didn't really make Sanji feel any better.

000

He was woken up a couple of nights later, before his one day off (and even that had taken a lot of negotiating and ended with him calling Zeff a few rather unkind names before the shitty old man had finally relented), by the feeling of the mattress dipping and a warm arm sliding around his waist.

"Hey," Law murmured, and Sanji hummed and pressed back into the heat of his body. He smelled clean, not like the lingering odor of the hospital, and his skin was still shower-damp where it pressed against Sanji's own.

"Hey," Sanji replied, turning over so he could look at the other man. "Thought you'd be at work."

"I called in," Law replied, a tiny smirk on his lips. "I know it's your day off and I…there are enough other surgeons at the hospital that they can cover my shift, though if there's an emergency…" he sighed, and Sanji nodded in understanding.

Law saved lives, after all, and he'd never try to hoard his time if it was a literal matter of life and death.

"I get it, don't worry," he wrapped his arms around Law and nuzzled against his neck, feeling a warmth bloom in his chest both at the fact that Law had remembered it was his day off and that he'd actually taken steps to make sure they could spend it together. "Thank you."

"I've realized you were right," Law added, something strangely serious in his eyes. "About this not feeling like home…and about us not making any effort to actually maintain this relationship."

Sanji nodded, his throat feeling strangely tight. Law rarely made an effort toward anything if he wasn't serious about it, after all, so this…it spoke volumes.

"That's going to change," he promised firmly. Sanji leaned in to kiss him, feeling Law wrap him up in a tight embrace, and somehow, he knew they'd make it work.

000

His feelings were only confirmed the next morning when he padded out into the kitchen to start breakfast and saw the vase back on the table, filled with water and a fresh bouquet of flowers.

Humming to himself, he started cooking, only stopping when Law stumbled over and wrapped him up from behind for a lazy 'good morning' kiss.

He didn't say anything about the flowers and Law didn't offer, but from that day forward, the vase was never empty again.