pairing: coradad! rocifather!
summary: "do you think, in your modern au, law is lowkey rich? like. not immediately. but like because his parents were so rich and died that like. he gets $$$$$$$ once he turns 18? but until then lives with corazon eating dollar tree cup of noodles and lives in an apartment that shakes when the train comes by? cuz i started wondering that after reading FruitPunched and now im like. damn. that would explain some things.." - anonymous on tumblr
words: 400
a comprehensive corpus of the hazards of smoking while class representative
(rocinante intermission)
"Oi, I have money now. Let me split the rent with you."
Rocinante immediately reacts with the greatest offense. "How dare you, Law. You absolute toddler of a boy—" (thirty-one to Law's eighteen, basically an older brother, but no one mentions that), "—how dare you insult me like this, put that money back in your piggy bank and keep it for an emergency, you hear me? Like when you're in college, and you meet someone, and it's on you to be a gentleman and pay for a love hotel—"
"Roci."
"I know, I know, of course I trust you because I know you'd introduce them to me before you try anything—"
"Love hotels are a waste of money," his high school delinquent says flatly, as though it were obvious. "There are bathrooms in every seedy club."
"The point is," he says loudly over Law, before he can die of heart failure, "I take care of you, not the other way around. The gall. The sheer nerve. I would demand satisfaction on the fields of combat if I wasn't about to faint, Law."
And then he goes off to squat on their grody little balcony that can only fit one small collapsible clothes-drying rack, chain-smoking and indignantly petting the stray cats that slink around the back alley they live over. Subway tracks are built just beyond the alley, and the train comes right on time, brightly lit windows crammed with passengers blurring by. The cardboard-thin walls of their apartment trembles.
After a while, when the hot water boiler chimes to a stop, Law compresses himself onto the balcony with two chicken cup ramen. Rocinante takes his, because Law made it and he hasn't the pride to refuse. Also, he is hungry. They squeeze together on the precariously built assortment of wooden planks nailed together, slurping down noodles and counting the trains that rumble past their cramped neighborhood of utility poles and dumpsters that stink to high hell.
Law empties the last few clingy noodles for a stray alleycat to lick up. He touches Rocinante's arm, a hand clenched persistently on the sleeve. "At least let me buy dinner every once in a while. I'm sick of cheap ramen. Let's get the good stuff."
And Roci can agree to that.