When Law came in Kuzan was already in the Baratie's private room, legs on the table and nose in his phone. Law would judge him for being unsanitary in a food establishment if the guy didn't have such great legs.
"Hello," Law said, "you wanted to talk?"
Kuzan put down his phone and sighed. That didn't bode well.
"Oh, hi Kuzan," fuck, Nami was there too, hands full of huge, deliciously-smelling bags. That damn freeloader, shamelessly exploiting Sanji's foolish weakness for women like that. "I didn't know you were here. Hi Traffy!" and then there was a lot of cheek kissing happening next to Law. He quietly wanted to die. "Where's Robin?"
"Home, with a sprained ankle."
"Oh? What happened?"
"She was too tired and couldn't concentrate properly. Made a misstep. Foolish woman," Kuzan said, unadulterated warmth in his voice.
"Does she need any help?" Nami worried.
"No. I'm staying with her for now, until she can properly walk again. I'm used to carrying her around anyway," Kuzan grinned and winked at Nami, and with a start Law realized he was actually still rather young — maybe in his mid-thirties. Very good-looking, too, in a roguish, happy-go-lucky way. Whenever he talked to Law, he always looked so cold and serious, it was unusual to see him that smiley.
"You take good care of her, mister, or I'll come up and personally kick your fine ass," Nami declared.
"Promises, promises," Kuzan said. They both laughed.
"Ahem," Law pointedly coughed. "Wasn't there something you wanted to tell me?"
"Yes. I have news about your Doffy. Sakazuki says they found — fragments," Kuzan said, instantly back behind his cool mask.
Fragments.
That didn't bode well, indeed. Still…
"How do you even know the commissioner?" Law couldn't help but wonder.
"It's personal," Kuzan said, that cold look on his face, and Law didn't dare pry any further.
"They say Doffy's dead," Law told Rocinante. He didn't even take off his jacket first.
"Do I have to identify the body?" Rocinante said, slowly wiping his tomato-stained hands. He thought he sounded calm, but, judging by Law's worried look, he probably didn't.
"There's no body yet. Just — fragments. They are looking for it now."
"I see. Can you… can you please leave me alone for a while?"
Law decided he'd take Bepo on a walk, teach him to fetch. As soon as they were out of the door, Rocinante started laughing.
He laughed and laughed and laughed until he cried.
What are you planning, Doffy? he thought when he was finally able to breathe again.
His brother was unkillable. Rocinante wouldn't believe he was gone until he saw his cold dead body, and maybe not even after that. And Law knew that just as well as Rocinante did.
Was he really trying to feed him that ridiculous white lie to make him feel safer? Was Sakazuki really trying to feed that lie to two people who knew Doffy best? If he wanted to use them for bait, he really, really should have been more honest, or at least more inventive.
A finger or two meant nothing. You could cut off Doffy's head, and it would still clamp its teeth on your throat and tear it out.
Apparently Rocinante had been behaving weirdly after the news, because one night, Law emerged in his bedroom door, coughed for bravery, and said,
"Roci, I, um."
Rocinante smiled. Law always made him smile, his cute, silly, wonderful child.
"I. I can see that you're — there's something — I, I think you should try, um, therapy. I think… I think you really need it, to be honest."
"That I do," Rocinante grinned, painful love rising inside him at the sight of the childish hope on Law's face. "But I don't think I can do it right now. I'll have to talk about things I'd rather forget, and… I'm not feeling strong enough for that. Not just yet."
"Take all the time you need," Law fervently nodded, his precious child, his savior twice over. "I'll be there for you. I'll always be there for you."
And as he hugged Rocinante, clinging to his scrawny back, Rocinante dearly hoped it could be enough.
Therapy, huh.
Rocinante opened the strange contraption Law got him. Apparently, it was a laptop. Well, laptops looked different back in his day; this one was so thin, it looked like it barely had anything inside. How did it even work? Rocinante was still reluctant to touch it for fear that he might break it.
The Internet looked different. The city looked different. Law looked different, so tall and handsome with his silly rebellious tattoos and his earrings that looked just like Doffy's, laughing with his friends and kissing his boy, and Rocinante wasn't there to see him grow.
Compared to him, Rocinante barely changed. He just got older and wearier; he could see it very clearly, now that there were mirrors again.
He typed up a search query. Even Google looked different.
Rocinante looked through the search results, habitually dismissing the ones that looked uninformative. The years with Doffy taught him intel was king, so he always did thorough research before making any remotely important decisions. Back then, one wrong step could cost him his head, or Doffy's. Now things weren't remotely as drastic, but old habits died hard.
In the living room, there was a small black speaker. Law talked to it, and it talked back. Law also had a small vacuum that moved on its own, a watch that measured his heart rate and berated him for lazing around, and a freaking dog camera with barking alerts so that Law could talk to Bepo whenever he was away. The camera even tossed treats. It was crazy.
Somewhere over the years when Rocinante was in the asylum, all of that became the norm, and Rocinante missed it.
Therapy: "The use of psychological methods to help a person change behavior and overcome problems in desired ways."
Problems. Rocinante had a lot of those, and a lot of behaviors he'd like to change.
Doffy leaned in to lick the blood and moans out of his mouth, ever hungry, ever greedy. And Rocinante kissed back like he couldn't get enough, desperately fucking back on his dick.
And therapy was supposed to help with that. Alright then.
Damn, it was hard to adjust to freedom when all he'd seen for thirteen years were the asylum walls and his brother's face.
There were people around, far too many people. Too much clamor, and too many bright colors. New gadgets, new words, new ways of thinking. Rocinante read the news and felt like a fossil.
Law tasked Rocinante with taking care of Bepo while he was away at Harvard; clever child. It gave Rocinante something to do with himself, and that fluffy cloud was real good for the soul.
He'd take Bepo for walks to the Central Park and spend whole days there, taking in the burgeoning greenery. It felt like in his thirteen years away, he had never seen the color green once.
People came up to him from time to time, asking to pet his dog and/or get his number. Rocinante never said no the former.
"I'm in a relationship," he would say to the latter, and usually, it was enough.
Law worried, of course. His kid was such a worrywart, with that unnecessarily huge heart of his. Rocinante wished Law'd have been a little more selfish, a little more callous. Law didn't tell him much about those thirteen years, spent alone in Doffy's household, but what little he did say was enough, along with the huge bags he had under his eyes when Rocinante first saw him after the asylum, and the way Law treated him like Rocinante was a Murano glass figurine.
Now those bags were gone; Rocinante made sure to kiss them away every night when Law went to bed. Law didn't even protest his sappy affections very much, and that was how Rocinante knew just how much his kid had missed him.
Rocinante'd never have thought he'd feel guilty over his kid loving him this much. He never wanted to be Law's idol, and he never wanted his kid to be a martyr. All he ever wanted was for Law to be happy, and the kid hadn't been, until that boy of his came along to drag him on a titillating journey of spontaneous sex and casual heartbreak.
And now that Rocinante was back, Law kept fretting. Once again, Rocinante was reminded of Doffy and the way he'd so obsessively make Rocinante stay home at all times whenever Doffy wasn't with him, back when Doffy was around Law's age.
Usually, Rocinante never talked back to Doffy, but that one time he had to. He, too, had his own pride, and the way Doffy was so carelessly grinding it into dust hurt, quite a bit.
"I can be useful," he said. "Let me help."
He was very clumsy, and he wasn't much of a fighter, but he wasn't useless.
Doffy looked at him, sunglasses off, and Rocinante could fully see how truthful he was being when he told him:
"You help enough as it is, my heart. You don't need to fight, not anymore," he trailed his fingers down Rocinante's trembling throat and moved his hips, and Rocinante sighed for him, the way he always did, "now that I have enough grunts for that. You're an officer, not a grunt. My favorite officer," he bent down for a moment to kiss the moans off his lips, "do your work," Rocinante threw his legs up on Doffy's shoulders. He nearly hit him in the eye with his heel, but he didn't care, he barely even noticed. He needed more, more, more, faster, deeper, he needed more of Doffy, now, "by my side," Doffy stopped moving for a while to kiss his bony ankle, and Rocinante keened in wordless protest, "so that I can always see that you're safe and sound."
Rocinante came before Doffy did, without so much as a hand on his dick.
Doffy took his sweet time finishing. Rocinante was sensitive and uncomfortable, and he just wanted to sleep, but he didn't protest. When Doffy finally came and just about fell on him — without pulling out, of course, — Rocinante just held him and listened as his breathing evened out.
He listened, and thought he'd do just about anything for his big brother, even if it meant letting him casually wipe his feet on Rocinante's torn, tattered pride.
Just about anything, huh.
He really, really should have known how Doffy was always so full of surprises.
In a month's time after that night, he was talking to an old, scarred cop, his voice dead, telling the cop all about Doffy's grand new plans. In a couple of years' time, he was chain-smoking cigarettes, grimacing at the vile taste and lighting a new cigarette the moment the old one burned out, because at least the cigarettes were a distraction from all the cramping.
And then he was twenty-six, and his body was all red and blue — his bony, clumsy body, so useless in a fight, so untouchable to anyone but Donquixote Doflamingo. And he was bleeding all over the bed — Doffy's bed, the one he stained with his sweat and come so many times as he came undone for Doffy, just for Doffy, only ever for Doffy. And his big brother was looking at him through his sunglasses, and Rocinante didn't even need to see his eyes, because Doffy's mouth and jaws told him in excruciating detail just how deep it cut Doffy, that thing Rocinante did.
Deep, deep down to his heart. The heart he probably didn't even have, or at least that was what Rocinante thought sometimes, watching Doffy do business and talk to people — but then they'd come home, and Doffy'd take him to bed, and in bed, he'd call Rocinante—
My heart—
—and kiss his lips, and bite them all over, and fall asleep with his arms locked around Rocinante like he was afraid to let him go even for a second, like someone might come and take him away any moment — the way those social workers did, back when Doffy was eight and Rocinante was six.
My golden darling, my Roci, my heart.
His heart, now torn and discarded and bleeding all over Doffy's large bed.
His heart, now breaking into pieces, because of the way Doffy's mouth kept twitching and twisting as Doffy silently regarded him from his big gilded armchair, Rocinante's blood staining his shirt red.
At first, Law kept fussing and fretting, badgering Rocinante to stay home and never set foot outside, not even for some Bepo walkies.
"Do you really think that'd stop Doffy if he really wanted me back?" Rocinante asked good-naturedly.
Law frowned and mumbled something that obviously meant "no," even if it was worded rather differently. He, too, knew not even all the guns and cameras in his new apartment would have stopped Doffy, even on the run as he was.
Sakazuki's people would, though. They were rather inconspicuous, Rocinante had to give them that. But there was quite a number of them, and they really did seem to be good enough that Doffy wouldn't risk it, for now.
"How'd you even manage to secure that man's help?" Rocinante marveled.
"It wasn't me," Law grumbled, clearly unhappy that he had to rely on someone else to help protect his precious Roci. "It was Luffy and Kuzan."
"Didn't you say he's a ballet dancer?.." Rocinante wondered, and then remembered that rumor he heard back in the day, when Sakazuki was still a small fry but already quickly rising through the ranks, quickly enough that Doffy decided to watch him a little bit more closely. Now that rumor would certainly explain things…
"He is," Law griped. "Somehow, he knows the commissioner. But he just won't tell how," the kid looked so indignant at not knowing something. Rocinante laughed and ruffled his messy hair.
"Anyway, that means I can go out more or less safely. Of course I'll be careful, baby bunny," he solemnly promised when Law opened his mouth to chew him out some more, "I'll do my best to stay in public spaces and avoid deserted places. But I've spent enough time cooped up in a concrete box, don't you think so? And I'll be taking Bepo with me, for protection."
Law laughed so hard he got tears in his eyes, just as Rocinante planned.
"That furball is useless," he complained, "he can't protect shit, he just loves everyone. Hell, if Doffy ever came up to you in the street and tried to drag you away, Bepo'd just wag his tail and slobber all over him."
Indeed, the small Samoyed puppy was essentially a useless little ball of fluff, love and drool. That was why he helped so much, Rocinante privately thought. It was nice, to love and be loved without any demands or pretense, just the way you were.
And Bepo did seem to love him almost as much as he did Law. He'd jump up on him and put his snout in his lap and drool all over him, and Rocinante would kiss his nose and give him scratchies for hours. Bepo certainly reveled in the attention, and Rocinante—
For Rocinante, the ever-smiling white cloud was a lifeline in a floating world with nothing to hold on to.
He had no friends and no family, except for his precious monster. He had no work, no legal past, and no future. Even his little baby Law was now all grown up, all healthy and strong, with his own life and his own friends and his own wretched love to cry over.
Thank God for dogs, who just loved you the way you were without expecting anything in return. Wasn't that just the best therapy?
They went shopping before Law departed for school. At first it was supposed to be just Law and him, but apparently Law's friends got tipped off about his plans.
"Your taste in clothes makes me want to cry," a very red, very beautiful girl accused Law with great vigor. "I shudder to think of how you'd dress this fine ass!" She winked at Rocinante. He grinned back, pleased.
"Indeed," a tall black man said, looking him up and down. It wasn't often that Rocinante met people almost as tall as him. "Don't get me wrong, Traffy, I like your style, but somehow I don't think it's gonna fit Donquixote. I think I know just the thing for you, man."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Kuzan?" the foxy red girl gave the tall man a sly smile.
"Why, I think I am," Kuzan breezily responded. They laughed. A stunning black-haired woman quietly giggled under her breath.
"Sorry, Rocinante," she said, "they are ridiculous."
"Indeed they are," Rocinante said, "I like them. So, what are we waiting for?"
"Why did you even blab out my plans to them?!" Law berated his boy off to the side.
"What, was it a secret?" the boy blinked. "Sorry, Traffy! Ha ha ha!"
"You're not sorry at all! Quit laughing and get them off my ass! It was supposed to be our time together, Roci and I, without any unwanted fashion experts!"
"But Nami's so good at fashion," the boy blinked again, "she always helps me choose my shit. Even Jinbe always says it's the good stuff. She'll have your Important Guy looking bomb in no time!"
"Aw, stop it, you're making me blush," Nami was indeed blushing and hiding her face. Law narrowed his eyes.
"And then we'll take you to all the best places around! Traffy's such a nerd, he only ever parties with books. But I, the Great Party Animal, will graciously show you around and make sure you have all the fun!" a long-nosed, bohemian-looking young black man bragged.
"I'd rather just sit down and have some coffee, thanks," Rocinante grinned.
"Well, then I, Coffee Lover Extraordinaire, will take you to all the best coffee spots! Ready your body, bro, because that coffee's gonna blow you off your feet!"
Rocinante laughed. Damn, he liked this crowd.
"Fine," Law gave up with a heavy sigh. His boy watched him with a smile.
"You scowl too much, Traffy," he said. "Stop pouting."
He gave Law a brief kiss, and such a heady, glowing smile that Rocinante almost saw why his kid was so crazy about that boy.
And then they were off to dress up Rocinante, and he got to spend hours in front of the tall mirrors, choosing all the things he liked. He, not Doffy.
He ended up with a pile of Levi's and Tom Ford shirts. There were new dress shoes on his feet, there was a new haircut on his head, and there was a barely-familiar man in the mirror, staring at him from under the short blond bangs.
He looked nothing like that fifteen-year-old kid who loved cotton candy and worshipped his big brother. He looked nothing like Doflamingo's favorite whore, all painted up like one of Baby 5's dolls. He looked nothing like that Donquixote officer, with his diplomatic smiles and uncomfortably tight pants.
Who was he, that man in the mirror, sporting relaxed blue jeans and an untucked white cotton shirt and an unfamiliar look in his eyes?
Rocinante didn't know him, but he was very eager to meet him.
"Hello," he said. "How's tricks?"