"Say, Law," Rocinante told him in the evening over Facetime, "can you come over for a couple of days? I understand that you need to study, but—"
"What happened? Is it Bepo? Oh god, he's sick, isn't he. He missed me so much he got sick, and now he's gonna die."
Rocinante opened his mouth. Law blanched.
"Fuck," he said, "it's Doffy. He contacted you."
"Well—"
"Stay where you are, I'm coming for you! No, it's not safe — I'm telling Roronoa to get you right now! I'll be there in the morning! Just hold on, Roci!"
Rocinante couldn't hold it in anymore. He laughed.
"Shh, baby bunny," he said, "no one's dying anytime soon. Calm down and listen to me. Oooh, Bepo sends kisses. Shall I scratch him for you?"
"Please do," Law said, still breathing heavily. "So what is it?"
"Ah, you made it," Rocinante wiped his hands on a towel and hugged Law tight. "What did you tell them at school?"
"Family matters," Law said, grumpy and even more disheveled than usual. "Did you make me come all the way here just to feed me dinner?"
"That, too," Rocinante grinned. "C'mon, let's eat."
The dinner — didn't turn out very well. But Law still ate everything on his plate, and asked for seconds.
"There's something I have to tell you," Rocinante said when Law looked stuffed enough, and showed him the small, wrinkled piece of paper with just three words on it—
"nest f3 ok"
—in that familiar, whimsical handwriting.
"He'll kill you," Law said, pale and scared and looking almost eight again. "He's a terrible man. You know what he's capable of. Remember what he did to you! He's absolutely unpredictable. You can't trust him for a second. Don't, Roci. Please."
"Don't I know it," Rocinante said easily. "But it's what I want. Don't worry, baby bunny, I can take care of myself."
"Don't call me that," Law said, aghast. "Do you really want to leave me again?"
"I'm never leaving you again," Rocinante promised him, honest and solemn. "Remember, there's always Facetime. I'll forever be with you in the spirit."
"He won't let you use Facetime. Digital communications are not that hard to trace," there was such despair on Law's face, Rocinante couldn't help but hug him tight.
"Well, he'll just have to deal with it. I demand the right to tell my baby bunny goodnight," Roci ruffled his hair, laughing at Law's wrath.
"I said, don't call me that! It's undignified! I'm an established adult man! Ow!"
Doffy was risking a lot, coming back to New York like that, with the cops still on the lookout.
Sakazuki might be almost as bad as Doffy, but he was also almost as sharp as Doffy. There was no chance in hell he could possibly think the Donquixote business was really dead and buried, and the head of that business was a big prize. All of Doffy's connections, all of Doffy's trade secrets, all the intel he had, all the strings he pulled — all of that was a veritable treasure trove to someone like Sakazuki.
His cops were still on the lookout, some of his best people on the task. They were looking and watching, carefully watching the people who used to be close to the target — particularly Trafalgar and that other Donquixote.
That other Donquixote, who could so easily snitch on Doffy, again. He had the time, warned in advance as he was; he had the connections, too, thanks to Law's friends — well, now his own friends as well, Rocinante supposed.
He had Doffy in the palm of his hand. All he needed to do was clench it.
Doffy really was remarkably cocksure, thinking for one moment that Rocinante wouldn't.
Doing that, coming back here, personally, just to maybe, possibly, hopefully pick him up, if Rocinante came at all, after those thirteen years… It was very much unlike Donquixote Doflamingo. And that was how Rocinante knew things would likely work out.
At the end of the day, for all that they had their differences, his brother really knew him best. He didn't spend thirteen years opening his heart and soul with his knives for nothing. It was a very intimate thing, a knife. It really showed you the true colors of the person on the other end.
After thirteen years of taking out his own pain on him, his brother wanted Rocinante to — up and go back to him, just like that. Willingly. On his own.
Apparently, mutilating his body in so many ways was not enough for Doffy. Now he demanded his soul as well, that demon of a man. And he wanted it freely given, too, so that he could rightly call Rocinante his in all ways.
Doffy, that damn control freak.
He took everything from him, and he still wanted more. He wanted all of Rocinante, and, most ridiculously, he expected Rocinante to just — go gentle into Doffy's open arms, like they never raised a knife to his skin, like they never shot a gun at a random passerby just because Doffy was feeling cross, like they never held other people in their bed, the bed Rocinante had to sleep in later in the night, with all their bodily fluids still soaking the sheets wet.
Rocinante snorted.
Well, he did always come for Doffy, and didn't his brother know that oh so well.
Rocinante'd scream that out loud for Doffy in the night, and meet him halfway in the asylum bed. Doffy'd get up and leave before sunrise, and Rocinante'd cling to him in his slumber.
Doffy'd lick the blood out of his mouth, and Rocinante'd kiss him right back.
Doffy really was ridiculously cocksure and not a little bit insane, to expect Rocinante to just come back to him after these thirteen years.
The thing was, Rocinante wasn't very sane himself, and a heart couldn't very well thrive away from the body.
"This is wrong," Law told him in a last-ditch attempt to dissuade him. "He's your brother. It's horrible, what he forced you to do. It's all kinds of wrong. Do you really want to go back to that — relationship?"
"I know it's wrong," Rocinante told him, smiling. His baby bunny was so cute when he got all angry like that. "I know what he did, and I'm more or less sure I know why he did it. I know why I can't let him go, and I know just how to fix it. The thing is, I don't want to."
Law just looked at him, angry and helpless.
"I fully realize what I'm doing, and I know just how unhealthy it is. But it's what I choose, knowingly. It's what I want. Baby bunny," he kissed Law on the top of his head, the way he always did ever since Law was eight, "let your old man make his bad choices. At least they're mine now, not Doffy's."
"Are you really so sure?" Law venomously said. "This is your Stockholm syndrome talking, not you."
Technically, it wasn't exactly the right term, but the general message was on point, so Rocinante decided it wasn't the right time to drill down into the details.
"My Stockholm syndrome is me," he patiently said. "All the things I did, all the things I chose, and all the things that were chosen for me. They are me now. Everything that makes me up; all my traumas, all my issues, everything that's wrong with me. That, too, is me."
"Well, get rid of them!" Law demanded. "That damn cancer was also me, but you made sure I got rid of it!"
Rocinante laughed.
"Well, Doffy's not killing me like your cancer was," he said.
"Yet," Law grumbled.
"True, true. But I don't think he's killing me anytime soon. I know him very well, Law, better than you ever have. And I think I can manage him, now that we're on more or less equal ground."
"No one is on equal ground with Doffy," Law insisted. "I've never taken you for a fool, but this is just stupid. You can't control him, Roci. No one can."
"Hmm," Rocinante said breezily, "not true. I have leverage."
"What kind of leverage?!" Law cried. "No one can possibly make Doffy do anything he doesn't want to do!"
"I can. And no, I'm not telling you. It's a se~cret~"
"Argh! Cough it up, now! Roci! I'm serious!"
"f3."
Rocinante could almost hear Doffy's smooth, mellow voice, talking to his new business partner.
"So you're saying this is the good shit," he said with just enough doubt in his voice.
"What do you take me for, Donquixote!" the man bristled. Although as bald as a coot, he had a prodigious black mustache under his nose. It went all wiggly when the man got fired up like that. "I take pride in my work. Besides, no one in their right mind would mess with you. Trust me, this shit is worth the money."
"Hmm," Doffy said, "alright then. I trust you, my dear partner." His voice clearly spelled just what was going to happen to the ‛stache man if he failed that trust. "I'm expecting the first shipment on the agreed date."
"Deal," the ‛stache man said, and they shook hands.
"Pleasure doing business with you," Doffy sharply grinned.
Un placer hacer negocios contigo.
That language had always rolled so sweetly off his tongue, Rocinante could listen to him for hours. And Doffy knew it, too; he knew it very well.
He'd talk to Rocinante in Spanish whenever he was particularly pleased, or particularly horny. It was always their special language, their bed language; the memory of their childhood's magic land Doffy so loved.
Rocinante hadn't heard Doffy talk to him in Spanish for over thirteen years now.
La fecha del 3 de octubre, Doffy's voice told him in his head, don't make me wait, darling.
Therapy, huh.
Years and years of therapy, of dismantling himself to the very core and assembling his psyche back, of rooting out all the unfortunate desires that grew in his soul, of opening all the festering abscesses, of taking everything that got broken about him and wasn't set right, and breaking it again, so that one day it might heal the right way.
So that one day he might think of Doffy, and feel nothing but distant sadness.
"So that you could maybe meet someone good one day," Law hopefully told him. "Someone worthy of you."
But Rocinante didn't want someone worthy. He wanted Doffy.
Of course it was the tangled mass of his defense mechanisms talking over his bottomless well of trauma. Rocinante knew it very well, and accepted it for what it was.
But he didn't want to be sane and healthy. He wanted Doffy, like he always had, more than anything, more than anyone, more than any drug he had ever tried.
Obviously, it was a very stupid choice. But it was his, and wasn't that so very new and refreshing?
It turned out Rocinante didn't forget all the things Doffy taught him, drilled into him with his heavy fists and his sharp words.
The cops Sakazuki set on him weren't even all that good, apparently. Rocinante lost them in about five minutes, as noticeable as he was with his height.
And now, here he was, the Nest staring down at him like a doddery, kooky grandma. That old, smelly, nostalgic place Doffy so liked to use for his dealings long before he got all big.
It wasn't actually called the Nest, of course. The neon sign said, The Family Place Hotel. It unevenly blinked in the wet, foggy darkness of the autumn night.
Rocinante didn't know the place was still in business. Doffy probably kept it afloat, both for cover and out of sheer nostalgia.
How are you even planning to get out of here, Doffy, he thought, what are you going to do about those SWAT guys waiting behind the corner?
He opened the door. It squeaked, a bird's cry in the chilly night. Rocinante stepped inside.
"Excuse me," he said to the front desk clerk, "I'm here to meet someone named Olly Kerr."
On October 3, at two minutes to midnight, Rocinante pressed the handle of the room door.
Doffy was sitting on a ratty, sorry-looking bed, his clasped hands under his chin. Rocinante moved soundlessly, the way he learned when they were still snot-nosed kids selling molly and yayo, lifting wallets and hiding from the cops in the dark, putrid alleys. But by the position of Doffy's body, by the tension in his arms, by the frown on his lips he knew Doffy heard him in the hallway.
"Took you long enough," Doffy said without turning his head. "I haven't got time to waste, you know."
Rocinante smiled, widely, helplessly, and then he started to laugh.
"Shut the fuck up," Doffy said and got up. He walked right up to Rocinante, somehow looking down on him despite Rocinante being almost as tall, and pressed him into the wall.
He kissed his lips and bit them all over, and put his hands into his hair and all over his back like he didn't want to let him go for a single second, and that was how Rocinante knew Doffy wasn't sure at all whether he'd come or not.
But of course he came. He always did.
"My heart," Doffy said, without a single sound leaving his lips. Rocinante only knew what he said because he saw Doffy tell him the exact same thing so many times before, for so many years of hell.
"Tu corazón," he agreed. "Solo tuyo."
He took off Doffy's sunglasses and carefully put them on the scratched table by his side. Doffy didn't even say anything about him touching his sunglasses. He was staring at Rocinante like he was trying to eat him up with his eyes.
"Honestly," Rocinante said, "it hasn't even been that long."
Doffy narrowed his eyes, his peculiar eyes: one blue, one reddish brown. He grabbed Rocinante by the nape of his neck and growled:
"If you betray me one more time…"
"Then don't do anything that might make me betray you," Rocinante offered lightly, and pushed Doffy's gun against Doffy's own temple. Brother didn't even notice Rocinante pulling it out, and that was how Rocinante knew he would agree.
"You dare?" Doffy grinned. There was blood in that grin.
"I dare," Rocinante smiled back, his heart easy at last. The gun barrel kissed Doffy's temple one last time, and then Rocinante pulled it away — away, away, and all the way to his own head.
He cocked the gun and smiled even wider. Ah, so that was what freedom really felt like.
"Do we have an agreement?" he asked.
Doffy ground his teeth.
"Fine," he spat.
"Deal," Rocinante said, and leaned in to kiss him, the gun still at his own temple.
He thought he tasted blood.
The kiss went on for a long, long time.
"Where to, then?" Rocinante asked when Doffy pulled away and stuck his palm in the back pocket of Rocinante's jeans.
"Not telling," Doffy grinned, wide and white. "Snitches don't get to ask, darling."
He put his sunglasses back on with his free hand. They glinted red in the dim light. There were steps thundering on the staircase, getting closer and closer.
And there it was, that old familiar feeling of hanging upside down, two hundred feet from the ground and ready to fall.
Rocinante threw his arm around Doffy's waist and carelessly stuffed the gun into Doffy's pants.
"Let's go, then," he said.
In Spanish, Tu corazón. Solo tuyo means, Your heart. Just yours.
Doflamingo and Rocinante's story continues in a short, silly sequel titled Find New Gold that I'll be putting up in a day or two. Overall, there will be at least four doflaroci sequels.
Law and Luffy's story continues in a long-ish sequel titled Fireworks I'll be putting up somewhere in late August… or early September… hopefully =_=
I'll be posting the rest of the stories on my AO3 only, because (a) the FFN posting system is brutal, and (b) I'm honestly not sure they allow that much explicit porn here on FFN.The link to my AO3 is in my profile, appropriately mangled to suit FFN's little quirks.
And now for the obligatory warning: coming back to your abuser and living happily ever after only works in romance fiction. If someone abuses you and won't listen to your words without you threatening suicide, the best thing you can do for yourself is leave them and move on. You can seek help if you need it; there are people who will help. Remember: you don't deserve the abuse, be it verbal or physical. No one deserves the abuse, not even people like Doffy. It's justice bad guys deserve, not abuse.
If you ever find yourself in a situation like that, please please remember: you can do better. You can meet someone who will genuinely care about your happiness and wellbeing. You don't need a person who thinks it's alright to wrong you; you're far too good for that shit, even if you don't think so at the moment.