Chapter 18
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, but Kyra was my idea.
Beta'd by Tomas the Betrayer.
Law scrambles a large group of burly marines with an absent flick of his wrist. At the moment his attention is focused through the pouring rain on his magician as she mows down soldiers like they are nothing. That does not mean that he likes having to engage in a fight such as this in the middle of what might possibly shape up to be a cyclone, but Law supposes that he can't exactly tell the Marines to piss off because of a little thing like bad weather. Luckily there isn't so much as a spark of electricity in the air; only an obscene amount of rain and wind that is approaching brutal.
In the weeks since her little disappearing act, Kyra has been especially brutal in battle. It is a perfect contrast to her almost docile manner around himself and his crew. Two more New World islands have come and gone without major incident, aside from the villagers at that last one trying to steal Bepo to make him their personal god. They have encountered pirates and Navy personnel alike, always coming out the victor due in large part to the girl's ability to protect and fight all at once. It's abnormal the amount of Marines that have just happened upon them lately, here in the second part of the Grand Line where the World Government's hold is tentative at best. Law rather thinks this is due more to the presence of his magician than his own renown - especially after the article that showed up in the newspaper three days ago.
Fire Fist Ace has finally made a reappearance into the world, letting all and sundry know that he is once more among the living by single-handedly sacking a Marine base on some island not far from Amazon Lily. At his side was Straw Hat Luffy, seemingly recovered from the physical trauma heaped upon him at Marineford. While reading about the duo's exploits had proven amusing, what really caught his eye about this article had been the report that Fire Fist and Straw Hat's continued life was the sole work of the pirate Demon Witch Kyra. Her bounty picture had been provided, along with the reward for her live capture and the information that she was known to be traveling with the Heart Pirates.
This has obviously painted a gigantic bull's-eye on his magician's forehead, but the Surgeon of Death is only a trifle concerned. Kyra is without a doubt quite capable of taking care of herself, and with the Heart Pirates watching her back she should be fine as long as she doesn't do anything stupid - like go on another mysterious little field trip without his permission.
The feared pirate ambles over to the girl in question, who has her hand fisted in the last remaining Marine's hair. She has forced the man to his knees and is tilting his head back at a dangerous angle as she speaks to him in a soft, deadly voice. The soldier is visibly shaking, all Navy pride having fled as he looks upon the face of his death dripping poisonous words in his ear. Law positions himself close enough to distinguish their conversation over the wind and rain.
"...I know you're full of shit. It's pointless to lie. You're not just taking orders from the Fleet Admiral anymore. Who issued the newest warrant for my capture?"
"It was the Fleet Admiral!" the Marine shouts almost defiantly; this would be much more impressive if his bottom lip weren't shaking as badly as his voice. "Fleet Admiral Sakazuki! He ordered us to capture you, scum! Why he has us wasting the time instead of just killing you like you deserve isn't my business!"
Law frowns, the man's words niggling at him. Stepping up to stand next to his magician, the pirate captain slides the blade of his nodachi into the captive's shoulder. His victim screams at the pain and attempts to pull away, only to be stopped by the hold Kyra has on his hair.
"Akainu is Fleet Admiral?" the surgeon asks lightly, as though inquiring about the weather while attending a refined tea party. "What happened to Sengoku?"
The man spits at him. Kyra puts a magic-encased hand through his ribs and grabs hold of something that he obviously needs to continue living, if the way her victim rushes to answer is any indication.
"R-retired! After Marineford! Retired!"
Law watches as Kyra's face takes on a stony quality that would be immensely frightening to most. He observes as her eyes change from blue to black in a blink, right before she pulls her hand from the marine's ribcage and uses it to tear his head from his shoulder. The Dark Doctor raises an eyebrow at her when she lets the body fall and turns to stalk back to the sub, obviously in a level of rage somewhere beyond furious. He quickly reaches out and grasps her arm above the elbow to stop her.
"What?" his magician snarls at him, sounding much more like the girl he remembers from the auction house on Saboady than she has in the last couple of weeks. Her eyes are still the color of a starless night sky. Something warns him not to push her right now. Kyra is dangerous at the moment, when her fury is boiling over in such a manner. Using his hold on her arm, Law carefully pulls her back to him and slips his arm around her waist, putting his mouth close to her ear so that he can speak low and still be heard over the downpour.
"Why are you upset?" he inquires gently, noting that Kyra is not fighting him. Even in these last few weeks she has not been receptive to his casual proximity, and he had fully expected at least a cursory elbow to the ribs when his arm went around her. That she does nothing even while this angry makes him wonder if perhaps he is actually making progress.
"Sengoku," Kyra replies, her voice harsh with barely restrained fury. "That bastard doesn't deserve a peaceful retirement. Now he'll drop off the freakin' grid and I won't have another chance to kill him. Dammit! Why didn't I just blow him to pieces at Marineford?"
The Heart Pirate captain tilts his head to the side, regarding his reluctant subordinate with a considering gaze. "Killing him is that important to you?"
She jerks away from him, glaring at her feet for a moment before once more turning to stomp away. Law barely hears her muttered affirmative over the storm. "It needs to be done."
The deranged doctor watches her go for only a moment before gesturing for Bepo, Sachi, and Penguin. The four of them then head into the belly of the Navy vessel to search it on the off chance of finding something valuable. Usually the Marines are good for a sizable stash of belli, while rival pirates are the best source of out-and-out treasure. Law plans to raid the ship's infirmary as well. Not like anyone here will miss it.
He has plundered the glass-fronted cabinets along the infirmary walls, sent his crew back topside with the pilfered cash, and is rummaging through a very well-stocked supply closest when he hears it: muffled sobbing. Law straightens up and silently backs out of the closet, head once more tilted to the side as he listens carefully. The voice is feminine; probably muffled due to a hand pressed over the mouth, and quite close at hand.
A few seconds later has the pirate pulling open the door to the ship hospital's tiny bathroom. A woman is huddled within, her back facing the doorway, dressed in the standard uniform of a Navy nurse. She does indeed have both hands clamped over her mouth in a futile attempt to quiet the sounds of her fear. She has not yet noticed him. He can feel the ship shifting dangerously from side to side under his feet. The wind is starting to howl louder than ever as it picks up speed, which means two choices are open to Law: leave this Navy nurse alone on this ship to die or take her with him.
He has no obligation to help her. He despises the Navy. And of course he's in a bit of a time crunch right now. Law knows that as soon as the woman sees him and recognizes him he'll probably have a case of hysterics on his hands, as well. Unfortunately, his mother taught him as a child that men should never hurt women. While this does not usually cause any trouble with his chosen profession, as not many women are strong enough of body or character to withstand the life of a pirate or the career of a Marine, sometimes - like right now - it can be a serious annoyance.
Law steps forward and wraps a hand securely around her upper arm, pulling the nurse upright and spinning her around. Her eyes go huge at the sight of him, but only a choked gasp come forth. Not trusting her to remain so acquiescent, Law immediately gags her with his free hand. She struggles against him until he yanks her out of the tiny space and slams her back up against the nearest wall hard enough to daze her. Planting his free hand right beside her head, the pirate captain leans his face down very near to hers, a dangerous expression dominating his features.
"Don't struggle, and don't scream," he orders quietly, his captive quivering with fear as copious amounts of tears dribble down her cheeks. "I will remove my hand from your mouth. If you cry out in any way I will remove your tongue. Do you understand?"
The nurse gives a whimper and a nod, plainly terrified of the infamous man hovering in her personal space. Law takes his hand from her mouth and grasps her chin. "What is your name?"
"L-L-Lily," is the stuttered reply, the woman's voice shaking just as much as the rest of her body. Quite the nice body, too, when he takes a moment to glance her over. The men are going to be acting like idiots trying to impress this one, due to the plentiful curves and shy demeanor. It's really rather unfortunate that she is a blonde; the boys would be more willing to give her space if she weren't the perfect representation of a number of their fantasies.
"I take it you were the nurse on this ship, Miss Lily?" he asks, having already deduced this from her uniform. "Is there anyone else hiding around that I don't know about?"
The woman doesn't answer, too busy crying and wasting effort trying to free her chin from his grasp. Irritated that she would be stupid enough to ignore him, the Surgeon of Death jerks her face back around so that he can glare at her. "I expect an answer, Miss Lily, and I would advise you not to bother lying. It will not go well for you if you do."
"There's no one else! I promise!" the distraught nurse wails. "The doctor is a soldier, he went to fight with everyone else and told me to hide until he came to get me! There's no one else hiding, please, I promise, don't kill me!"
Law releases her long enough to grab what he wants from the supply closet. Coming back, he finds the woman on the floor, slumped against the wall with her hands over her head as though to protect herself. He reaches down and takes hold of her upper arm again, pulling her gently but firmly to her feet and tugging her along behind him. Predictably, the nurse does not like this a bit, and her crying promptly intensifies as the pirate leads her up on deck where his drenched men are waiting. The storm is getting worse by the minute, the sea turning dangerously choppy and the rain descending upon them in a torrential downpour. The Navy vessel's deck is listing from side to side, dumping sheets of rainwater into the ocean as it rocks. The wind is screaming around them like a dying animal, and Law must shout to make himself heard.
"We're done here! Back to the sub, now!"
Nurse Lily is fighting him now, obviously terrified at the sight of the dead Marines whose bodies have yet to go overboard from the swaying of the ship. She screams and kicks out as he drags her towards the railing closest to his ship, probably trying to trip him. Annoyed, Law stops and throws the woman over his shoulder, one arm wrapped firmly around her legs so that she can't use them to attack him. She settles instead for hitting him repeatedly in the back with her delicate fists, the blows no more damaging than if she lashed him with a wet noodle.
Kyra is on the deck of his sub, her hat gone and her glorious hair whipping around in the wind like live snakes. The sub is pitching and rolling in the increasingly dangerous waters, yet his magician stands there with her bare feet planted, hardly moving an inch until she darts forward with a pissed off scowl on her face. She stops at the sub's railings, directly across from him, and makes a jerky gesture with one hand. The nurse slung over Law's shoulder like a sack of potatoes is yanked away to float through the air until Kyra can grab her arm and turn to hustle her inside.
That burden taken care of, Law steps back to watch his men so that he might be sure they get back on the sub safely. The Navy ship is definately rocking now, the waves around them growing larger and larger with every passing second. Bepo slips when his feet hit the deck of the sub, losing his balance and going sprawling on his stomach to skate across the wet surface. He is quick to get up, however, managing to slip and slide over to the hatch just as Kyra comes back out. The girl shouts at Law, making violent 'get-your-ass-over-here' gestures with her arms as the Dark Doctor carefully climbs to stand atop the railing of the dead Marine's ship. He tosses his bag of loot over first, which Kyra catches without a problem and throws through the still-open hatch. Law removes his cap, stuffs it in a pocket so it won't blow away, and jumps.
The sub pitches.
Away from him.
The Surgeon of Death barely has time to register what is happening, barely has time to hear his magician scream his name before he hits the water.
Kyra doesn't stop to think. She is sprinting for the side of the sub while screaming Law's name, a frantic litany of fuckfuckfuckityfuck running around in her head. In the next instant she has vaulted over the railing and plummets for the sea, a wave coming up to catch her as she falls.
The sun is hidden behind layer upon layer of angry clouds, making the depths of the sea almost pitch black even three feet under the surface. She cannot see a damn thing past her hands in front of her face, cannot see a yellow hoodie anywhere. She needs to do something fast, because the fucking dumbass that is her captain ate a Devil Fruit and is currently sinking like a rock. Kyra wraps her magic around her and teleports, mind stuck on Law so her powers will have a target.
The onyx sphere drops and Kyra whirls in a fast underwater circle with both hands outstretched, reaching and reaching in the hopes of grabbing something. Her grasping fingers close around a cloth-covered, slim thing that might be either an arm or an ankle. Not knowing how deep they are, not knowing for sure if it's Law she's holding or the body of a dead Marine, the sorceress immediately teleports again.
Kyra lands on the sub's deck from too high a drop point and at an awkward angle when the vessel lurches up to meet her. She distinctly hears something give an audible crunch when her shoulder connects with the deck and is only mildly surprised when her left arm goes completely numb. Her passenger lands atop her, smothering her for a moment in yellow fabric that answers her earlier worries of who the hell she grabbed.
Law is ripped off of her in the next moment, the giant Jambarl running away towards the hatch with the captain in tow as Bepo scoops up Kyra and sprints after him. Sachi is waiting to slam the hatch shut as soon as the four are through, with Penguin yelling down to Gable, "Dive the fucking sub, all the fucking retards are onboard now so dive the gods-damned-fuck-ass sub before we all die, won't you please?"
"Jambarl, is he breathing, is Law breathing?" Kyra bellows over the noise to her large crewmate.
"No!" he barks back at her, eating up the hallway with his long loping strides towards the infirmary. Bepo follows after him, the mage still in his arms, whining noises like an animal in distress issuing from his mouth. Kyra can't even begin to try to comfort him. Law needs to be taken care of first, then she'll maybe worry about everybody else.
They're in Law's domain in record time, Kyra pushing herself out of the bear's arms and stumbling to her captain's side as Jambarl lays him out on one of the beds. The big man looks to her for instruction, as if she's supposed to know what the fuck to do when Law isn't breathing. Her good arm rises so that she can put her hand on his chest, relieved to a ridiculous degree when she feels a heartbeat. Thank the fucking gods, at least the idiot isn't dead yet. There's no telling what kind of shit his soul would pull if she had to directly interact with it in order to bring him back to life.
"Okay," Kyra rasps, wracking her brain to remember what her mother had done that one time she nearly drowned as a small child. "Jambarl, I'm going to tilt his head back and breathe into his mouth. When I pull back, I need you to do five compressions on his chest. Here, put your hands right here - yeah, and fold them over each - yeah, just like that. Make sure you don't break his ribs if you can avoid it, if not I'll fix 'em later. Alright, here we go."
Kyra uses her good hand to angle Law's head back before moving it to pinch his nose and sealing her lips with his. She lets out a deep breath into the pirate's lungs before pulling back and waiting as Jambarl does the compressions. Then she repeats the process, adding just a little bit of magic with her breath and hoping it will work because you'd better not fucking croak on me, bastard, I don't want a pervert's soul brushing up against me, so don't fucking die.
Law jerks all of a sudden, giving Kyra just enough warning to yank her head back before he begins spitting up a fountain of water. She slides her hand under him and tries to turn him on his side; Jambarl takes the job and rolls his captain with one huge finger. Kyra watches with near crippling relief as the fearsome Surgeon of Death gags up what seems like a lake's worth of water before going still again, flopping onto his back once more when Jambarl releases him. The sorceress instantly puts a hand on Law's chest, forcing healing magic into him and fixing the slightly bruised ribs along with the raw throat and soupy lungs. If he has a bellyache from swallowing all that seawater she can take care of it later.
Long shaky fingers touch her cheek, drawing her eyes back to her captain's face to see the bastard grinning rather weakly at her. Kyra immediately scowls and moves to back up, not surprised when those fingers grab at strands of her hair and refuse to let go. The adrenaline is draining from her system and her legs are wobbling as if the bones have been removed. Kyra is suddenly dead-tired, wanting nothing more than to fall into her bed and sleep for the next month or so. She settles for bowing her heavy head slightly and planting her palm on the very edge of Law's cot to steady herself.
"At this rate you're going to scare me to death within the next year or two, Law," she grumbles as the pirate before her eases himself up into a sitting position, overbalancing slightly only to be set upright by Jambarl.
His hand tangles itself further into her hair so that his fingers can knead her scalp, sending little pings of pleasure down her spine. If not for her sudden exhaustion and the current uselessness of one arm, Kyra would bat him away. Lucky prick. She tells herself this even as she feels Law's lips press a lingering kiss to the top of her head through her curls; even as his other hand moves to wrap around her torso and he shifts to sit with his legs hanging off the cot enveloping her body on either side. Kyra doesn't rest her head in the crook of Law's shoulder because she wants to; it's purely because she's too fucking tired to move right now. Give her a few minutes to recover and she'll push him away and demand that he fix her fucking arm as repayment for saving his worthless life. Maybe whack him over the head a time or two for not being more careful about jumping from ship to ship in the middle of a fucking hurricane.
Someone is saying something somewhere close to her, but Kyra really can't be bothered at the moment to listen. A probing squeeze to her hurt shoulder is enough to instantly snap her out of that little daze, dragging a pained yelp forth as she sluggishly pulls away from Law's annoyingly comfortable shoulder to see what the hell is going on now. The crazy surgeon whose life she just saved is carefully fingering her throbbing left arm through her soaked shirtsleeve from elbow to shoulder and back. The numbness from earlier is gone now, replaced with an agonizing ache that sharpens with every beat of her heart. Law ignores her hissed protest as he moves the arm around for a moment before rising from the cot and pushing her back slightly. He then goes to stand at her side and lifts her elbow to shoulder level, one hand holding hers and the other clasping her deltoid in a bruising grip.
"Brace your legs and try not to move," he orders. Kyra does so, and as soon as she has her feet in a good position the crazy jerk slams her arm back into its socket with a resounding pop.
"Fuck!"
"Bend your elbow," Law commands, obviously not aware of just how much it fucking hurts to have a dislocated shoulder forced to rights. Kyra manages to bend her elbow, flex her wrist, and wiggle her fingers enough to please him. Her powers have made quick work of healing anything that might have been damaged during the initial injury, so there's really nothing to worry about. The sorceress would tell Law this, but that would mean opening her mouth and producing words, and Kyra is not sure she's up to that right this minute.
As soon as he lets go of her she slumps against his vacated cot, closing her tired eyes and wondering if she should just curl up on the uncomfortable thing and try to sleep here. That blonde bombshell she swiped from Law earlier is now locked safely in her room, so it's not like she can use her own bed anyway. Kyra is soaking wet and desperately wants a shower. And she's hungry. Trust the fucking Marines to show up right as they were all sitting down to lunch for a stupid afternoon-long battle the Navy had no chance in Hell of winning anyway. Who in their right mind engages such a dangerous enemy - the crew of a Supernova and the fucking Demon Witch, for Roger's sake - in the middle of a freakin' New World storm?
Ugh, this day has sucked majorly. Kyra wants it to end.
She finds herself carted to Law's room by the much-more-alert man, shoved into his bathroom with orders to shower and a pile of her clothes stuffed in her hands before the door is shut. When she stumbles out ten minutes later, smelling of Law's soap and dressed in clothes that she's been mysteriously missing for a while now, the Dark Doctor is there to loop an arm around her waist and lead her to the galley for a victory celebration. As soon as they set foot in the chamber a great cheer goes up from the rest of the crew, who swoop over to grab Kyra and drag her into the middle of the mayhem. Thanks and slaps on the back rain down upon her from every direction. Kisses are smacked on her cheeks in seemingly endless succession. Everyone is talking at once, all clamoring to tell her something that her brain refuses to process. What the hell is going on? Why isn't Law coming over to rescue her from his crew? The jackass owes her big time, the least he could do is get her out of here before these guys accidently hug her to death.
Sachi and Penguin appear at her sides, looping their arms through hers as they scream for silence. Someone darts forward and presses a mug of beer into her hands; she almost drops it from the weird positioning of her arms. All around, the members of the Heart Pirates thrust their own drinks in the air with huge grins on all their faces.
"To Kyra, for saving Captain's life!" Sachi and Penguin yell out in unison.
"TO KYRA!" the rest of the crew bellows, banging their mugs together and slopping liquor everywhere.
What, they're toasting her now? All she did was pull Law out of the water and perform mouth-to-mouth. Anybody could have done it. Kyra twists her head around enough to spot the aforementioned captain sitting in his chair at the head of the table, freshly washed and wearing nothing but a pair of sleeping pants with his hair in disarray and his own mug of alcohol in his hand. He smirks when he catches her eyes, raising his drink to her before draining it all in one long pull.
Eventually Kyra manages to claw her way out of the biggest congregation of celebrators and heads over to the table, a veritable platter piled high with food balanced in one hand while her mug of grog is still clutched in the other. She takes her customary seat to the right of Law and puts the platter in between them so that he might help himself, slumping over the table with an exhausted sigh. Holy shit, she's tired.
"I think I liked it better when they were all scared shitless of me," the sorceress mutters, sitting up enough to take a healthy gulp of her drink. "If I'd known they were going to mob me I might have just let your ass drown."
The smug smirk she gets in response tells Kyra that Law does not believe her in the slightest. Huffing, she decides she has better things to do than convincing the man that really, she doesn't care about him and only saved him out of instinct. She should be eating some of this food before her stomach starts to digest itself. Sticking a hand in her pocket, Kyra fishes out the two forks and knives Sachi had stuffed in there a few minutes ago when the asshole of a cook was piling food on this platter for her. She passes a set of silverwere to Law and tucks in, absolutely famished.
She is gnawing on a particularly juicy piece of steak - and since when did that rat bastard Neil cook steaks, anyway? Somebody must have thrown around a few threats to get him to go all out for this little party - when Law reaches over and brushes the backs of his fingers against her cheek in an achingly sweet gesture. Flustered, Kya looks at him and nearly chokes in shock at the honest-to-gods smile on her captain's lips. Not a smirk, not a leer, not even a sarcastic grin. A fucking smile.
The world is coming to an end.
"Thank you," Law says, in a tone of voice Kyra has never heard him use before on anyone. "Thank you for saving my life."
Okay, now Kyra's positive that she has to be dreaming. She must have passed out in the shower and everything since has been a fantasy made up by her overactive imagination. What do people always say about making sure you're awake? Pinch yourself? Kyra promptly drops her fork and pinches the hell out of her leg. It stings like a bitch, but when she looks up nothing has changed except the vastly amused look on Law's face.
"What are you doing now, my dear magician?"
"Trying to wake up. I just realized I fell asleep in the shower; I need to wake up or I'll probably drown."
This pulls a laugh from the man next to her. "And why would you think you are asleep?"
"Because you're smiling in a non-threatening, non-sarcastic way and you just said 'thank you', a phrase I'm pretty sure isn't in your vocabulary. So either I'm asleep or I pulled a shapeshifter out of the water earlier and you're just pretending to be Law. Or you've suffered brain damage because of how long you were not breathing." Kyra eyes the crowd in search of Bepo. If she is awake, she should probably get the bear to verify that this man is indeed Law by scent - just to make sure he really isn't some Devil Fruit user who assumes the shapes of other people. Ah, but that's crazy, right? If he is Law, Kyra will need to see what she can do about fixing the brain damage.
He laughs again. "If I had found you asleep in my shower, I assure you we never would have made it in here in the first place. A shapeshifter would not know that your golden necklace was a present from your mother or that the spot just below your jaw on the left side is extremely sensitive. And no, Kyra, I am not suffering brain damage. In fact, my brain is currently working through several more personal ways to show you exactly how much I appreciate that you saved my life today. I would hate for you to think me ungrateful."
The tone Law uses for those last two sentences has Kyra blushing red as a tomato in embarrassment, thoroughly convinced that she is not asleep and the arrogant bastard beside her is indeed her captain. Not knowing what to say, she decides the safest course of action would be to continue eating and attempt to ignore him. She picks up her discarded fork and spears another piece of steak. Right, so ignore the perverted pirate and finish eating; then she can go lock herself in her room and sleep for the next ten -
Shit.
"The blonde woman is in my room," she blurts out.
"Ah, good. I was wondering where you had stashed her. She'll have to stay there until we come to the next island. Best not to put the men in the way of such temptation."
Kyra does not like this suggestion. "What, you want me to room with her? That sucks! Why should I have to put up with a whiney chick who's going to spend ninety percent of her time bawling and the other ten bitching?"
Law is smirking again, that rather attractive smile from minutes before morphing into something more familiar. "You won't. Bepo moved your belongings into my room, where you will stay to sleep until we get rid of Nurse Lily. It's the perfect opportunity to convince you of how thankful I am."
WHAT?
"Oh, come on!" She's managed to avoid sleeping with Law since that last time the jerk drugged her. She sleeps with Bepo or on her own, but not with the captain. No way is she doing that again. "Why can't the blonde just sleep with you?"
Thin eyebrows are waggled in her direction. "I prefer brunettes."
Kyra stuffs a chunk of potato in her mouth, chewing angrily as she tries to think of some way out of this situation. "She'll need somebody to keep an eye on her. I'll sleep on the floor in my room, just to make sure she doesn't do anything stupid at night."
"No need. Bepo will watch her. He said he'd take her a plate of food, and I'm sure he'll stay in there to ensure she eats it." The Surgeon of Death is watching her struggle with open amusement in his expression. "I would never make you sleep on the floor, my magician. Besides, I wouldn't want you to be forced to deal with a whiney chick who's going to spend ninety percent of her time bawling and the other ten bitching."
Dammit, now he's using her own fucking words against her. Kyra concedes defeat and sulks, stabbing a piece of broccoli with unnecessary force. Looks like she's going to be sharing a bed with fucking Trafalgar Law. Yippie.
"You better not drug me again, you asshole, or I'm going to neuter you," she threatens, brandishing her fork at him.
Law's smirk turns feral, leaving Kyra to wonder for a moment what she could possibly have said to give him that look. "Anxious to get in my pants, Kyra?"
Gods, this man has such a dirty mind. Kyra takes the high road and ignores him. She's just found a section on this platter devoted entirely to desserts, which are infinitely more interesting than Law. She would be best friends with the cook if the little prick hadn't insulted her mother.
The pair spends the next hour or so dueling over the desserts, which are some of the best Kyra has ever tasted. Law tells her that Neil once worked at a pastry shop in his hometown in North Blue; the surgeon recruited him because of how much he loves the man's cooking. He then solemnly agrees that the cook's attitude is shit, but says he's never really cared before because as long as the food was good and Neil refrained from insubordination Law hadn't been concerned with personality issues. Kyra makes a comment about his fucking creepy personality being a draw for assholes. Law retaliates by childishly flicking a dollop of vanilla pudding in her face. A piece of pie is scooped up and thrown in return, and suddenly a slice of cake flies across the kitchen from Sachi and Penguin's general direction to smack Kyra in the side of the head, smearing chocolate icing in her hair. Her blob of ice cream misses the cackling duo and smacks the navigator in the back of the neck. He mistakenly assumes the two friends are responsible and peppers the both of them with chunks of potatoes from his plate. Suddenly food is flying everywhere, the entire crew participating in a full-scale food fight, and Kyra finds herself laughing harder than she has in years as she magically dive-bombs her crew members with produce.
What a crazy day this has been. From fighting Marines in the middle of hurricane-type weather to saving her captain from drowning to a food fight with the crew she has failed to keep at a distance. Her life is insane.
Eventually Law sees an opening and yanks her out of the galley, leaving the others to both their fun and the clean-up. He drags her off towards his room, stopping to check on their blonde guest and ushering Kyra into her own shower to wash the food from her body. The hot water reminds her of just how drained she is; she sluggishly pulls on pajamas and waves goodnight to Bepo before stumbling to Law's chambers and collapsing on his bed, asleep the moment her head hits the mattress.
She saved his life.
Law strokes his fingers over his magician's brow, smirking lazily as she nuzzles further into his thigh. He had emerged from his post food fight shower to find her sound asleep atop the covers of his bed, lying on her stomach with her hands flung out to the sides. He had picked her up long enough to slide her and most of his legs under the silky sheets and warm blankets, putting her head in his lap and his hands in her hair. Law feels a compulsion just to touch her tonight. This is not one of the times where he will be able to sleep, so he will spend the hours until dawn massaging Kyra's scalp and attempting to come up with a way to entice this woman to sleep with him in the more... 'adult' sense of the phrase.
She saved his life today, after all. Before today his seduction attempts have been like a fun game, something to do to spice up his days. He has flirted with her, touched her, wormed his way under her skin as best he can because her reactions were entertaining and because she is quite frankly an attractive, powerful woman. There are so few females who possess both qualities, things Law is drawn to, and he'd have to be a fool to not try to weedle his way into his magician's nonexistent sex life.
Now...
Now everything is different. He owes her his life. He has definite proof that Kyra really does care for him, whatever she might say to the contrary. Because how many people in their line of work would save the life of someone they loathe as much as his magician claims to loathe him? She tells him that she doesn't want to care for him; Law thinks it's a little too late if she would willingly dive into the sea in the middle of a storm to rescue the person she supposedly doesn't give a shit about.
The Dark Doctor wants to pay her back. Sex would be the perfect way, and honestly it would probably do wonders for the both of them. It would help him get rid of the sexual frustration that always builds up in his gut over time, which has been particularly strong since bringing the girl into his crew. It would help Kyra relax, which would be doing everyone a favor. Law is confident that he can turn his stubborn, headstrong magician into a gibbering mass of pleasured jelly given the chance, and gods but he wants that chance. The chance to see where she is most sensitive; the chance to taste every last inch of her; the chance to watch her face as he pushes her past the edge of ecstasy over and over again until she doesn't even know her own name.
Kyra saved his life today. Law can show her pleasure she's never dared to dream of. Isn't that a fair trade?
He will have to be patient. His magician will not be able to resist him forever now that he is really determined to have her. All he has to do is win her over and wait her out. Soon, the Demon Witch will belong to the Surgeon of Death in every sense of the word.
Law is very much looking forward to it.
A/N: Please review.