Work Text:
OF MEN AND BOOBS
In his twenty-six years of age, Trafalgar Law has witnessed many incredible things.
He has seen an entire country collapse into sickness, its population wiped out like vermin. He has seen a navy officer risk his everything to save the sorry life of a kid who had given up on living and he has seen a ruthless pirate take his own brother's life. He has seen, with his own two eyes, how a fearless kid struck down a tenryuubito. He has seen that same boy take down an underworld overlord and the strongest creature in the world. He has fought alongside samurai and ninjas and animal people, and has become directly responsible for the defeat of an Emperor of the Sea.
And yet after this incredible streak of miracles, he doesn't think he'll ever get to see the day when the strawhats leave him alone.
He brought this on himself, really, and although he can't bring himself to regret his alliance with Straw Hat, not truly, he would definitely have thought twice about offering if he'd had the knowledge he has now. He's certain he's walking to an early grave but not due to the strain his devil fruit puts on him, but to the stress this alliance has put him through. If it's not Straw Hat's recklessness then it's Roronoa's ludicrous sense of direction, or their cyborg's inventions that get Long Nose and Tony all worked up.
So when their cook shows up before the banquet, clearly distressed and making a beeline to him, Law cringes visibly.
"Torao," Blackleg says in greeting, the cigarette between his lips twitching, before dropping to the ground beside him and laying on his back, hands joining nervously to rest on his chest. "I need your help."
"Our alliance is technically over," Law reminds him curtly.
"You keep telling yourself that," the cook replies, pitiful. Then: "I need a doctor."
"You've got your own doctor."
"No." He smokes anxiously. "I can't discuss this with Chopper."
While that does admittedly catch Law's attention, he forces himself not to care. "Discuss it with someone else, then," he grumbles.
"No, it’s too embarrassing. I can't discuss it with any of my crewmates!" Blackleg whines.
"You won't discuss it with your actual friends, so you come to me."
"I didn't want to put it like that," Blackleg smiles sheepishly, "but kind of, yes. I'm having a crisis."
Law rubs tiredly at his eyes, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt at relieving stress. "Blackleg-ya," he sighs, "I'm not that kind of doctor."
"But surely you can help?" he tries.
"Not unless you want me to remove your brain and beat it with a stick before putting it back." Law glances at the strawhat cook, who seems to be genuinely considering his offer, and fights back an exhausted sigh. "Listen, however embarrassing this is, your friends will be able to help more than—"
"Does liking Yamato make me gay?" Blackleg suddenly blurts out.
"—me and—What?"
"Yamato," Blackleg says, his hands making a poor impression of horns on his head. "He's a dude, right? He says he is and who am I to refute him—but, here's the thing, he doesn't really look the part, does he? I mean, he's a guy, but he has, uh…" he fumbles awkwardly with his words, fingers fidgeting with the fabric of his kimono over his chest.
"Breasts," Law finishes for him.
"Fucking ginormous boobs," Blackleg sighs dreamily. "Which I happen to like. Like, a lot. I like Yamato, and for more than those, I think. But—he's a dude. So, does that make me gay?"
Law gives himself a moment to blink and process all the absolute nonsense that's coming out of Blackleg's mouth. "No," he answers then, honest, but so fucking done with this crew of morons. "No, of course it doesn't make you gay. That's stupid."
"Right," Blackleg chuckles, looking somewhat relieved. "I—"
"It makes you bisexual," Law finishes. Blackleg chokes in surprise and Law raises an eyebrow. "But you already knew that, didn't you?"
Blackleg's face is not the face of a man who already knew.
After his first day among the Strawhats, Law thought he had a very good grasp of the dynamic aboard the Thousand Sunny.
The captain doesn’t do much captaining. The navigator calls the shots. The doctor panics easily, the skeleton never does as told, the shipwright and the sniper like to get creative in the workshop. Nico Robin is permanently amused.
And the swordsman and the cook flirt.
Weirdly, yes, in a flashy display of explosive quarrels and increasingly creative demeaning nicknames, but flirt nonetheless. Law doesn’t think he’s ever encountered two people more disgustingly obvious than Roronoa and Blackleg, with their constant, literal headbutting—because nothing says I hate you more than bumping foreheads and looking intently into each other’s eye.
Now, after half an hour of listening to Blackleg blabbering in denial, he’s starting to think that he misread the signs.
“—and sure I thought Luffy’s brother was hot, but that was just, like, objectively, you know?” Blackleg is saying, pacing around with two lit cigarettes between his lips. “I’m not blind, of course I can tell when someone’s good-looking, even if I’m not attracted to them, which I very much am not, so—”
Law tunes him out, internally counting ten Watersevens to stop himself from shambling either of them to the other corner of Wano. He used to consider Blackleg as one of the few sensible strawhats, but this display is proving him tragically wrong—and to make matters worse, he’s being too polite to send him packing. If one more strawhat comes looking for him after this…
The thought dies in his head as a memory resurfaces, of a heartbroken Roronoa moping in his submarine for the entire journey to Wano, and that’s when he realizes he didn’t misread the signs: he just saw reciprocation when it was one-sided.
Or was it?
“I think you should talk to Roronoa-ya,” he says, interrupting Blackleg’s rant about how he was not attracted to Pedro in the slightest and even if he were it wouldn’t count because he was a mink.
“I should what?” Blackleg sputters, jaw hanging open in shock.
“He’s the resident homosexual man in your crew, so—”
“He’s WHAT?”
Maybe Law should have just fucking died in one of the many occassions he had the chance. It would have been preferable to this. “Roronoa-ya,” he says slowly, “is gay.”
“No he’s not,” Blackleg protests, and Law would have laughed if he wasn’t on the brink of a nervous meltdown.
“Yes he very much is,” he hisses back, his patience growing so thin it’s basically 2D now. “I strongly suggest you talk to him.”
And before Blackleg can protest again, he casts a room and shambles him away.
He decides to watch the show, because honestly, he’s earned it.
He shambles himself and Blackleg both, the cook right next to Roronoa and him a few feet away, from where he can watch discreetly while mingling with the crew.
Roronoa is in a good mood, sitting next to what looks like Wano’s entire alcohol supplies, and barely flinches when a large barrel is suddenly replaced by Blackleg. “Hey, curlybrow!” he greets. “Luffy was looking for you, he’s dying to start the banquet and—”
“Do you like men?” Blackleg asks unceremoniously, after the surprise from the teletransport has ebbed, and Roronoa chokes on his drink.
His coughing is so bad that for a moment Law fears that this is the undignified and untimely end for the would-be greatest swordsman. But, “What?” he wheezes, tears in his eye, and Blackleg looks away.
“Do you like men?” he asks again, wiping the sweat off his palms on his kimono and looking everywhere but at his crewmate.
“Yes,” Roronoa answers, frowning in confusion. “Didn’t you know that already?”
“If someone else asks me that…” Blackleg grumbles grumpily, only confusing Roronoa further. “And you don’t like women?”
“I do not.”
“Well you really should tell Hiyori-chan.”
“Cook, what’s this all about? What did I do?”
“Nothing, nothing, I just—” Blackleg sighs, burying his face in his hands with an exasperated sigh. “It was brought to my attention that you’re, you know—”
“You can fucking say it, it’s not contagious.”
“—and it surprised me, because I thought you weren’t interested in relationships or anything like that.”
Law knows that this man has trained under none other than Dracule Mihawk. He has seen him cut an entire mountain in half without breaking a sweat and block a combined attack by Kaido and Big Mom and somehow (inexplicably) live to tell the tale—so it’s hilarious to see his eye widen in panic at something so innocent.
“Uh,” he tries to interrupt, but Blackleg goes on, unfazed:
“I mean, we’ve known each other for a long time now, and I’ve never seen you show any signs of liking someone! Not even remotely! Or did you ever like someone and I just never noticed?”
If he wasn’t having the time of his life, Law might have held medical concerns over the way Roronoa blushes. His entire face goes tomato red—the effect only accentuated by the contrast to his hair—his skin flushing all the way from the neck to the tip of his ears as he opens and closes his mouth like a fish out of water.
“Cook,” he chokes out.
“I’m being a bit invasive, aren’t I? Sorry, I just—” Blackleg’s words die in his mouth when he finally looks at his crewmate, eyes going wide in surprise at the redness of his face. “Fuck, marimo, what’s with that look?” he blurts.
A second ticks by. Law observes from the distance how their eyes meet, Roronoa’s unscarred and Blackleg’s uncovered aligning perfectly, a myriad of unsaid things flashing between them in that brief instant. He sees the slight shift in Blackleg’s posture as it hits him, his back straightening as the gears in his head turn at top speed, and his mouth adopts the form of a perfect circle as he breathes out a small, soft, soul-crushing:
“Oh.”
This might be the only recorded instance of Roronoa Zoro straight up fleeing.
Law is ever so amused by the way the swordsman springs to his feet, uncaring for the booze that spills from his jar as it hits the ground, and sprints away, red-faced and leaving behind an equally confused and enlightened cook. It still takes Blackleg a moment longer to react, but soon he’s shrieking “Marimo, WAIT!” and dashing after him.
Law is positively grinning like a maniac, if the scared glances he receives from the locals are any indication.
He ends up taking pity on them.
As fun as it is to see them playing tag, especially with Roronoa’s directionless ass adding to the chase, they’re causing a bit of a ruckus and it’s only a matter of time before they do some irreparable damage.
“Room,” Law sighs, the blue aura of his power spreading all around the Flower Capital, and when he locates the two strawhats, “shambles.”
He prides himself in being precise. He is, after all, a surgeon—he needs to be. There’s very little room for mistakes with a scalpel in hand, and that strict mindset from his operation room has permeated into his everyday life. So it’s with spot-on precision that he teleports Roronoa and Blackleg, both of them mid-run, so that they crash right into each other.
They freeze—and so does everyone around them at the sight of Blackleg’s face smushed into Roronoa’s exposed chest.
Law smirks.
Surgical precision.
“Uh, eyebrows,” Roronoa gasps.
Slowly, delightfully slowly, Blackleg raises his hands to both sides of his head, setting them on Roronoa’s pectorals. No one misses the squeak that leaves the swordsman when those hands squeeze, and when Blackleg steps back there’s a string of blood connecting his nose to the chest.
Law strongly doubts that the collision is to blame for it.
“Listen, cook, I—” Roronoa tries to say.
But, “Fucking ginormous boobs,” Blackleg breathes, and his hands are still squeezing Roronoa’s chest when he lunges forward and kisses him.
Before they can get too graphic—and Law thinks them capable—he shambles them away into somewhere private, where they can hopefully talk to each other about their situation…
…and finally leave him the fuck alone.