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Jagged edges felt sharp under his fingers, cutting into his skin, leaving trails of blood in the wake of his palm.
There was no blood, not anymore.
Law still saw it when he closed his eyes.
When the lights were dim and a shadow got caught somewhere and he’d have to blink the sight of dark puddles away. Hold his breath until the biting smell of a life pooling on the ground dissipated.
There was no blood, not anymore.
Ace was sleeping peacefully, deeply, as he tended to, caught between his narcolepsy and simply enjoying a good long sleep. Law couldn't remember a time where he’d felt similarly. Undisturbed nights of sleep felt further away than his hands could grasp, memories slipping through the sieve of time where it wasn't blocked by the clumps of terror.
Tattooed fingers traced the edges of a violent scar, a scar that told a story which by all means shouldn't have ended in the bearer living to tell the tale. Law wasn't sure he’d ever even seen tissue knotted quite like this, and he’d been the one to help heal it.
It shouldn't have worked. Not at all. By all means and laws of nature Ace should be dead. Decomposing next to his father where he’d been buried a year ago.
And yet here he was, sleeping, one arm folded against his scarred chest, the other wrapped comfortably but securely, like a seatbelt almost, around Law’s waist. His hair tickled at Law’s nose from where his head lay on his shoulder. Fingers tracing an impossible scar.
This shouldn’t work either, really, a narcoleptic and an insomniac - going to sleep together usually simply meant watching Ace fall asleep, immediately and soundly, as Law waited.
Waited for what? He wasn't sure. Sleep as well, mostly. Maybe for the other shoe to drop. For the dream to end and for this unusual deep sleep to end, for him to wake up in an empty, cold bed, the blood of his failures sneaking into the cracks of his skin.
But it didn't happen.
No matter how sure Law was that this was it, he’d had felt too good, too content, and it would all end soon, it never did.
So he laid there, every night, surrounded by triple the amount of pillows and sheets he’d owned before Portgas D. Ace had fallen into his life on a stretcher, pierced clean through and seemingly dead.
He laid and he listened and he watched.
He felt, fingers tracing over Ace’s ever-exposed chest and back, memories of long hours holding the seared remains of organs between them, piecing together a puzzle that was missing an unknown number of pieces. He watched, eyes flitting over Ace’s resting face and body, sticking to the deep rise and fall of his chest like glue. Listened, to steady breaths, the occasional sleepy murmur, breathed into the night before Ace shifted with a hum and sank back into Sleep’s gentle hands.
Law didn't feel particularly.. odd for it, not really. He was rational enough to know that he’d had too many close calls, too many losses for his anxiety to be anything but justifiable. Ace did that to him, in a way. Forced him to confront himself, to be... kinder to himself, kind of. What right did he have to hold Ace’s freckled face in his hands, drill
golden eyes deep into a rose tinted gaze and tell him that he wasn't at fault for Marineford, wasn't at fault for people loving him, when he himself still cursed himself for not taking the bullets?
So every night he laid there, in his once empty bed, so often undisturbed, now constantly warmed, holding or being held, pressed close and always, always, keeping Ace in his sight. Listening, watching, feeling.
Waiting for sleep to claim him or to wake up or for something else altogether. Really, there wasn't much else to look at but the man in his arms. Unless they sailed on the surface there wasn't anything but pitch black, writhing darkness outside the small fisheye. He knew his cabin, knew every nook and cranny and everything in between. Sometimes he read, one hand awkwardly holding the book and flipping the pages, occasionally managing to push his reading glasses back up, because he couldn't bear to take his other hand completely off Ace’s warm, alive skin.
Maybe, the entire thing had made him more paranoid. It was a possibility. So what? He hadn't even been with Ace when the War had concluded, had merely patched together what he thought had been hopeless because Strawhat wouldn’t have let him treat him if he hadn't at least tried. So Law had tried and Ace, stubborn, fierce Ace, had lived. It had started there, probably, when Law had felt the weak but persistent beating of a damaged heart.
What else are you supposed to do when you hold a man’s heart in your hand as it starts beating? What other option is there but falling deeply, desperately in love when the thousands of nerve endings in your own fingertips pick up the very pulsing of life?
And yet Law, of course, had held back. Had waited. Had taken Ace apart again and again and again, always picking out something else, unwinding another wound, fixing another thing. Had gotten to know him. Had learned to love him.
Not that he’d allowed himself to have it, of course, shoving his feelings to the side and carefully locking the door behind them. Love wasn't really something he got to have, not like this. Not another person to settle in his fragile heart, a heart that he sometimes felt he had to take out and examine if it truly still was whole after all. If it hadn't turned to ice. Hadn't shriveled up.
And Ace, stupid, wonderful Ace was much too similar.
The first weeks had been horrible, many a shouting match between them because Law had insisted he hadn't cared, hadn't pushed his hands deep into Ace’s flesh as anything but a means to an end and maybe, just maybe, he’d believed it, too, at that point. Had tried to, at least.
Ace had yelled at him until he’d inevitably start coughing, over exerting his fragile, patchworked lungs.
The words still rung in Law’s ears sometimes, like an echo there to mock him. Another song looping to make him dance the dance of misery.
I should have died, he’d yelled, and he’d been right, too - just not for the right reason. Why me, he’d shouted, voice breaking when he’d repeated the question. Why me and not them? Why did I live when I chose to die? Why am I not dead?
And Law hadn't had any answers. Because your brother wanted you to? Because I saw the slightest possibility of your survival once I felt your pulse and needed to know? None of the words had ever left his mouth and Ace had glared at him and breathed out: You should have let me die.
You didn't have the right to bring me back, he’d said one time, merely a whisper when Law had prodded at his exposed spine, full of bolts and pins.
He’d not said anything in return but the words had rung in his mind like a gunshot. Like those gunshots.
He fucking hated self sacrificial assholes.
He loved them all the same.
Since then they’d come far. Ace had been forced to come to terms with being loved and the consequences of it and he’d known that for now death wasn’t an option.
And Law?
Well, Law had loved as well, slowly but surely, from a safe, professional distance.
And then Ace had inevitably, in his charming, cheeky way managed to sneak past all of Law’s defences until he’d sat, surely and securely, in his own seat in Law’s tired heart.
Had softened the edges of Law’s distant attitude and his standoffish demeanor until one night a handful of months ago, a rare night of sailing on the surface, Law had been leaning against the railing of the deck next to where Ace had been sat on it and Ace had leaned over and kissed him. What else had Law been supposed to do but kiss him back?
Since then they’d spent their nights more or less like this. Law was content with it, happy even, though he could have done without the paranoia, the gnawing anxiety that Ace’s ribs would still or that he’d open his eyes and be alone again. Or still.
The darkness surrounding them, broken up by a dim light in the corner, on every night because Ace had trouble sleeping in total darkness after Impel Down, came back into focus when the man in his arms started to stir slightly. This, too, wasn’t unusual. Narcolepsy or not, it would’ve been a miracle if Ace had come out of the short twenty years of his life without nightmares. If both of them had survived this long without being prone to them. Honestly, the narcolepsy probably made the dreams worse. At least being an insomniac meant Law didn’t have just as many chances of getting nightmares.
His hand stilled on the edges of that scar, instead wrapping tighter around Ace’s slim waist, the fingers of his other hand reaching across his body to soothingly run through black and strawberry blond strands, waiting. It took some more stirring, some mumbled, distressed noises, and then dark rose eyes snapped open. They flicked from one place to another, disoriented. Law waited and then Ace shot up, one hand to his own chest and the other patting all over Law’s chest and face. A noise of confusion left his throat and Ace made a sound, somewhere between stress and fear and a whimper.
“Hit me”, he said in a whisper.
“What?”
“Hit me”, Ace repeated, louder, hands never stilling, his eyes moving rapidly. “Pinch me, scratch me, anything.”
Law’s eyes were wide as he watched Ace work himself into some sort of half hallucinated panic and, in his confusion and given that Ace’s hand was currently clawing around his mouth, Law licked a stripe across his palm as though he was five years old and not trying to break his boyfriend out of a nightmare induced trance.
It worked, though. Ace’s eyes focused and he snatched his hand back, staring at it in confusion before he met Law’s worried gaze.
“Are you back with me?”, Law asked as he sat up against the headboard, letting his fingers tangle with the ones of Ace’s other hand, coaxing him closer. Ace blinked, gaze still a bit glassy but aware and in the now, and shuffled up the bed. With a tap on his bare leg he moved to straddle Law’s thighs almost absently and then they were face to face.
“Why’d you ask me to hit you?”
A line formed between Ace’s brows and then he seemed to remember.
“Did I... Oh. I- I kept waking up from dream after dream and I needed to be sure this time was reality.” He ducked his head, as though embarrassed and Law leaned in to press kisses to his jaw and cheek, as light as the brush of a butterfly’s wings.
“Was it nightmares?”, he asked while his fingers drew soothing circles over Ace’s warm skin.
Where Law needed space to himself more often than not, drawing back and only allowing light, unrestrictive touches, Ace was a tactile person, always. He craved touch and usually wasn’t afraid to seek it out, but nightmares made a person vulnerable and in Ace’s case made him sink back into self consciousness.
Ace sagged against Law at his ministrations and the tense line of his shoulders finally softened. Nose pressed into the spotted skin of Law’s neck, he nodded and pierced lips pecked his temple.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He always sounded a little mechanical when offering comfort, like he’d had to study the lines and motions. He had, in a way, sharing vulnerability with someone and being a crutch wasn't something that came naturally to him. Law offered solutions, rational and methodical, and he’d clashed many times with others for this approach. Given that his crew was fine with it, fine with him, there’d never been enough reason to change. Until Ace tumbled into his life, with his soft eyes and softer heart and his need for reassurance.
Shoulders lifted in a shrug, freckles dancing over tanned skin and Ace hummed lightly into the safety of Law’s neck.
“Not much to talk about. Just had to make sure both of us were alive.”
Before Law had time to process that, not unused to this topic of nightmare from either of them but somehow still rattled by the implicit love of the matter, Ace sat up, the familiar sparkle back in the rosy depths of his eyes and a small, shaky smile curling the corners of his mouth.
“Did you seriously lick my hand? Are you five?”
Law groaned and shoved Ace’s face away and his palm met a bright smile and then a wet stripe was licked up the length of it. His hand shot back and Ace laughed, filling the sleepy silence of the room instead of disturbing it.
“Now we’re even.”
“You’re a child.”
Ace grinned and sank back against Law, the both of them settling more comfortably into the bed until they were almost lying down.
“That would make this relationship a bit difficult. And you started.”
Law’s arms closed around Ace’s waist again, pressing into freckles he’d memorized as strong arms embraced him and a heavy head landed on his shoulder. There was a furrow between his brows that didn't nearly conceal how comfortable he was.
“I’ll shamble you into the sea.”
Ace playfully nipped at his bare shoulder, the smile on his face natural now, carrying no trace of its earlier tension.
“Can't wait to see you try, doc.”
Law knew he was smiling, gently and instinctively. He couldn’t have forced the corners of his mouth down if he’d tried, even after two decades of schooling them into a frown. Instead he let his fingers trace patterns on sun-tanned skin, glowing with vitality and adorned in freckles he connected with the featherlight graze of a black chipped nail.
“Ace?”
He felt the inquiring hum more than he heard it, against his skin, in his chest.
“It’s good that you're here.”
Soft words weren't Law’s forte. They felt clumsy on his tongue, too big and unwieldy for someone like him. Ace had joked once that he tended to make sincerity sound like a business meeting, all impersonal and rational, if only to get the words out before they slid back down into his chest to never ever see the light of day.
But Ace had also said he liked it. That it was Law and it was Law trying and that was more than enough.
Ace wasn't much better at this kind of sincerity either. He was a smooth talker, charming and charismatic to his core, and he showed his love for the people close to him in a crystal clear manner too. It was puzzling, sometimes, how Ace managed to be both self-sacrificial and selfish at the same time. Blood relation or not, it was something he shared with his brother. His selfishness aided his selflessness, though maybe there wasn't anything selfless about offering yourself up for your loved ones until there’s nothing left at all.
At the end of the day, Ace had a hard time accepting that he, too, was someone. Not a tool, not a destiny and not a curse. But someone who was so very deeply loved.
An amused huff of air disturbed the small curls at the base of his skull. Ace pressed a kiss to the place where the depigmentation had formed a shape that Law knew vaguely reminded him of a heart. He didn't see it, but Ace had traced it once and said, It’s like hearts were meant to be part of you; even before the tattoos.
He’d laughed, clearly making a joke, but it had rattled Law. So even if he didn't see the shape Ace did in the patch of skin, it sent goosebumps up his back whenever his lips or fingers landed on it.
“You can say you’re glad about it.”
Pinching slightly at Ace’s skin, Law grumbled into his black and blond hair.
“Why do I have to say it when you know that I mean that?”
Ace chuckled again, shuffling and wriggling so they at least laid down fully. Law, never one to run warm and always lying to himself about craving touch, usually slept with a heavy weighted blanket. He hadn't been needing it as much anymore since Ace had first started sleeping in his bed, either falling asleep directly on top of him or subconsciously shuffling into place during the night. The weight of another warm, so very warm, body on top of him was better than any weighted blanket he could've ever imagined.
“Guess so. I’m glad I’m here with you then.”
Law was speechless at the easy admission but it wouldn't have mattered if he had had a reply, because with another slightly slurred kiss to his cheek, Ace was once again dead asleep.
He smiled, alone with his thoughts again but too aware of Ace all around him to care much. Sleep was tugging at the edges of his mind, gently and inviting, and he let himself be pulled into its embrace, warm and comfortable.
Ace was right. Law was glad that he was here.