Work Text:
Vibrant hues of red, green, and yellow globed over the sea of water droplets as they slid down your shoulders, across your arms, and into the air before gliding to the ground. Your upper limbs were extended in a helicopter formation; your lower limbs were engaged in either a tip-toe rotation or pulled up a 90 degree angle. Water glistened on your upturned face. The only thing that could possibly outshine the glorious scene was the glowing smile that was penned across your mouth.
The heavy sigh of your Captain was audible over the soft tapping of rain that enveloped the otherwise empty street.
"What the hell are you doing, _______-ya?" Law demanded, his voice a mixture of exasperation and confusion. You didn't answer for a moment, completing your one-foot spin and sending water droplets shooting in an arc from your outstretched arms, before facing him. A massive smile played on your lips as you tilted your head.
"Messing around, reliving childhood, all the stuff you're supposed to do when water falls from the sky!" you exclaimed as though it were common knowledge. You threw your arms up, palms out, and pretended you were showcasing the surrounding scenery. There was plenty to showcase; the darkness of a cloud-coated late afternoon had produced a life of its own on the island. Neon signs for inns and stores illuminated the street with a color from every section of the color wheel. They painted the puddles that formed in harmonious groves across the cobblestone road with the most gorgeous combinations. It was like an urban paradise had opened up before your eyes, and you weren't one to let those things pass without a second glance.
Your Captain, however, folded his arms and remained safely under the pavilion that shielded the sidewalk. From the slightly bothered look on his face, it was clear that he didn't share your desperation to be apart of the scene before him.
"Oh come on, Cap!" you said, brushing a strand of your soaked hair out of your face. "You can't tell me you don't have the slightest inclination to join in."
"I don't have the slightest inclination to join in," Law repeated, to which you clicked your tongue.
"I don't believe that for a second," you said, prancing over to him until you were standing as close as you could without leaving the delicate downpour. You looked up to meet his gaze, not at all phased by mild irritation that was written across his features. There was nothing that met his hard stare but sheer playful ecstasy from yours.
"Why are you so fascinated with this? It's not the first time you've seen rain," Law pointed out, his eyes flicking back and forth between yours as though searching for an answer to your strange behavior.
You pouted at his lack of understanding.
"But it's the last time I'll ever see it here! We're leaving tomorrow, and odds are we won't come back. No where else is going to be exactly like this! It's gorgeous and it's special! How can you not be fascinated?" you asked. By now, the rain had completely drenched every fiber of your clothes and every strand of your hair. With everything hugging your body, you looked so small compared to him, but the unmatched life in your eyes made you immune to the size difference. You stared at him with the expectancy of a child that was inviting another into their land of fantasy. The Heart Captain was at a loss on how to respond to your wonder over something he deemed little higher than watching grass grow.
"You're going to catch pneumonia," he finally muttered.
You nodded your head to the side as though thinking over what he said, your eyes rolling to the top right before flicking back to him amusedly.
"Noted. Spoken as my Doctor. How about as my Captain?"
"I order you to get your ass out of the rain before you catch pneumonia."
You giggled a bit. Your fingers interlaced behind you, and you leaned your head into your shoulder, making your best attempt to look innocent and adorable. It worked.
"Taken into consideration," you said, your voice still holding your lighthearted glee. "How about as my best friend?"
Shock immediately froze Law's features as your words fell from your raindrop-dotted lips. From his reaction, you supposed the idea of having that particular relationship with you had never crossed his mind. Or perhaps he'd never given it a name, and hearing it from you was the first time he'd ever heard those words directed at him.
Either way, you saw your opportunity and you took it.
"You hesitated~," you sang. With one swift and sudden motion, you knocked the white fuzzy hat off your Captain's head and pulled him into the rain.
"Your hat would take forever to dry," you explained, putting on your biggest smile yet as Law stumbled to regain his balance and pull back under the pavilion. "You're welcome!"
The effect was instantaneous, as though a serious downpour had appeared right over where he was standing while the rest of the storm remained calm. His spiky black hair, unprotected by the hat, slumped down with the weight of the water. His clothes stuck to him every bit as much as yours did to you, and you could tell that a few seconds would find him without a single dry spot on his body. He freed his arm from you, backing up a few steps towards the pavilion, before deciding that it was a hopeless endeavor. You stood and waited with the most joyful expression you could craft as he decided whether to kill you out in the rain or to go back to the dry sidewalk and kill you there.
You skipped the few steps of distance between the two of you, tilting your head so you could meet his gaze, which was cast down as he attempted to calm himself. The sight of your delighted face suddenly in his line of sight did little to help.
"You mad, Cap?" you asked, the smile on your face clearly saying that you were aware of the answer and you were quite amused by it. Law didn't bother stating something you already knew. "Oh come on!" you exclaimed, getting on your tiptoes and throwing an arm around his shoulder nonchalantly. "Live a little! You're already soaked, so you might as well enjoy it!" you pointed out, more than a bit proud of your handywork. You knew your antics with the sadistic captain were going to be the end of you one day, but you knew that, despite his extreme annoyance, today wasn't that day.
"I'm not entirely clear. What the hell am I supposed to be enjoying here?" he demanded, shrugging your arm off of his shoulder so he could properly glare at you. You let your arm fall, bringing up your other arm to place a finger on your bottom lip.
"Well, a whole bunch of things. Like, for example...," your eyes scanned the street for a second, before suddenly shooting wide. Law's gaze hesitantly followed yours as you gaped in amazement. He couldn't place what you were looking at until you suddenly, and quite loudly, yelled, "DO YOU SEE THAT PUDDLE?"
You couldn't take your eyes off of it. The beauty was halfway across the street in front of you - how had you not seen it? It was the perfect depth to make a splash without sucking in your shoe, and it was big enough to make the child inside of you squeal with glee. Or maybe you actually did squeal. You couldn't tell. You were too excited.
"I think I'm going to jump in the puddle," you declared.
"Don't jump in the puddle."
"I'm going to jump in the puddle."
"I just said don't- ________-YA!" Law yelled, exasperation filling every decibel of his voice as you took off running towards the glorious miniature lake. "Room."
"Cheater!" you called loudly, doing a rapid tuck-and-roll on the cobblestone and narrowly evading the blue semi-sphere that radiated from your Captain. You popped up in the same heartbeat, continuing to run towards your goal, extremely grateful for the insane pace that you were capable of moving when you got excited. You were so close; five more strides, four, three, two-
And as anyone who'd seen enough cheesy Hollywood movies would guess, your countdown was abruptly cut off. The sudden appearance of a strong arm choked the 'one' from your mind as the limb wrapped around your waist and effectively halted your motions. You struggled for a second, only a step or two away from victory, before you finally decided that such resistance was futile.
You crossed your arms and slouched against him in a full body pout. For a second, the meer closeness of your body to his washed through your systems. Your back was pressed comfortably against his chest. His pulse was steady; you could feel it through your rain-soaked clothes. The heat of your bodies mingled in the air around you, taking away the light chill of the night. You weren't quite sure - it was so subtle - but it felt as though he pulled you just a bit a closer, his muscles relaxing into the position.
It was a long second, but it ended.
You suddenly twisted around in his grasp, doing a full 180 so that you could look him in the eye.
"What do you have against puddles?!" you demanded, keeping your arms crossed the best they could in your rather tight situation.
Law stared at you incredulously for a few moments, his grip on your waist slackened in surprise at the turnaround. You met his stare with a pout and scrunched eyebrows. The demand for him to let you go was clearly readable in your fixed gaze, and the way he held it evenly told you that he understood it. After a small hesitation, the Heart Captain sighed longsufferingly.
"We're going back to the inn," he said, making your eyes fly wide.
"What?! No!"
"Yes," he corrected, steady authority in his voice that you weren't quite ready to succumb to.
"I haven't made my quota of puddle jumping!"
"Too bad."
"The puddle gods are going to be pissed when they hear about this!"
"Oh well."
"LET ME LIVE MY DREAM!"
"No."
"This isn't fair!" you whined, stomping your foot like a five year old. Unfortunately, the stomp didn't produce the intended effect. Rather than hitting the ground with an emphasizing splash, your shoe hit the edge of a twig at the perfect angle to slide your foot out from under you. A loud yipe escaped your throat. Your eyes flew wide; your balance flew to the sky; and the word 'flew' was too graceful for your rather unceremonious flailing as gravity played its part. Your hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of your Captain's blue hoodie in a desperate attempt to right yourself. The result was quite the opposite. Instead of pulling yourself up, you pulled your Captain right along with you.
The two of you tumbled straight into the long-awaited puddle. Your body braced for contact with the cobblestone, but midway through the fall you felt Law twist you in front of him, letting his body break the short fall in a motion that was too sudden to be anything but subconscious. His back hit the street, your chest hit his, and the water shot up around you with a loud and satisfying SPLASH. If there was any part of either of you that wasn't soaked through before, the situation was now remedied.
For a few seconds, the two of you just stared at each other, partially making sure the other wasn't hurt and partially too stunned from the abrupt plunge to do anything. Law was fine, although he definitely had the wind knocked out of him. Your Captain's chiseled chest was hardly a pillow, but you had nothing to recover from besides sheer surprise. And you weren't going to let that be a factor for very long.
A mischievous grin blossomed on your lips as you realized that the events had played out quite in your favor. You could practically hear the warning in Law's gaze, but before he could regain enough of his breath to verbalize it you had rolled clean off his chest and into the puddle. The giggle that you released was the epitome of complete happiness and unbridled ecstasy as the cool water splashed up in glistening droplets in all directions. There was nothing bad or wrong in the entire world as you flipped over onto your side, facing Law with your head lying in an inch of water and your hair floating out behind you. He had turned his head just enough to deliver the cold glare that he had prepared just for your sake, but the hard gesture was suddenly stopped in its tracks.
Your gaze locked with your Captain's with all the energy and life you possessed displayed on your glossy orbs. You had never looked more alive than you did in that instant, with the look of someone who has fulfilled every dream their imagination could craft painted across your glowing face. The rain that you were so fascinated by made your skin shine, and the neon lights that you found so captivating were dancing in your eyes. For a moment, just a fleeting moment, he saw what you could see through those eyes. He saw the way the soft droplets cascaded from the sky like a gentle waterfall in the middle of a city. He realized how the cobblestone absorbed the multi-colored pastiche of illumination across the street. He saw how the puddles made patches of glorious mirrors everywhere they collected, as though acting as an entrance to a world even more beautiful than this one. And with that, he understood how breathtaking it was for you to be lying in one, queen of this special world that seemed to have been handcrafted just for you. The pavilion behind you, lit with the dull yellow of hazy street lights, seemed so colorless and bland - too out-of-place to ever belong in the mystical allure that was threaded through every fiber of this scene. For that one fleeting moment, Law felt sorry for the sad soul that could remain in that tasteless place, when the vibrancy of your world lied only a few steps away.
"Not too bad, huh?" you asked, your tone almost angelic in its bliss, as though you understood that, for the first time, your Captain was truly in the same world that you resided in. His eyes danced back and forth between yours, as though searching for an answer that he couldn't find himself. The silence was awed affirmation enough.
A soft grin crossed your lips as you suddenly pulled yourself closer to him, snuggling into the soaked fabric at his side and placing your head comfortably onto his shoulder.
"What are you doing?" he asked, his voice subdued. His grey eyes were fixed on you; you didn't have to look to confirm it.
You shrugged lightly, curling into him more.
"I'm just...I'm just so happy, Law," you replied breathlessly. Every syllable you spoke was glossed over with genuine satisfaction. There was a sort of intoxicating peace that seemed to envelope your entire form, from the way your relaxed body fit perfectly against his to the blissfully content expression on your face. The rain continued to fall evenly from the darkening skies; a cool night air brushed its way across the street that belonged to the two of you alone; and the puddle seemed to lend its water to stick you both together tightly. Your tranquility and innocent beauty seemed almost an extension of the scene around you.
Almost subconsciously, Law began to comb his tattooed fingers gently through your hair, tracing the soaked strands down from your head and into the water before repeating the motion. You practically purred in response, and shifted yourself so that your head was slightly below and beside his to give him better leverage. Your arm pulled itself onto his chest, lightly grabbing a fistful of his hoodie to anchor itself.
There was no way to judge how long the two of you lied there. The whole thing had something of a timeless effect as you simply enjoyed the presence of the other with no other thought in the world. At some point, the Heart Captain's fingers began massaging light circles into your hair, and at some point soon after you began to feel your eyelids get heavier. You shifted your body, pulling your leg up onto him as though he were a full-length pillow. You remained in that comfortable position for a few seconds before suddenly being scooped up by a strong arm and placed onto his chest. Your legs straddled him on either side, and you pulled them up closer to you out of habit, not at all bothered by the sudden change in position. His chin rested on the top of your head. One of your arms remained curled up into his hoodie, while the other fell lazily over his shoulder. Your fingers intertwined softly into the wet strands of his black hair where it met the water.
Your chests moved up and down together in harmony. It wasn't long before your eyes slid shut, nature's soft lullaby melding with the comfort of Law beneath you soothingly. Before your mind finally drifted off, you felt the heat of the Captain's breath on your hair as he pressed on it gently with his lips. A peaceful sleep overtook you before the warm impression faded away.