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Law isn’t big on showing his affection openly. Words are bad, touching is worse. But more often than not, he finds Luffy’s hand wrapped around his, or Luffy’s fingers circled around his wrist, or Luffy’s arm around his shoulders like it’s nothing.
And it is nothing. For Luffy at least. Law knows that. Luffy is so free with his affection, it’s like he has endless amounts of it to give. So it’s not surprising that it happens. What is surprising is that Law finds himself craving the contact.
He sleeps in his quarters on the Polar Tang even when the crews are together for the alliance, but most of the time he just lies awake unable to sleep. Until Luffy starts joining him.
“What do you need?” he asks, and Law reaches out for him wordlessly.
It’s too warm to be sleeping all tangled up in each other – something that doesn’t bother Luffy, but would keep Law awake – so Luffy only takes his hand, and holds on tight. He traces the tattoos on Law’s knuckles, and the ones on his forearms, and then back down, and it’s soothing.
Law lets himself get lost in the repetitive motion until Luffy slots their fingers together again, fingers drifting up his arm. “How’s the scar?” he asks.
Law slightly flexes his fingers against Luffy’s, a habit from the early days of injury recovery when he would test the arm’s usefulness every morning. “Good,” he says and doesn’t quite mean it. It is good, it’s perfectly fine. There’s no nerve damage, no pain even on rainy days, and from eating to using his powers his arm holds up just as well as it did before. But the scar, thin as it may be, formed keloids and no matter what he does, it never looks quite right. He’s not a vain man, but looking at it is hard.
Luffy pushes up the sleeve of Law’s shirt and gives the scar a quick kiss before he pulls back. Law turns his face away as he asks “How’s yours?”
Luffy laughs, the exchange familiar to him. “It’s great.” And Law knows he doesn’t need to press, because he sees the scar almost every day, and it really is great. How Luffy lives with it, he doesn’t quite understand.
Luffy’s grip tightens and he pulls Law a little closer. They’re still not touching anywhere but their hands, but Law can feel the heat radiating off of him. He brings up their hands so he can press a kiss to Luffy’s hand.
“Go to sleep, Torao. Your arm isn’t going to vanish. I’ll hold onto it for you.”
He finally closes his eyes.