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Every morning once he starts shooting up in height, Law uses his power for the single most arbitrary reason he ever has and ever will: he measures himself using Kikoku.
Sunbeams coming through the window serve as his alarm clock. Because he lives with people who are insufferable demons when woken too early, he draws the curtain as he steps out into their front yard and throws up a Room.
He props Kikoku up on the grass and uses his power to keep her there while he draws his flat palm across the top of his head parallel to her sheath, where his pinkie clears the sword entirely for the first time. Yesterday, he’d met the highest diamond of the hilt, so he’s clearly hit another growth spurt.
When he grabs her and drops the Room, Kikoku purrs with the same pride he feels. He’ll need a new reference point, and he eyes a slim tree protruding from the forest at their house’s back.
Using the dagger Cora-san got him recently would be much easier and more practical, but Kikoku hears none of it. She's turned out a bit spoiled with Law indulging her so much, but she's a five foot tall cursed sword. How can he say no to her?
Of course, Penguin chooses the moment that Law is carefully cutting a notch into toffee-colored bark with Kikoku’s absurd blade balanced atop his head to stroll out and make eye contact.
“Wh- I- Okay! I'm gonna stand over here and do my stretches, you just keep doing your weird Law thing.”
Law stays silent until he's satisfied with the depth of the incision, then sheaths Kikoku.
“Rude. Where's Shachi?”
Penguin folds down onto crossed legs, pushing his hands forward until his forehead kisses the grass.
“He said he wanted to sleep in, which means he'll be out here in about five minutes to distract me.”
Law's glad he didn't bet on that, because Penguin is right down to the second. An orange tangle that might be considered hair by a blind man pokes out, then the rest of his uncoordinated body. It's not that Shachi doesn't love sleeping in, but his weird codependent bromance thing makes it impossible for him to sleep for long without Penguin.
He drapes himself over Penguin’s back while he tries to meditate, being an extremely proud nuisance for all the ten minutes he stays conscious.
Penguin cracks open one eye only visible because of the absence of his hat, acknowledging Law as he sits down on his left. Law rests his open palms on his knees like Penguin showed him the first time they did this.
“At the rate you're getting taller, you're probably gonna outgrow all of us pretty soon,” Penguin muses, creating conversation more for Law's sake than his own. Emptying his mind comes easily to Penguin, and though the obvious joke about that has been made by all of them, Law often has to choke back and swallow his own curdling jealousy.
Pausing in trying to slow his breaths, Law replies, “Mm. Not Cora-san.”
“Not Cora-san,” Penguin echoes.
Silence falls, but Law still shuffles on the grass while he fights his mind for a moment's peace.
“You good?”
He's too restless left on his own, too used to looking towards the next job to be done. It makes him a perfect machine in surgery, addressing each injury with full focus and switching gears on a hairpin trigger to treat the next, but life isn't an operation. It's what made Penguin suggest meditation in the first place, after the nth night of rest denying Law, leaving him on edge and jittery.
Law finally admits defeat. “Fuck, fine. Can you do the - the narrating thing?”
Penguin smiles, and it's a small thing even with more bared features than usual. “Yeah, I can do that.”
A moment is spared for rearranging Shachi's head on his lap rather than his entire body weight thrown over his back.
“Kay. Uh, start with the very tips of your fingers. The carpals, or whatever.”
“Distal phalanges.”
“Shh, lemme do my thing.”
Penguin's smooth voice walking them through their bodies part by part does wonders for the tension wrapped tight around his bones. His tone isn’t quite as deep or raspy as Cora-san's, but not as high as Shachi's either. The only voice he's ever heard that was similar was a lifetime ago, when he was listening to his father read him medical studies for bedtime stories, fond but fuzzy memories of a steady presence listing off tendon connections until sleep came for him.
Law tunes back in, at some point. Penguin's words have left him a bit incorporeal, floating away from his own form.
“Perfect, yeah. Doin’ great, Captain. Down your legs now. Let the tension release from your hips, then your thighs, down to your knees. Patella bone, right?”
He finds the solidity to give back an affirmative noise, somehow.
“Through your calves now, flowing down your ankles, and finally ending at your feet. Just let everything melt away, easy as breathing. All you are is your breaths, right now. In and out, contracting and releasing, not a worry in the world.”
Penguin bites back a yelp and a flinch when the slight weight of his friend hits his shoulder. He opens his eyes, turns his head to the side as slow as he can manage and checks. Yep. Law's out cold, narrow shoulders rising up and dropping down in a calm rhythm.
“Well,” Penguin chuckles to himself, “that's one take on ‘not a worry in the world.’”
He continues on by himself, centering his mind with two of his favorite people in the world using him as a pillow.
A voice from the doorway and two haki presences draw him back to the present, once the sun has drawn notably higher in its kingdom.
“Shit, how'd you get him to sleep?”
Roci steps carefully over to sit across from them, while Bepo moves to Law's other side. Law, in all his subconscious genius, shifts over to the fluffier, warmer pillow at his disposal. Roci tries his best not to laugh too loudly at Penguin's pouting.
“By the way, was workin’ with Makino yesterday and guess who I saw come into port?” Roci pales. Penguin's job helping out at Party Bar has, so far, brought nothing but trouble in the way only teenage boys can bring.
The pout makes a reappearance when Roci doesn't ask. “You suck. Anyways, it's your vampire sword guy! He asked me about you, so if he comes up here let me know and I can get the four of us out of the house for some privacy, if ya catch my drift. Now me personally, I don't see the appeal of a guy who looks undead, but we support you and all your decisions.”
Roci's jaw drops when he starts talking, and by the end it seems glued to the blades of grass below. He looks to Bepo for support, but finds none in those beady black eyes.
Roci sputters, “Wh - he isn't - he'd never!” quickly cut off by shushing from both boys to his volume.
“Right, sure, whatever you say,” Penguin soothes, “but the offer still stands.”
Roci snaps, encapsulating himself in indigo before very clearly shrieking his frustration in silence. Penguin shakes so hard with laughter that Shachi finally wakes.
“Whas goin’ on, Peng?” he mumbles as Penguin thumbs away the sleep dust from his eyes.
“Shh, the baby is sleeping. We're talking about how Roci's boyfriend is back on the island. Actually, if someone's a vampire I think it's called courting. His courtfriend?”
“Oh, Hawk-eyes? Yeah, saw his stupid excuse of a ship down at the docks. He should really take you out on a proper date, Roci, you can't let him keep treating you like this.”
Faintly, the edges of the purple sphere vibrate, almost like Roci is screaming so loud his own power can't even contain it.