Chapter Text
Penguin wakes up to a solid weight sprawled across his body in the middle of the night.
He startles a little, the weight only gripping tighter as he blearily blinks away the fog of sleepiness to see a familiar spotted hat.
“Law?” He murmurs softly, earning another squeeze to his ribs, his own arms rising to clutch at the bundle pressed against him under his duvet. How the man managed that without waking him to begin with was a wonder in and of itself.
“Sleeping.” Law replies, clearly not doing that, but attempting to if his low grumble was anything to go by. “Cold. Bepo is on duty.”
“So you came to see Mama Bird?” Shachi’s voice mocks groggily from the bunk above them, fiery red hair flopping down from the top bunk. Shachi peers at them with narrowed eyes as he hangs upside down, rather spooky against the light of Law’s dulling night lantern that the Captain had forgotten to turn off.
“I will disassemble you.” Law threatens, slightly more awake, but yelping when Penguin rolls his eyes and flips them both sideways, Law wrapped in the covers he had managed to slip under like an unintended cocoon between the elder man and the wall.
“Shachi. Later.” He warns, earning a low whistling click of rebuttal and a crass middle finger before they hear their brother in everything but blood shuffle around above them and quickly slip back into a snoring slumber.
Penguin then drags a huffing Law close, the Captain giving up all pretence and using the opportunity to cuddle, making his companion shiver as his cold lanky frame presses close, tucking his head under Penguin’s chin, his goatee scratching at the older man’s bare collar bone.
“Not a word.” His Captain whispers viciously, his long spindly tattooed fingers clinging like a child to the old off white wife beater Penguin uses as a night shirt.
“My lips are sealed.” Penguin chuckles, a hand coming up to rest amongst Law’s raven black spikes, his other removing the iconic hat and hanging it from the pegs set higher on the wall beside them.
A low hum overtakes the quiet rumbling of the Polar Tang, a long ago lullaby, drifting, rising and falling like the tides that causes Law to fully relax against his companion as his scalp is massaged, the small headache that had began to brew earlier chased from his mind by a song of the wild Swallow Isle and strong calloused fingers.
It feels warm, Law thinks, eyes sliding shut, head pressed against his older brother’s shoulder as the lullaby drifts away into gentle breaths of sleep, the hand buried in his hair going lax against his scalp.
Finally.