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"Cora."
Rocinante hums. There's an article in the news about a name that he knows is a Navy alias, and he's trying to figure out if it's some sort of coded message or just a weird coincidence. He hopes it isn't the second; nobody deserves to bear the weight of a name like Yuu Gunadai. Factually correct, of course, but... Woof.
"Cora. Coraaaaa. Cora!!!"
"Yeah, kid?" He doesn't look up from the paper, still thinking.
Silence.
It stretches on for far too long before he realizes something's amiss. Rocinante folds the top half of the newsprint down so he can see Law on the other side of the table, staring sullenly down at the wood. "I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention," he says, contrite. Law's mouth twitches but he doesn't look up. "What did you want to ask me about?"
"Nothing. It's fine," Law says in the kind of surly tone that means it's so fine, Rocinante is going to find frogs in his bed again as soon as Law feels up to chasing some down. Pre-dissected, of course, because it's Law and he's not putting perfectly useful surgical subjects to waste, especially when they're such a pain in the ass to catch.
Rocinante shakes the paper out so he can fold it, lay it flat neatly on the table, and interlace his fingers over it. Attention fully given, he wheedles, "Laaaaaw..."
"No!"
"Aww, come on, Law. Tell me!"
"You can't make me!"
"Oh, can't I?" Rocinante can feel a devilish twinkle in his eye. He takes a big breath in to start in on the silly little song he made up to torture Law with, which mostly consists of singing both their names wildly out of tune and also any random word that has irritated Law recently. This week's word of choice is dindin, a word that Rocinante still holds is cute, and Law insists is, quote, infantilizing at best, and I'm not a baby, so now I'm not hungry and it's all your fault.
Law senses incoming danger and shouts, "Would you still love me if I was a worm?" He immediately grabs the brim of his hat with both hands and drags it down to hide behind.
Rocinante blinks as he processes this question. Law’s cheeks go a little pink under the hat, and Rocinante is struck with a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.
"Aren't you already a worm?" he asks, perfectly befuddled.
Law gasps in horror and looks up. "CORA!" Bait taken. Time to reel this fish in. Heh, that's a worm joke too. Score. He'll have to tell Law later. Torture first, though.
"No, I'm pretty sure you are," Rocinante says thoughtfully, a finger to his chin. "Hmm, what do I know about worms? Well, first off, they're small enough to be picked up with one hand--"
It's enough warning for Law to shriek and struggle to get out of his chair, but not enough to prevent the inevitable. Rocinante, now standing and reaching over the table, wraps one hand around Law's head and hefts him up. At some point, Law will surely hit a growth spurt and Rocinante will have to stop, so he's gotta live it up while he can still do this.
Rocinante brings him in close and eyes him up like he's the first wild specimen of the Law Worm that has been discovered by science. "Yup, checks out! You fit in one hand."
Law emits a scream-whistle of pure rage as he kicks Rocinante in the elbow hard enough that his grips weakens. Rocinante, well expecting this, already has his other hand out and waiting for Law's butt to fall unceremoniously into.
"I've also heard that worms are wriggly. Let's find out!" Rocinante cradles Law in against his body, curving the fingers of his free hand into gruesome weapons of mass tickle destruction. Law's kicking and shriek-laughing at the assault, and he's worked up into a frantic lather by the time he gets both shoes on Rocinante's forearm and forcibly pushes it away like a cat that doesn't want to be pet.
"Wriggly, check." He looks down at Law, panting and flushed and clearly debating if it's time to graduate from frog dissection to human vivisection, and his heart bursts. It hurts, to love like this, and yet he'd never, ever give it up.
"The last thing I've heard about worms," Rocinante tells Law seriously, "is that they're pink. And look! Right here!" He pokes one fingertip into Law's bright pink cheek. "And here, too!" as he pokes the other one, just as flushed.
"Getoff," Law mumbles, swatting ineffectually at Rocinante's hand. "'s not a joke--"
"And I'm not joking." Rocinante shifts his grip so Law is tipped forward against his chest, and Law takes the excuse to wrap his arms around Rocinante's neck in what he would never admit is a hug. "I love you exactly as you are, Law, and I always will, no matter how you are." He lets it sink in, feels how Law's arms tighten around his neck, and then cheekily adds, "And how you are is a worm!"
"CORA!!!!"
Law disentangles himself from Rocinante’s embrace to stomp off, and Rocinante thinks that’ll be the end of it. He puts it out of his mind as he goes out to shop without Law, because the poor kid hates both the tedium of shopping and the furor his patchy-white skin causes in public.
Surprisingly, he’s feeling well enough when Rocinante returns to help quietly distribute the items to the pantry, mini-fridge, and counter as appropriate. The past few days he’s been sleeping more than he’s awake, which is why Rocinante had splurged for a room so he could rest and hopefully recover before they make the final push to Minion Island. It’s too early yet to truly call it an upswing, but at the very least, Law is getting a reprieve from the fevers and the aches.
“Here,” Rocinante says to Law, crouching as he reaches the bottom of the last bag. “Picked this up for you.” He brandishes the cheap, rough paper printed in bright colors at Law and hopes he remembered correctly.
Law’s gaze is sharp as he tracks it flopping through the air. His little hand darts out and wraps as far as it can around Rocinante’s wrist--not far at all--and then his eyes grow big. “Sora!” he breathes. “The new issue!” He snatches it fully free of Rocinante’s grip and stares wide-eyed at it. When he looks up to meet Rocinante’s eyes, he’s gone a little pink. “Thanks, Cora.”
“You’re welcome,” he tells Law’s back, because he’s already scampering off to curl up in the lone upholstered chair with his spoils. His expression looks lighter than it’s been in a while as he eagerly turns the pages; Rocinante feels an equal lightness in his heart as he sits on the floor with his sewing kit to do some mending.
Shadows grow and shift across the room as Rocinante moves clothing piece by piece from the to-mend pile to the good-enough pile. He’s engaged in his endless battle with the feather coat when Law says from surprisingly close by, “Cora.”
He twitches, hissing as the needle goes right through his skin. Once he extracts it from his flesh, he pinches at the entry point to try to keep blood from staining anything, then looks up to say, “Yeah, Law?”
Law’s practically on top of him, standing just a few inches from his left arm. With Rocinante sitting on the ground, Law’s head comes up to his chin, and it’s almost jarring to see him without the usual foreshortening. “Thanks for the comic. I hadn’t read that issue yet. It was good.”
“You’re welcome. Glad you enjoyed it.” Glad doesn’t quite cover the way the love wants to burst out of every seam of his battered and scarred body until he ends up on the to-mend pile, but it’s the closest he’s got.
That seems like it should be the end of that, but Law hovers determinedly inside his personal space regardless. Rocinante’s about to ask him what’s up when his eyebrows dive down in furious concentration and he blurts, “I’d love you if you were a worm, too.”
Silence.
Rocinante stares, a little slack-jawed, as Law slowly grows redder. Embarrassed but undeterred, Law plants a little socked foot in the crease of Rocinante’s hip and uses it as a step. With the extra boost, he’s able to push himself high enough to press a kiss on Rocinante’s cheek. Warm, dry lips brush on Rocinante’s skin, and he really is going to explode under the force of the love.
Only then does he remember their conversation that morning. As Law steps down and starts to turn away, shamefaced, Rocinante bursts out, “Laaaaw! You’re so cute! If we’re both worms, we’ll go live a little worm life together, okay?”
“Ew, no!” Law yells back immediately; apparently that is one step too far over the embarrassment line, but Rocinante doesn’t care. He lunges in an attempt to snatch Law up for a hug, but Law scrambles away as Rocinante's legs give out, numb from being crossed for so long. Rocinante crawls after Law, begging, “Come here, Law, let’s be worms together!” as Law shrieks while he darts around the little room to evade Rocinante, “No! I’m not a worm! You’re a worm!!!”
Law tries to ignore Rocinante all through dinner as punishment, but eventually caves and gives him a blow-by-blow of what happened in the newest issue of Sora: Warrior of the Sea, and even though he’s clearly feeling better, he still crawls into Rocinante’s arms to sleep at the end of the night.
---
It’s not often that Law gets a rest day aboard the Polar Tang; a submarine needs to be cared for around the clock, as does her crew, and who better to look after both but their captain?
However, Law wakes up red-cheeked and glassy-eyed this morning, which gives Rocinante quite a fucking fright. He’s thrown back through the years to a smaller, sicker Law, and he very nearly gets ill about it himself.
“No,” Rocinante says firmly from his stance in front of the door. Law’s dressed by some miracle, but he sways as he squares up for a fight. “Law, you look like shit.”
“I’m fine,” Law protests in flagrant denial of all evidence, despite calling himself a scientifically-minded man. Maybe he’s only scientific when it comes to studying how to make Rocinante’s brain melt out his dick.
“Fine, my left nut. Go back to bed.”
“I can just Shambles my way out of here.” The fact that he’s saying that instead of doing it is proof enough for Rocinante that he’s not okay.
“Try that and I’ll Calm my foot up your ass. Back to bed, go on.”
“That doesn’t even make sense--” Law protests, but he follows Rocinante’s shooing hands, and he’s asleep almost as soon as he hits the sheets.
When he wakes up four hours later, he looks normal enough that Rocinante’s heart stops throbbing uncomfortably and trying to squeeze out from between his ribs to flop on the ground like a dying fish. He runs a hand through Law’s hair gently and asks, “How are you feeling?”
Law yawns with a wide stretch. “Much better.”
“Good.” Law tries to say something, but Rocinante rolls right over him. “Bepo and Shachi and Penguin are covering for you today. Whole day off, doctor’s orders.”
“Which doctor might that be?” Law asks archly. “Considering I’m the only doctor aboard.”
“You’re not a doctor,” Rocinante replies, prim. Law's expression goes indignant as his mouth opens. “You’re a surgeon. It's different, see.”
Law stares at him slack-jawed and then dissolves into laughter. He tugs Rocinante down to drop messy kisses across his face in between chuckles. “And you’re an idiot,” Law tells him fondly.
“Thank you,” Rocinante says with coy delight, and that only makes Law chuckle more. “Lunch is on the desk, and I had Bepo bring some reading material from the library for you.”
“On house arrest, hmm?” Law asks, but he doesn’t sound all that upset about it. He slips out of bed to pad to the desk for the covered plate, then sweeps his hand across the pile of books. There’s a papery noise as a few thin volumes slide off the pile and onto the floor. Law bends down to pick them up, and--“Sora?”
“Bepo said you had a stash of issues, and I figured it’s good sick day reading.” Rocinante’s probably failing at playing nonchalant, but Law doesn’t protest, just brings back the plate and the comics to bed. He curls up under Rocinante’s arm with a comic as he eats, and Rocinante goes back to the paper. It’s a week old at this point, but they got a backlog off the news coo when they surfaced two days ago and he’s got nothing better to do than work his way through it.
“Cora.”
The word jars Rocinante’s concentration; he closes the paper and looks down and to his right to where Law stares up at him, comic book laid open over his thighs.
“Yeah, Law?”
There’s the tiniest hint of a smile on Law’s face as he asks, “Would you love me if I were a worm?”
Rocinante frowns as the paper falls out of his hands. Why does that sound familiar? It takes a moment before he remembers a tiny, patchy-white Law asking that question and tugging the brim of his hat over his face to hide. He lurches sideways to clutch Law to his chest in a hug. “Of course I would,” he promises into Law’s hair, and with the important assurances done, the urge to fuck with Law can come to the fore. “But I’ve been meaning to tell you--”
“That I’m already a worm?” There’s a laugh on Law’s voice.
“Not quite. It’s, uh, a little embarrassing…”
“Go on.”
Rocinante shifts so he can whisper directly into Law’s ear. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but you actually have a worm attached to you right… here.” He wraps his hand around Law’s soft cock in his pants. “I can help you get rid of it, though.”
Law freezes and then splutters into raucous laughter. It takes some time for him to calm down, but once he does, he does indeed let Cora help him try to get rid of the worm.
When they’re curled up together in the afterglow, Law says slowly, “Hey, Cora.”
“Hm?” Talking is hard. He’s tired in the best possible way; maybe it’s his turn for a nap.
“I would love you if you were a worm, too.” Lips brush against Rocinante's cheek in a chaste kiss, just as they had so many years ago.
The love in Rocinante’s heart boils over until it practically burns under his skin. He squeezes Law tight until Law makes a strangled noise and taps out on Rocinante’s forearm. Rocinante loosens his grip, kisses Law right on the mouth in an attempt to take all the love inside of him and push it into Law, and says, “Let’s spend the rest of our worm lives together, just like this.”