Wedding bells ain't going to chime, with both of us guilty of crime

[letsplaysurgeon.livejournal.com]

Who: letsplaysurgeon and deathsdoctor 
What: Katas, cigarettes and copious amounts of banter. Muraki alone on a roof at daybreak with someone he's deeply smitten with.
When: The morning after this, so backdated to the fifteenth of February.
Where: On the roof of CH2.
Summary: A fortuitous meeting when Muraki has an early morning nic-fit and heads to the roof for some smoke and fresh air.
Rating: PG-13 for now, but it's looking like it'll progress into an R rating later.
[Light was creeping through his window as faint as a phantom, and it didn't break the shadows apart as opposed to washing them in a grainy blue tint. This wasn’t nighttime, but it didn’t really qualify as morning, either: it was the hour in between where daylight was slowly being dragged from the dead. And he was awake to experience it. As a matter of fact, he was far more conscious than nature was at this moment.

He watches the world develop contours, bringing his bedroom into sharper focus. He stares at the same corner of his ceiling for ten minutes before deciding he didn't like the clash between the catatonic morning and his buzzing brain. He could get up, shuffle around his apartment and wait on his hands, or he could venture out into the world and watch it sleep.

When was the last time he had a cigarette? He puts on his shoes and coat and then leaves the apartment.

The decision to go up to the roof occurs to him after he acknowledges the familiar way downstairs and decides it wasn't worth the effort. Instead he treks up five flights of stairs and pushes open an unfamiliar door, met with a cold burst of February air before he even walks outside.]

Comments

[deathsdoctor]

[Cold air… and the scent of ozone. And flickering blue light in the still dark. The stars are still out, the breaking light has yet to snuff them, but they are faded and fading.

There are the bare whispers of movement. Crackles.

Muraki, you are not alone. There is someone else on the roof and has been for some time.

… doing this.

With lightning.

Sparks dance across bronzed skin as he moves, tranquil, flowing, as the electricity flows over him, trickles from his fingertips, and leaves sparkling arcs in the air. All internal power and grace and control, aside from those moments where he stops being water and becomes the lightning he’s channelling, and strikes with the same electric speed.

This is what he does in the mornings. Warm up. Stretch and focus for the coming day. He is not a hand to hand fighter but a swordsman, unless there is no other option, but he likes this. It’s relaxing, it’s meditative, it promotes concentration. Things essential for many reasons.

And to combine it with filial magic just brings it up to the next level. And it’s pretty.

So there practices Trafalgar Law, in the cold, and quite explicitly not dressed for the weather. All he wears is a simple pair of loose pants, a shirt only half done up and hanging loose, and shoes. The sword is to the side as is the hat. Call it laziness, but his apartment is just below and he expected to be alone anyway. And anyway, it is not what he considers to be truly cold.

Cold was what he was thrown into when he first arrived.

He keeps practicing. He’s aware of another presence but he ignores it for the moment. Not footsteps he knows by heart and he is not getting any overt sensation of threat. Whatever this person wants, it doesn’t require his attention and probably has nothing to do with him.

Yet. Anyway.]

The day of 15th after the roof to up to 17th 1/2

[deathsdoctor]

[In the end, Law ends up breaking into one of Luceti's few unoccupied houses for an uninterrupted sleep on the first night. He does not want to be disturbed tonight. He just wants to think.

The night passes slowly and uneasily. Dreams are fragmented, and he spends long hours just staring at the ceiling and his hands. At his tattoos.

-The first dream is simple - or at least starts that way. He is a Captain in search of his men who are enjoying themselves. They need to leave with the tide. And like most men at sea who have been on it for months, there are a few things foremost on their minds.

His first stop is a brothel. He'll drag them out by their ears if need be.

He catches in the corner of his eye ornate robes as he stalks past... smells tobacco smoke rising from a carved pipe, and gets utterly lost in the hallways. The sound of women giggling surrounds him, hidden behind paper screens. Weird place. Not typical of what would be found in a port.

He pushes one screen open, and it's not a woman with one of his dallying crew that he finds. Instead...-

He ends up in the shower after that one. Stays in there for a good hour.

-The second dream is the most comfortable. It's the one he would wish was reality.

He roams the Grand Line once more. He is home. He has his nakama. Bepo. He has the sea. He has his lover by his side. They are on the deck and the sails are raised.

It is not a perfect life. It is a hard one, filled with adventure, and battle, and piracy, and all those slow dreadful and wonderful moments in between when there is nothing to do but mind the sub and while away the hours being amused at the crazy antics of nakama, and finding a million and one things to pass the time. It is a better life. He has someone he can entrust his nakamas' lives to when the battle between his dual roles as Doctor and Captain become too much to bear and he can't shoulder both at the same time. Someone who can see the all of him, appreciate every multifaceted side and not define him by one thing, or a few things, but by all things.

He does not dream of sex. He dreams of warm cabins and lazy mornings, and exotic Grand Line islands. The simple pleasure of sunlight and seeing the sea breeze rake through hair. Watching talented hands at work. Apple crisp.

The air tastes bright, and clean, and brimming with the promise of the New Age. The sun breaks, and Raftel awaits, waiting just beyond that far off horizon, for him, for them...-

When he awakens in a start, he knows everything was purely fantasy. And will never be.

-The third is horrifying. Disjointed.

His nakama are dead at his feet. Poisoned and knifed. Irrationally he thinks he could bring them back to life with apple crisp. There is unmoving fur at the corner of his vision. A heap of things burns - a blood red fur coat, a sword and a four bladed axe, ... a straw hat. He is strapped to a table, collared, and restrained in every way, and his power burns at a slow, low burn. His flesh is limned in azure fire, and a scalpel traces around his bared nipple once, twice, thrice - blade flashing as it's turned and twisted and showing no signs of blood.

He doesn't bleed. Not like this. And his powers don't permit pain.

And then the scalpel carves into his chest and Law watches impassively as his heart is torn out, still beating, and hugged tight.

He still doesn't bleed. He never does.-

He doesn't sleep the rest of the night.]

Evening of the nineteenth - CH2

[letsplaysurgeon.livejournal.com]

[Between leaving the grocery store and checking his watch at seven-twenty on Saturday, realizing that he had to be ready to meet Trafalgar Law in forty minutes, Muraki wonders if this was really a date or not.

Dates were something that he believed was exclusive to the world that he came from—they often involved candlelit restaurants, flowers, and sweet nothings. If there was courtship and dating in other worlds, that was not his concern, but it was difficult to incorporate something from home (even something as trivial as a casual date) into this new environment, and feel like they were the same thing. Not just a simulation of normality to appease him while he was stuck in Luceti.

Never mind the fact that his companion was a sea-faring surgeon with tribal tattoos and a sword. He’d have an easier time courting a normal man. Law was a different species comprised of multiple categories he’s encountered before, but the fact that they blended together made him a bit of an enigma.

At least he was alive. ...To Muraki’s knowledge.

If this wasn’t a date, he didn’t want to pour a gratuitous amount of time into piecing together his appearance like a teenage girl trying to find the right outfit to cast aside with her virginity. After a shower, he chose a white suit and a silver tie that was embroidered with crisscrossed squares, like individual pieces of metal. Elegant yet casual enough to go to a bar.

Of course Law never told him which apartment he was in. His vague response leads Muraki to believe he was on the top floor, but he knocks on a few doors before he hits the right one.]