Chapter Text
“If you don’t stop squirming, I’m going to amputate all your limbs.”
And hey, that shouldn't have gotten the double takes that it did. After all, it was a pretty in-character line for the infamous ‘Surgeon of Death.’ This was somewhat undercut by the fact that he was saying it to a young man perched firmly in his lap at the cafeteria, a man who was currently wearing his prize yellow hoodie and making sad licking motions in the direction of the leftover curry on his plate.
Over time the Hearts and the Strawhats had worked out something like a formal custody arrangement for Luffy, who grew cranky without his ‘special Torao time.’ Which became an issue when the man in question was cataclysmic enough to sink an island on a whim, or worse, rubberize it and cause everyone on it to break out into song. See, when he was missing his significant pain-in-the-ass Law just moped around in dark corners and worked on his eyebags. Like a reasonable person. For some reason this was voted by his crew as ‘almost as bad.’
Unfortunately, the first thing Luffy had done on this particular infamous criminal playdate was run headlong into the wilderness (with Law slung under his arm) where they had spent a few pleasant hours chasing down rare beetles and teleporting through waterfalls and making out suspiciously gently for what was sure to be a hip-fracturing main event. And then, because Law’s checkered fate apparently still wasn’t quite done with him, Luffy had managed to get into a boxing match with some kind of man-eating vine. A vine that had injected its seeds a little too optimistically into the outer layer of his rubber epidermis, which meant that not only did Law have to extract a pepper grinder’s worth of little purple sesame-looking things out of his extremities, they had ended up being fucking poisonous, and, as a result, a guy with extensive government documentation of his terrible impulse control was currently itchy as hell.
As the person who had called dibs on injecting anything seed-like into his boyfriend, Law was kind of pissed about the whole situation.
Sure, rubbing slick medical ointment into said boyfriend’s springy, tan thighs would normally be a pleasant activity for the medical-kink-adjacent. But not when you had to immediately cover them up with bandages and not touch them again under any circumstances for at least twelve hours.
Did Law mention that he was pissed?
Adorably stolen hoodie aside, Luffy currently resembled something that had wandered out of a cursed Alabastian tomb. With a lifetime of frankly much scarier injuries behind him though, the patient himself was fantastically unperturbed. What he was, was squirmy, rolling himself back and forth across Law’s lap and, having finished the curry, stretching his mouth out to try and engulf a wobbly spoon full of pudding cup that someone had pushed into their Captain’s plate for extra fiber.
Law himself was mildly-positive-to-indifferent about the pudding cup, but the idea of indulging an idiot who had given himself essentially New World fuck-off turbo-supercharged poison ivy when they could have been scratching a much more pleasant itch grated on his nerves.
Therefore he could not be entirely blamed for shoving the spoon into his significant-source-of-persistent-full-body-headache’s mouth and, amidst the ensuing happy muffled ‘mmmmfff’ (again, a cruel reminder of things that were unspokenly off the schedule for today because a possible rash on his dick wasn’t it), Law made a tidy little Room and chopped both his arms off halfway between shoulder and elbow.
Having seen this coming, Bepo caught them and carefully put them on the table where they twitched in a macabre way until Luffy shrugged and then they started dragging themselves over by the fingertips toward Shachi’s plate.
“Wow, breaking out the kinky shit already huh?” Shachi said, nonplussed, moving his stack of pancakes a few crucial inches out of range.
“He was just going to keep scratching himself.”
It sounded weak to his own ears.
“Shishishi, Torao just wanted to hand-feed me.”
Well it was that or put his arms back on. Sighing, Law picked up the pudding cup and flourished a spoon.
Of all people in the world, Law’s crew were familiar with the general ambient freak level of the Grand Line’s most infamous lovebirds but watching Luffy pout, grab Shachi’s spoon with one unnaturally elongated foot and then duel Law with that spoon for the last little bit of pudding cup that Law had been preparing to feed to him anyway -oh my god Strawhat why the fuck are you like this- was probably pushing it. So in the interest of benign censorship and mental chastity Law chopped off his boyfriend’s legs, picked up his torso and teleported them both out of the place.
----
Look, it’s not like this whole thing didn’t have a precedent.
Law distinctly remembered operating on one of Lami’s dolls as a boy, carefully removing the limb at the soft stuffed section just before it transitioned to hard porcelain. Afterward the image of it had compelled him to remove the rest: the thing itself, in pieces but still paradoxically whole.
It had all seemed easier to manage like that. And he could now efficiently play-pretend at giving each limb different conditions to treat. Of course he’d had the full intention of fixing it before she noticed anything, he had just wanted to experiment, not make his sister sad. Even now he wondered if she’d ever noticed his careful stitching under the doll’s clothes before it burned. Before she had, too.
Another clear memory was asking his Mother why you couldn’t just remove someone’s infected or gangrenous limb for treatment and keep it in the hospital overnight instead of having to deal with the full person attached. His Father had cracked up laughing in the background (which Law had felt severely injured his eight year old dignity) but Mother had gotten a thoughtful look on her face and said ‘Well, maybe in the future. That would certainly be convenient!’ but then gently explained about blood volume and necrosis and suchlike to the point where Law understood that his genius idea wasn’t currently feasible.
One of the first things he’d done with his power was remove his own foot, his left and least favorite, stiff and lead-splotched as it had been at that point and clean it out, vein by vein, vacuole by vacuole, a process that had ended in a working limb and vindication yielding to a pale flame of hard-won pride. God forbid something in his wretched life going his way at last.
Carrying the better part of Luffy, caged to his chest and still looking up at him adoringly, completely heedless of his terrible, vulnerable position, because the bastard trusted and loved him implicitly. Well. It gave a man a certain thrill. Certain ideas.
“You have a bad look on your face.” Luffy snickered.
“You like my bad looks.” Law parried effortlessly, hitching him higher on his hip. He was adorably compact now but still not light.
And damn straight he was plotting something.
He was going to do something that none of the fiercest pirates of the world had dared to do to Monkey D. Luffy.
He was going to wash the little fucker.