Ora Pro Nobis - MeatPanic (Ossicle) (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Cover art submitted anonymously and mysteriously.

It was past 3am when the back door of the car opened and closed with a sullen bang. Law slid into the backseat of the sedan and kicked the driver’s seat. “Go.”

Kidd had been waiting for hours. “About f*cking time. You having an off day?”

“Drive. Idiot.”

The big redhead sneered at the rearview mirror and drummed heavily ringed fingers on the steering wheel. The lanky figure in the back seat wasn't looking at him. His tattooed hands were shoved firmly in his jeans pockets and his hood was up so Kidd couldn’t see his face. No bragging or banter, but that was rare these days.

Kidd sucked his teeth and considered the empty road outside. “If you f*cked something up, now's the time to say.”

“I didn't. Take the highway.”

“Jesus…” He cast another burning look at the back seat and put his foot to the pedal. “How bad was it.”

“f*cked.”

The highway route meant the highway stop, which meant Law didn't want to wait to do their post-operation accounting. Which meant bad, but not in the skip-town-and-sleep-with-a-gun sense. Kidd pulled off the highway at the abandoned gas station, and into the cover of the overgrown lot behind.

Law didn't wait for his all-clear before stomping out of the car and over to a stand of trees.

“Aw, real professional,” Kidd complained as his charge emptied his guts into the foliage.

Law flipped him off. He caught the water bottle Kidd tossed him, rinsed his mouth and splashed his face.

“The air in that f*cking bougie fratboy rathole, cigars and Axe, still f*cking clinging to me.” He shucked off his jacket like it was full of ants, and Kidd kicked it over toward the car. He'd put it in the fire bag later.

“Law, get on the hood.”

Law wasn’t listening—he was standing there and scratching absently at the scabs on his arm. “Would you believe there were two f*cking kids this time? Both marks. Rich brats, high schoolers.”

“Sounds like you did a service to mankind.”

“Donquixote’s been handing down some f*cked up commissions. You gotta wonder.”

“No you don't cuz that'll get you dead,” Kidd reasoned. He grabbed Law’s shirt and pulled him over to the hood of the car for examination. “Injuries?”

“None,” Law murmured.

“Liar. Meds?”

“Holding up.”

“Shots discharged?”

“None,” Law sounded vaguely proud.

“None? Not even on the marks?”

“Overdose and drowning. More elegant. And they’ll be a hot tub full of bio-soup by the time they’re found.”

“Huh.” Kidd pulled off Law’s shirt and tossed it on the fire pile. Underneath, he was all raw edges, his skin stretched paper thin over a slender but obsessively toned physique. The sprawling tattoos on his chest, back, arms, stood out stark as wrought iron.

“Okay, there's one injury,” Law finally met Kidd’s eyes, flashing that sarcastic half-grin that used to be a regular feature on his face. “Wanna guess where it is?”

“Not really.” Kidd started on his belt.

“It’s right here,” he indicated the left side of his face. There was nothing there. “One of the brats thought he was tough sh*t, he got a good shot in, messed my face up. See?”

Law laughed and let his handler pull off the rest of his clothes.

“sh*t happens, huh,” he pulled Kidd's stooped shoulders down so he could bite at his lip.

“Guess so,” Kidd sighed into the hungry mouth. He savored the leisurely sliding and entwining of their tongues before pulling away.

The thick cords of muscle in his back bunched and then relaxed.

Law’s head snapped back and he hit the hood of the car with a dull thud and a grunt of pain.

“Nnggh! … haha… sh*t happens…”

Law was quiet at first while Kidd f*cked him, just gritting his teeth when a particularly sharp thrust jarred him. It took a while for his indifferent facade to start to break down. Kidd held his legs apart and drove himself deep into the patterned body until desperate little gasps and curses started coming out. He knew he had to make it hard; punishing.

“Ahh! Ah! Kidd, f*ck…”

“C’mon, you f*ckin whor*. C'mon.”

“Kidd…”

Law finally came apart in a shuddering mess. Kidd f*cked him through it, so hard their skin impacted like a slap. And then the grey eyes rolled back in his head and he was gone, collapsed into exhaustion.

“Psycho,” Kidd muttered, checking under an eyelid. The patterned body was limp and heavy, pulse rapid and breathing shallow. Out cold.

But still f*cking perfect—beautiful and wrecked. Kidd shifted him slightly but didn't pull out. It only took a few more thrusts until he came inside him. Almost as hard as Law had, too… Kidd pulled out and watched the evidence drip over them both. Now there was a thing to see: that honed body with all its deadly symbols, spread out beaten and f*cked on the hood of a car in the middle of nowhere.

Kidd cleaned them both up with the discarded shirt, and redressed Law in the loose clothing from the bag in the passenger seat.

Now that he could look his charge over properly, Kidd saw that he did already have another injury. A head wound, for f*ck sake—blunt trauma from something heavy, not much blood but a big lump. Why couldn't the guy f*ckin say something? Had to go and make it worse… Make Kidd make it worse.

Kidd gathered him up and propped him up in the back seat like he'd put himself there, then went to signal their tail.

Law woke to Kidd shaking him some time later. Early dawn. They were in a different car, parked outside the safe house.

“Mmmrgh. What.”

“Making sure I didn't put you in a f*cking coma. Were you gonna mention the head injury?” Kidd sounded pissed about that.

“Nah. And you're not supposed to wake concussion victims.”

“You're not any kind of victim,” Kidd argued. He shoved Law out of the car and onto the pavement, and left him there while he retrieved the bags.

“My hero,” Law complained dryly.

“Asshole,” Kidd retorted.

Law dismissed his attempts to pick him up, just to be difficult. He made it as far as the kitchen before listing sideways. Kidd caught him.

“Stay,” Law murmured as he was set on the bed.

“I’ll be right outside.”

“No, you’ll be here.”

Law knew the harsh face was creased into a scowl, though it was too dark to see.

“You don't give me orders. All I gotta do is drive where you say.”

“Just get in the f*cking bed.” Law was already shedding his clothes and burrowing in. “You can do your check-in bullsh*t from here, and I'll get to sleep faster.”

“I won't get to sleep faster, though,” Kidd pointed out.

“Fine. Gimme the valium and f*ck off.”

There was a pause.

Law waited.

Kidd made an impatient sound but gave in. He kicked off his shoes and shuffled in under the blanket. Law let him mess around with his phone for a while, messages flickering across the screen and illuminating his deep frown of concentration. Scar tissue around his eye and a nose broken too many times made it more or less permanent now.

Law watched him. Eventually he grunted and thumbed the screen off, sinking back into the pillows and throwing an arm over his eyes.

“f*ckin lemme alone,” he grumbled as Law started pulling the clothes off him too.

Law grinned to himself and left the shirt bunched awkwardly up around Kidd's muscled arms, so he had to take it the rest of the way off himself. Ditto the pants.

“I'll do the other eye,” Kidd threatened as he kicked those away.

“Right,” Law dismissed this. Then he spread a hand across the broad chest, the tattoos he couldn’t quite see in the dark but had memorized.

Some of the ink was the same as Law’s, like the grinning crest on both their shoulders. Kidd’s had two bars at the edge, Law’s had one: their ranks in the Donquixote Family. Both had a large scythe somewhere on them: they’d taken lives. Kidd’s scythe was on his ribs, crossed with a sword: he’d had someone taken from him. Law had two swords crossed on his back, and two scythes crossed in the shape of a heart on his chest.

Some were different. Three rings on Kidd’s left index finger and two stars on his right, usually covered by his rings: he’d done a three-year term inside, and two months in solitary. Law had no rings or stars, since he’d never been caught, and never been called on to take a fall. His hands showed a different kind of utility. The Rota Fortunae on the back of each hand, and the letters ATRPS spelled across his fingers communicated a unique claim to those who knew how to read it: That Law’s business was death; his record so flawless and his methods so precise that it was as if he served fate. Not a single broken spoke in the wheel.

Law liked Kidd’s more personal pieces best. Like the large Stella Maris on his chest—a sailor’s traditional protective charm.

“The Latin seems so unlike you,” Law paused at the ORA PRO NOBIS inscribed to either side of the serene madonna of the sea. He rested his head on Kidd’s chest and traced the dark letters, jiggling his foot restlessly.

“The what?”

“The ora pro nobis thing. Didn’t think you were much for languages.”

“It’s not Latin, it’s just stuff you say.”

“Uh, it is Latin, it means pray for us,” Law raised an eyebrow at him.

“Oh. Yeah that makes sense…”

“Heh. What did you think it meant when you got it done?”

Kidd waved an annoyed hand. “Well I know what it means. It's part of this whole thing you say in churchspeak—”

“Latin,” Law insisted.

“—that’s just like, ‘Hail Mary, sh*t is f*cked, hopefully my soul not so much.’”

“That's… the best translation I've ever heard.”

“I mean that's the gist of it. When I was a kid at the mission they used to make us say it a bunch of times if we were bad. So maybe it’s more like ‘I f*cked some sh*t up.’ But then we also had to say it before bed and everything so… I dunno. We were probably just born f*ckups.”

Law smirked at the idea of tiny hellion choirboy Kidd. “It’s kinda hard to believe you’re religious.”

“Pff. Not religious, just Catholic,” Kidd mumbled, halfway asleep already as Law traced the bold letters on his pale skin.

“Eustass.”

“Mmn.”

“Are you seriously a god-believing-type, though?” Law was still trying to wrap his head around this.

“Nah. Or like, whatever. Dunno. But sh*t is f*cked, so…” Kidd muttered sleepily, gesturing vaguely out at whatever. Everything. “Better not be all there is.”

“And what, you think you’ll go to ‘heaven’ after all the sh*t you’ve done if you mumble a few words now and then?”

“Dunno.”

“You’re not holding up your end of this theological debate.” Law flicked Kidd’s nipple idly and got himself dumped off the tattooed chest.

“f*cking go to sleep, Trafalgar.”

“Can’t sleep,” Law protested. “Still fulla ritalin and co*ke.”

“That sh*t shoulda wore off already. Wait, co*ke?”

“Yeah well, I took a top-up.”

Law waited, picking obsessively at a loose thread in the pillow that turned out to be one of Kidd’s hairs. The big redhead growled and shook him off before digging around in the bag next to the bed and throwing a pill bottle into Law's waiting hands.

“Here. Knock yourself out.”

It was f*cking valerian. Law threw it back. “This hippie sh*t won’t knock me out. Might as well be homeopathy.”

“Yeah well at least with the hom*o-path stuff you can't OD. Just take some.”

“Eustass, give me the benzos or I'll show you exactly how one overdoses on homeopathics.”

“Pff, and how's that.”

“f*cking drowning.”

Kidd snorted. He exhaled through his teeth, still not budging. “The other stuff f*cks up your system after too long, though… and you already have to take a bunch whenever you go… over to…”

“That’s a different thing. Just gimme the f*cking bag I’m a f*cking doctor.”

“You’re the f*cking opposite of a f*cking doctor.” But Kidd threw the whole bag at him.

Law sat up and dug around until he found the right bottle. He sighed with relief and dry swallowed one for the uppers and one for his nerves. Two from another bottle for sleep. He paused and briefly considered a third before thick arms circled his waist and pulled him back into bed.

Kidd didn’t say anything else, just lay spooned around Law’s back, breathing on the nape of his neck. Not breathing like he was sleeping, though… like he was thinking.

Law counted their pulses in the dark, still buzzing while the sedatives worked their too-slow way into his system. Kidd’s heart was always so steady, so regular, no matter how f*cked things were. Maybe his little superstitious charm worked, or maybe he was just made for this kinda thing. Born to f*ck sh*t up.

Ugh… sleep wasn’t happening fast enough. Law was bored.

“Eustass.”

“No.”

“Eustass-ya.” Law stifled a laugh. Messing with the guy was almost better than benzos. “Speak Latin to me.”

Kidd snorted. “What?”

“They made you memorize it, right? In priestf*ck preschool or whatever? Tell me some.”

“Yeah they kinda beat it into you, if you want the complete experience.”

“That would help me sleep,” Law mused.

Kidd broke his sullen silence and laughed into Law’s hair. “Oh my god. You’d f*ckin love that sh*t, wouldn’t you. Should I get some robes?”

“Yeah, all the sinning is actually so I can work up to the penance part. So get me started, here.”

“Heh.” Kidd nosed around Law’s ear, breath warm on his neck. “Sancta Maria…”

“Ooo, perfect inflection,” Law fanned himself.

“Mater Dei…”

“Hot. Tell me more about your magical spacemom.”

“...Bless me cuz I’m gonna kill this blaspheming f*ck if he doesn’t let me sleep.”

“Excuse you. You couldn’t kill me if you tried,” Law rolled his eyes.

“Your punk ass? Yeah I f*ckin could. Any time.” Kidd flopped his head back down on the pillow.

“No. You couldn’t.” Law turned to look at him. “Don’t forget that, okay? If sh*t goes wrong and you get sent after me? I would win.”

Kidd’s eyes were faint globes in the dark. Something about that little warning/challenge seemed to get him, and he pulled Law flush against him and fit their lips together.

“Mmnh…” Law sank into the kiss.

He could feel Kidd’s dick pressing into his hip. He was still sore as hell from getting f*cked on the car like that, but that made everything so much better. Just the thought of it got him hard, made his heart speed up again…

But he was suddenly so f*cking tired. His awareness was starting to blink in and out. Time skipped and he was on his back, Kidd’s weight pinning him down and their mouths sliding together. Law raised his hands to comb through the wild red hair… but it wasn't there anymore. Kidd was gone? No, Kidd was hovering over him, twisting rough fingers in him… pulling him over, arranging him like a doll… f*cking him.

“Ahh!… Kidd…”

Kidd was watching him fade in and out. “Downers kicking in, huh.”

“Yeah, it’s all… f*ck… ah… ah…”

“Mm. Just hold onto me.”

Law tried but his hands felt heavy and useless. Everything was starting to get numb but he could feel the thick co*ck sliding into him, slow and slick. Not a violent invasion like before, smooth now that he was already f*cked open, but still painful. Everything else was hazy, though. He laughed to himself and watched his own fingers flex sluggishly on the bed next to him.

“Guess if you wanted to kill me you could ju… st… just come for me when ’m… like this…”

“I could, yeah. Heh.” Kidd grinned down at him, teeth glinting.

That was rare, thought Law vaguely. He smiled so rarely these days. He couldn’t think of the last time… couldn’t think of anything. He thought there might be a hand cradling his head, lips against his.

Law closed his eyes and relaxed into a warm chemical haze of arousal, pain, and Kidd’s taste.

Sketches by godims0tired on tumblr

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Law was vaguely aware that it was late afternoon, but didn't give a sh*t. He had some combination of withdrawal and lingering after effects happening that was actual hell. Hangover inception.

Beside him, Kidd finally answered his buzzing phone.

“Yeah, f*ck you,” he mumbled in greeting. Probably not their bosses then.

He paused. Scoffed.

“We did a job f*cking less than f*cking twelve hours ago, so no, f*ck YOU.”

There was a pause while some stooge rattled on about orders. Law already knew what was happening, but he kept listening, hoping he was wrong.

“No cuz he’s injured and hasn't come off the last round of sh*t anyway. There's rules for a reason, you living dickzit. You wanna know what I think?”

“Eustass…” Law sighed.

“I think you're a short haul from a long drop.”

“Eustass, tell them double the usual fee.”

Kidd help up a silencing finger at Law and kept up his verbal assault on the phone. “Don't listen to him, I'm gonna tell you what, you're gonna take your orders and…” But he stopped as a different voice interrupted. It spoke in calm, chilling tones, and Kidd just listened.

“Yeah,” he said finally. And that was it.

He flicked off the call.

“Triple,” he said to the ceiling.

“Huh…” Law let this settle. There was a slow gnawing starting up in the pit of his stomach. Familiar. He wanted to sink back into the easy intimacy of last night but everything was suddenly tense between them.

Kidd was avoiding looking at Law's face.

“Um. You should shower. If you can stand, or I can get you over to—”

“I can f*ckin use my own legs, thanks,” Law pulled away and Kidd waved him off, turning over and pretending to go back to sleep.

Law took measured steps to the bathroom. He avoided his reflection in the mirror and turned on the water as hot as it would go.

He knew what their boss was doing with all this—the unexpectedly young marks and the sudden summons immediately after. Donquixote just liked seeing him thrown off. And none of it was quite a breach of their agreed rules, but it was close enough to show how much rules actually mattered when one was as thoroughly in hand as Law was.

Kidd stomped into the sh*tty baseroom ‘clinic’ despite Law’s specific instructions to f*ck off. The NP checking Law's blood pressure startled and dropped the compression ball as the scowling menace ducked through the doorway and ambled up to stand over him.

“I said to pick me up when I texted,” Law noted in his warning voice.

Kidd shrugged. “And I said you don't give me orders. Just thought I should mention to the doc the whole head injury thing, since you're not gonna.”

“Head injury?” the NP looked him over. “In addition to the eye? We can't give you the usual stuff if you… I-I mean if there's a chance of blood on the brain…”

Law gave the poor guy a scathing look and he trailed off. “He's not a ‘doc,’ Eustass. And neither are you.”

“Or you.”

“I'm kind of a doc?” the NP protested. He was wearing a dorky beanie and an X-files tshirt instead of scrubs, though, so no one took him seriously.

Law reassured the lanky stoner nerd / nurse. “It’s fine. I know the symptoms and they don't apply here. And you,” Law turned to Kidd. “f*ck off.”

Kidd didn't f*ck off. “Lemme just show him where the—”

Law caught the reaching hand and threw it back with a sneer. “No.”

“Would you just—” There was a half-second flurry of snarling and testing shoves.

“I f*cking said I don't need you—”

Kidd abruptly jammed his fist against the cupboards next to them and the whole cabinet rattled. Then he seemed to collect himself. He spun around and strode out, kicking the door on the way so it bounced off the wall and slammed behind him. A framed certificate fell off the wall.

“Theatrics,” Law hissed after him.

The NP looked a little shell shocked. He was trying not to look at Law’s face either. Irritating. Everything was grating on his f*cking nerves today…

“Have we finished the exam?” Law stripped off the cuff without waiting for an answer. The NP just kept standing there.

“Um. Law… do you know about that guy?” he asked hesitantly.

Law snorted. “Obviously we know each other.”

“No but… do you know what he um. Does?”

Law pulled his hoodie back on and forced a cold not-smile. This guy should get out of the basem*nt more and see what other prime specimens Donquixote kept in his employ. “I do. He very ably manages various volatile situations for our employer. Sometimes he manages me.”

“He seems like a volatile situation all by himself…” the skinny nerd muttered. He started putting away his kit. “But um, just saying, you shouldn't trust him. He’s into heavy sh*t.”

“Heavy sh*t. Huh. Penguin. Do you know what I do for this organization?” There was no reason for this, but Law was suddenly feeling mean. Everyone was treating him like a f*cking child today.

The NP looked down and fidgeted. “I guess, not… not social media after all?”

“No, I don’t f*cking do… f*cking social media, Penguin, that was a joke. I f*cking kill people.”

“Oh.”

“Or just make it clear to them that I could, sometimes that's enough. Most people involved in organized crime don’t have to be told what these tattoos mean.” He watched the skinny nerd redden. “You didn't actually think Donquixote would waste all those expensive meds on some button-pusher, did you?”

“He provides very comprehensive health coverage to his employees,” Penguin mumbled.

“That he does. Drug empire and all.” This game wasn't fun after all. Law was actually starting to feel bad for the guy. Penguin was only trying to help; wasn't his fault he lived in an innocent little bubble world. He cleared his throat. “So. Drugs?”

“Drugs,” Penguin agreed dejectedly. He gave Law the usual stuff for his appointment upstairs. What he’d think if he knew what those were for, Law didn’t want to find out.

Law sighed. “Okay, don't make that face.”

“Not making a face.”

“You are. Stop. Not like I'm gonna off you or anything.”

Penguin shrugged. “Nah, you just making it clear that you could, I get it. No biggie.”

Law pressed inked fingers to his temples. The sad penguin face always got to him. “Look. I’ll bring you and Shach that cactus sh*t again next time if you just forget I said anything.”

“It’s cool, whatever, I mean obviously no one here is an angel? I sew up booboos on baddies and you… f*cking kill people. We all hard cases, lost souls and such.”

Law grunted and pulled his boots back on.

“But… Law? That guy is no one’s friend.”

“Peng-ya, leave it alone.”

“Kay. Um. Law?”

“What.”

“The cactus sh*t with the flowers on it.”

“Yeah.”

Law strode down endless corridors with his boots clicking decisively on the tile and fluorescent lights flickering with each bang of a heavy steel door. Stupid, the whole facility… Layering up more of the same sh*tty fortifications didn't amount to greater security. Law could bypass all of this easily, even if he didn't already know its layout by heart. He could get in, kill everyone inside, maybe even make it out alive. Two hours, tops.

Hah. No he couldn’t.

He paused at the ancient security camera in front of yet another door, and grinned into its glass eye. He swallowed the little pill, along with another palmed from the nurse's cabinet just to be very sure.

“You're late,” that chilling voice noted through a speaker. Vergo—the boss’ right hand.

The door unlocked and Law threw his empty water bottle at the camera before stepping into the empty room beyond.

Law swam into consciousness one piece at a time and found that he was already sitting up. He hated this part—like his body was awake before him, doing stuff while his mind wasn't even around.

He fell back on the rigid mattress and groaned. If he'd been in pain after last night, he was in agony now.

He blinked and waited for his facilities to return.

Minutes. Minutes longer. The relation of ceiling to floor started to make sense. The rest of the sparse, minimalist furniture in the windowless room emerged into solidity. He grimaced at the sleek little camera hidden in the light fixture above. That little detail wasn't part of the agreement either, but like everything else, Law pretended not to notice it. No point giving the Donquixote the satisfaction of seeing him unbalanced.

It was getting harder, though. The man was always pushing. One of his favorite things was to leave Law like this after having his way with him, so even if he was safely unconscious for the worst of it, he'd wake up and be confronted with the evidence. It was an effective mindf*ck—imagining it was almost as bad as being there while it happened. Almost. Law was the one who'd insisted he be put under for each session.

This time there were aching bruises on his thighs, and rope burn around his wrists. That was definitely for his benefit—pointless to restrain someone already drugged.

After taking a few deep breaths he sat up again, trying to ignore the fluids trailing between his legs and the searing pain in his lower back. He was certain his legs wouldn't be working. Maybe he could get his clothes on and then call Kidd up here, get him to help him out the back way… But no. He’d never voluntarily called Kidd for help before, and wasn’t gonna start now.

“Ah, sleeping beauty joins us,” a deep voice mocked.

Law forced himself not to jump. He slowly turned to look across the room.

Donquixote was lounging at a table spread with papers, pen in hand. As if he was just f*cking catching up on some work.

“Doffy.”

“Did you sleep well.”

“This is against the rules.”

“Oooh Law.” Doffy stood and stretched. He was too big for the room—his hands brushed the ceiling. Law involuntarily imagined how those hands would map onto the bruises on his thighs, how they'd wrap around and dig in…

The blond giant was closing in on him. Law tensed but his legs weren't working yet. He kept himself still.

“There’s no rule against a civil chat. Perhaps I wanted to inquire after your health?”

“Well, Doffy. I'm great.” Law opted for casual sass. “But as you know, I've only just returned from a mission and I'm supposed to be lying low.”

“Of course,” Doffy perched on the edge of the bed with his hands politely folded. “I require nothing further of you today. You just had me worried and I wanted to make sure you recovered well.”

His light linen suit and pink shirt were immaculate, everything about him was manicured. No trace of the sloppy mess he’d made of his unusual toy. Law was acutely aware of his own degraded state in comparison—all f*cking filthy and exposed.

“Worried about what.”

“Your face, and your head,” a long, graceful finger extended toward his black eye. “It’s so unlike you, to let a mark land a blow. Let alone two.”

Law shrugged. “Where are my clothes.”

“Over there,” Doffy gestured across the room to the adjacent washroom. A million miles away.

Law stared at it helplessly. He tested his legs—unsteady, but he needed to get away.

He stood, and felt a trail of come leak from him and drip onto the floor. He didn’t look. Doffy watched him with penetrating interest as he took painful steps towards the distant room. Law could practically hear him smirk as the next drop hit the floor.

“I do hope your handler took note of those head injuries and ensured you received the proper care.”

“Hah. I believe he tried. But I am, as ever, on call whenever you need something interesting to stick your dick in—”

A huge hand grabbed his elbow.

“You think I f*cked you today?” Doffy's cruel grin was suddenly looming inches from his face.

“I know you did,” Law hissed.

“Is that what you imagine whenever you wake up reeking of use—my co*ck inside you?”

“No.” Law shuddered and tried to recover his balance enough to push away.

“I’m flattered. But do you never imagine that I might let others have you?”

“You…” Law felt kicked in the chest. That hadn't occurred to him.

“For convenience as much as anything, really. I find you a bit too tight-fitting if you haven't been broken open a little first.”

“You know that's not—”

“It’s not ~not~ part of the agreement, is it. And with you in such an accommodating state, I'd be remiss not to make full use of what's offered.”

Law swallowed. “You want me to ask who. Don't you.”

“Oh,” Doffy feigned surprise. “Nono, I just wanted to correct you: In fact, I have not had you today.”

You just want to make it clear that you could, thought Law.

Doffy was still gripping hard onto his arm. Law looked down and realized that what was dripping onto the floor was blood. His heart was beating painfully in his throat.

“Doffy, if you f*ck me like this, you’ll—”

“Law! Law, Law, Law.” The hand was suddenly all softness and support. Doffy started helping him toward the washroom, an arm circled around his waist. Law’s skin crawled at the touch. “It was out of concern for your injured state that I refrained. You started bleeding almost as soon as the second man had started. Not a careful man—I don't think I'll invite him again. Anyway, I stopped things, and here we are. So.”

They'd reached the washroom. Law stumbled away from Doffy to lean on the sink.

Doffy followed. Two hands fit themselves lightly around Law's waist and stroked over his skin. “How do you feel?”

Law choked out a laugh. He gripped the edge of the sink, and stared at his inked knuckles to avoid their reflection in the mirror.

“Like I’ve only been f*cked halfway to death. I suppose I should thank you.”

Doffy laughed and left him alone to dress.

Law shouldered open the side door of the old brick building and sighed into the cool night air. The parking lot was nearly empty. Kidd was lying on his back on the roof of an obnoxiously-parked Escalade, smoking. He looked at Law upside down and didn’t say anything.

Law limped over and sat against the brick wall opposite the car, swallowing a grunt at the pressure on his spine. He was back in jeans, his hood and dark glasses shadowing most of his face, and gloves with the fingers cut off hiding his tattoos. Apparently in disguise as someone with something to hide.

“What’s the tank for,” he questioned Kidd after a long moment.

“Dunno.”

There was silence for another while.

“You mad about something?” Law demanded.

“No.”

“Well you’re making that face.”

“This is just my face.”

Law scoffed and rubbed his head restlessly. He could feel the ants on his f*cking skin again.

Kidd blew smoke out in a long stream. “So. Have fun?”

A good-sized chunk of pavement caught him in the head and clattered over the roof of the car.

“f*ck! Watch the f*cking car!”

“Do you think I do this for FUN??”

“Can you not even take a f*cking joke?!” Kidd pressed a hand to the gash on his head “God, you see this? I’m f*cking bleeding all over!”

“Oh hey so am I. Fun!”

“Asshole,” Kidd spat, sopping up the spatter on his face with his shirt. Then he stopped. “…Law. What’s that.”

Law was sorting through stuff in a handkerchief on his lap. He had a baggie of powder picked out.

“Not barbs but it'll work.”

“Jesus Christ. Can you at least wait til I drop you at the place?”

Law stopped for a minute and evaluated himself. “Don't think so. No.”

Kidd sat on the roof of the suv and grumbled to himself. “I'm getting kinda tired of hauling your dead-eyed corpse around every time you feel like dropping outta reality.”

“Tch. You get paid well enough for it. And anyway, you get off on f*cking me like that.”

“Yeah…” Kidd kicked a sullen heel on the windshield. “Didn’t used to be every time though.”

Law didn't answer. He was rolling the baggie contents thoughtfully between his fingers as he dug in his pocket for something.

A hand full of chunky metal rings caught his arm. “I f*cking said can you wait?”

“I f*cking heard you, I said no.”

“What if I come and stay tonight? Just while it's bad.”

Law looked up, a little surprised. “You wanna? Then yeah.”

“I mean I'll stay. If you stay.”

Law furrowed his brows. “What?”

“If you don't use that sh*t.” Kidd clarified, rubbing his head and not looking at Law.

“Oh, f*ck sake. Sweet child,” Law mocked him.

“Tch… You didn't used to be mean like this either.”

“Just my bleeding sphincter talking, don't take it personally,” Law admonished. He'd finished patting himself down and hadn't found what he was looking for. Agitation suddenly pumped through him.

Kidd offered him a credit card. Law looked at it, then him, then sighed and took it. Kidd sank down the wall next to him while he balanced cell phone, card, and all.

“Hey, here,” Kidd gestured once he’d made his lines and finished half.

Law raised an eyebrow but passed it over and Kidd made the rest of it disappear.

“Guess we're not making it to the safe house huh.”

Kidd shrugged and stood. “Later. C’mon.”

They bundled into the back of the Escalade and waited for the k to come up. Law felt the first tendrils ease into the space between his body and mind and start to pry him loose. He felt lighter. He relaxed against Kidd.

“He’s been letting other people f*ck me,” Law found himself saying.

Kidd’s arm tightened around him. “How do you know?”

“He told me. He was waiting for me when I woke up this time… just wanted to mess with me, probably bored of the usual. I was bleeding, he said he'd had two men f*ck me halfway broken cuz I'm better that way… made a big deal out of not finishing it… just… haha… hey, do you think blood works like lube?”

“Nah.”

“Yeah, no, it coagulates huh.” Law watched the faraway orange lights of the city begin to sharpen and spread. A warm kind of light, an incandescent halo glow reflecting off the clouds in arcane patterns. “So what d’you think I should do.”

“Dunno. I still don't get why you haven't at least tried to kill his ass. That was number one on my list of duties when I was assigned to you: Don't let you murder management.”

“Ah, can't. Bigger stuff at stake.”

“Yeah you keep saying. So like, send him an invoice for all the other guys. Back pay.”

“Hah! I should…” Law watched his and Kidd’s knees. Where they were pressed together, glowing orange patterns were spreading. “What're you gonna do?”

“Hah. Uh…” Kidd heaved a sigh. “Guess I'll pray for ya.”

“Great. Thanks,” Law muttered before he forgot he had lips, a voice, a body. He went floating in thewarm lightof the starless sky.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Doffy started calling him in right after jobs more frequently.

Law could tell it was going to happen when the job had some little twist, or some previously untouchable target. Not that Law hesitated to pull the trigger on just about anyone, but there were some things that still threw him. In one month alone there was a request for him to stage the botched suicide of a politician (he'd strung him up to suffocate slowly then arranged to have a neighbor find him once he'd passed into vegetable status), and to copycat a serial killer who only attacked young women (Law had gotten a lucky break on this one—he’d taken out the killer himself a few months prior and had kept his fingers and kit, so he’d only needed to shoot the mark and plant evidence to stage this, instead of emulating the killer’s usual patterns).

After each, he'd been called in the following day and used to the point of injury.

Once Law learned the signs, he became more and more adamant that Kidd mess him up first. Kidd became stubborn and sullen and started refusing. Law got agitated. They both got violent.

Eventually he was called in directly from a job—a bad one. Law had finally f*cked up, gotten a leg full of lead shot and let the mark escape. If he was being honest, Law had kinda let the kid go on purpose... It was the first time he'd been sent after a civilian.

“Doesn't matter,” Vergo's toneless voice told them when they called it in. “It was a test. Your presence is required within the hour.”

Kidd did something he'd never done before and tried to argue with Vergo, and Law did something he'd never done before and tried to bolt. Kidd couldn't really stop the decorated assassin, especially when he was still wired on his ever-expanding co*cktail of enhancers. Law had just knocked his handler out with a precisely aimed pistol butt to the head and disappeared.

But he brought himself back after a short while. He had good reasons to see his debt paid in full.

Kidd was waiting right where Law had left him, smoking and massaging his head.

“Don’t suppose you'd wanna run away together, huh,” Law deadpanned.

“Depends what you're paying.”

“f*cking drone,” he slammed the car door behind him.

He pulled tweezers out of the kit and began picking bits of lead from his leg. He was just f*cking lucky he'd been wearing heavy jeans, and had been mostly out of range. Most were peppered across the surface in pulpy pockets, like seeds in a watermelon slice. Some were too deep and would just have to stay floating in there.

Kidd got back in the driver's seat and started the car, but then sat there with it running, gripping the wheel.

“Law…”

“Drive.”

Law came to gradually in that dimly-lit room with its minimalist furniture, and was amazed to find that he wasn't in blinding pain.

He kept his eyes closed until the fog in his brain lifted. He could tell something was different. The bed? The sheets…

No. It was that he was still fully clothed.

He sat bolt upright.

“I’m curious, Law: how do you usually imagine this going?” Doffy was seated next to the door, watching him.

“You're violating our agreement,” Law insisted with quiet desperation.

“I'm willing to reduce your remaining debt by half.” The towering man stood and considered his quarry. “Undress.”

“No. No.”

“You want me to do it for you? It'd be my pleasure.”

“No…”

“No what.”

“You can't. I can't. Doffy…” he shuffled back and back as the towering blond pursued him across the bed, trapping him against the headboard between arms like small trees.

“I can, obviously. You belong to me until your debt is paid. But you still have some choice in how this proceeds. Option A…”

Doffy fisted both hands in the front of Law's t-shirt and tore it open. Law tried to lunge away but found himself jerked up short and slammed back against the headboard. Doffy held the remains of his t-shirt twisted up in a noose around his neck.

“Option B…” Doffy pulled on the t-shirt and Law was consumed by a fierce kiss. He couldn't breathe. The knotted fabric was biting into his throat.

“O-option A,” Law gasped as soon as he was released.

“You would of course opt to inject a little fight into it. I do love that about you. Any other requests?”

“Hit me,” Law almost begged. “Face. Hard.”

“Ahh—you're hoping that I'll do it hard enough to ‘put you under.’ That's a no. And you're out of requests.”

Law's jeans went the same way as his shirt, buttons popping and seams giving way under the giant man's hands. Law struggled, pointlessly. More to allow himself the illusion of resistance than anything.

He stilled in shock when rough fingers breached him. Doffy was holding his legs open with a sharp knee digging into his injured thigh.

“Ah!”

“Hah. Feeling that?”

Law shook his head and clamped his teeth closed. He lost his careful grip on himself once Doffy had deemed him ready, and pulled the tattooed body against him. He was still fully clothed, but he undid himself and released a co*ck the size of Law's forearm.

“sh*t! Doffy! Let me dose myself, just with what I have on me, it'll be fast, you can do whatever you want to me if I can just…”

Diffy just ate it up. “This is good. This is so good…”

He hitched Law's legs up so he was half in his lap, the monster co*ck fitting along the cleft of his ass. He took himself in hand and played the tip over the resisting hole. Law felt it nudge, push, stretch him open with a slick sound… and then he was being forced onto it, massive hands viced around his forearms and pulling inescapably down.

“Aahh! AHhh!” Law writhed like a worm on a hook. It was so, so tortuously slow and he couldn't stop himself crying out.

Doffy silenced him with a suffocating kiss, savoring the ragged shock in his breath.

Law choked.

He broke away from the kiss and whipped his head backward so his skull met the very-solid headboard. Crack.

He did it again— crack.

Doffy stopped, bewildered. “What the hell…!”

Crack.

Law felt something shift this blow and his vision staggered. But before he could do it again, he was flat on his stomach on the bed, and thrashing did nothing.

“No you don't. You're gonna be here to feel this one.”

“F-f*ck…”

There was nothing else he could do. He watched his hands gripping the sheets, trying to detach from himself, but felt every inch of the co*ck that was grinding into him.

“That's it… Haha… you're shaking, can you feel it?”

The warlord was f*cking heavy. When he'd gotten about halfway sheathed, he drew out and plunged back in again, letting his weight drive him deeper and deeper.

Law really was shaking. He took deep, shuddering breaths, trying to draw on his considerable inner discipline. It was just another job, didn’t hurt worse than waiting in freezing water for hours, chasing a mark on a broken leg, letting himself be beaten and tortured just to advance a scheme. It’s not even like he’d never been raped before. He’d done so much sh*t… this was nothing.

But every thrust threw him off, pushed out everything inside him except fear and the feeling of being f*cked.

It's Kidd. Law closed his eyes and tried a different tactic. It's Kidd f*cking me—it's okay, it hurts but only cuz I want it to, he only does it cuz I want him to, and he'll soothe it after, he'll stay with me and wait, and worry and… and…

But that made it worse, to think that it was Kidd doing this to him.

Doffy must have sensed it, too. Maybe the deepening defeat in the hunch of his shoulders. Heturned Law over and caught his face in one hand, so he could watch him cycle through his inner miseries while his body was used and used and used.

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

Doffy just f*cking delighted in heaping insult on injury, so once he’d finished with Law, he called Kidd up to remove him, claiming he needed the space for a business meeting immediately after.

“Yes, now. He requires some assistance today. Thank you so much.” Doffy was dusting off his suit and smoothing back his blond hair with idle distraction.

Law wasn’t paying attention to the call. He was still trying to keep from hyperventilating as he rolled painfully onto his back and unstuck himself from the sheets.

“As I said, half your remaining debt.” Doffy reminded him.

“Y-yeah.”

“And perhaps in future…?”

“No,” Law sat bolt upright. “Doffy. Not like this. We, we have an agreement.”

“So we do.”

Doffy nodded to him and strolled out of the room.

Law startled when Kidd came in moments later. “The f*ck are you doing in here!”

Kidd apparently wasn’t expecting this scene either, and almost tripped through the door. “I’m! You’re!!! Would you get some f*cking clothes on!”

“OUT,” Law barked.

Vergo’s voice directed through the intercom, “You’re to vacate the room for another function. We have housekeeping coming in five and guests in ten.”

“f*cking what??” Law clutched his hair and sat frozen.

“sh*t!” Kidd looked around, at a loss. He didn’t seem to want to approach Law any nearer or even look at him.

Law was suddenly aware of the stench of sweat and sex in the room. Red-tinged lacework all down his legs, searing like acid where it seeped into his open wounds.

He stayed frozen.

“Well, move!” Kidd waved frantic hands.

“I f*cking can’t, I’m—”

“Are you still f*cking drugged?”

“No,” there was an edge of hysteria in Law’s laugh. “He waited til I woke up to f*ck me, wanted me to fight it so he could force me.”

“sh*t…” Kidd said again. He started pacing, looking around everywhere but at Law.

Law barely noticed him. “I know where this is going, he’s gonna, next time, he’s gonna…”

“Okay uh.” Kidd grabbed Law’s clothes off the floor and went to grab Law too.

“No! NO nono…” he backed away across the bed in a blind panic.

“f*cking hold still, I’m not doing anything! I’m getting us out of here!” Law’s frantic fear was spreading to Kidd too. He scrambled after Law and grabbed his arm, yanking him over.

“NOO!!”

“WOULD YOU SHUT UP!”

“GET OFF ME—”

Kidd put him under with a single strike.

Law surfaced a few minutes later, wrapped in the bed sheet and slung over a broad shoulder. Kidd's heavy boots were thudding along under him. Twenty steps from one door to another and the scrape of an ill-fitting magnetic bolt… he knew where they were in the building. He stayed limp, hidden inside the sheet, and waited.

Shuffling sneakers approached from a doorway, hesitated then walked along with them.

“Oh hey, um. Mr. Eustass.”

Oh f*ck, it was Penguin. Sweet little Penguin… God, if Kidd was taking him to the f*cking clinic, Law would straight up kill everyone in it, rather than let them see him like this.

“Nurseboy.”

“You got a… a thing there? You need help with?”

“Just a dead guy.” Kidd patted the sheet and Law longed to kick him.

“Oh, nice. Yeah. Do we deal with those in-house? I don't think I've ever had to… process one.”

“We have a guy on staff that does it.”

“Oh good,” Law could hear the relief in his voice. “Yeah I figured you'd do stuff like that.”

Kidd made a sound of distinct annoyance. “As if I'd do that fussy sh*t. Nah, I think you know the guy—creepy f*ck with a wicked death glare and a pill problem.”

Law tensed.

The dragging sneakers hesitated again. “O-oh.”

“Didn't know that, did ya.”

“Well, I guess someone's gotta do it, and he’s good at all sorts of stuff. I mean, I could probably, if Law's busy, like…” Law could just imagine the blank scowl Kidd was giving the poor guy. Why the f*ck was Penguin still talking to him? “Uh. So what does ‘processing’ usually…”

Law felt Kidd shrug. “Depends. He usually just clips off the fingers and pulls out the teeth.”

“He what?”

“I think so they can't be ID’d.”

“Oh. Yeah that makes total sense, very reasonable.”

“Sometimes he removes the whole head. But if he's in a hurry he just burns the face off.”

“...”

Law knew what Kidd was doing with all this but he still hated it. He listened with a sinking feeling while Penguin processed this in silence.

Kidd sounded like he was enjoying himself, though. “And then dismembers them so they fit in a cooler and we dump em. So hey, doc, think we could use the operating room for this one? Usual room is double-booked.”

“Uh…”

“You'd be doing Law a favor.”

“Oh well yeah! Just, yeah, whatever he needs.”

They went down to the clinic and Law was dumped onto a hard surface, still hidden in the sheet.

“Gonna stay and help?” Kidd prodded the NP smoothly.

“Nah, um. On lunch. So.” Penguin fled.

Kidd pulled the heavy curtain over the hall window and locked the door. He was sitting on the far side of the room pretending to be busy with his phone when Law sat up and unwrapped himself. Red eyes glanced over but quickly looked away again.

Law looked around. Coming here was actually a good plan… at least there was a sink and a locked door. He got his legs under him and grit his teeth before walking over to the sink without a single hitch in his step. He sure as f*ck wasn't gonna let Kidd see any more weakness than he already had.

His clothes were next to the sink. He checked them… jacket, sneakers. Good. But his jeans were split and his t-shirt was a twisted rope.

He put them down again and held onto the counter edge tightly for a moment, breathing.

“What.” Law snapped the second he heard Kidd open his mouth and take a breath.

Kidd snapped back, “Don’t be a dick. Just was gonna say, should I get anything.”

“Like what.”

“Medical sh*t or whatever?”

“Yeah,” Law opened the cupboard and pulled out a handful of gauze. “Rape kit and a f*cking band-aid.”

Kidd scoffed and went back to his phone. “Just trying to f*cking help.”

“I know. Just… get my other set of clothes from the car.”

“Those were your other set. We came straight from a job and ditched the others already, remember?”

“f*ck.” Law slammed the cupboard. His hands were shaking visibly now. “f*ck.”

“Keep your voice down if you don’t want someone coming in.”

Law muffled his cursing. He started pacing instead, then suddenly turned and started punching theconcrete wall.

“The hell are you doing!” Kidd was across the room in a second. He grabbed Law’s arm and got a hard blow to the face. And then another. He blocked the next and narrowly avoided a knee to that one nerve that Law always went for. “Unh! f*ck!”

“Hit me,” Law insisted.

“f*cking stop it.”

“You like f*cking my dead-eyed corpse? Cave my skull in, you can have me cold. Just gotta take my fingers off, pull my teeth out after…” He’d sunk down to the ground now, caught somewhere between keeping up his frantic attack on Kidd and trying to crawl into a corner.

Kidd gave up trying to grab his arms and grabbed his face instead. He held him still and silenced him with a firm kiss.

Law choked.

Two hundred fifty pounds of lean muscle flew across the room and met the stainless steel cart in a deafening clatter.

“You absolute f*cking sh*t…” Kidd growled, throwing off tubes and pads. He kicked away the cart and barged out of the room, slamming the door.

“Well... f*ck.” Law muttered into the empty room. “Don’t f*cking grab people like that then… idiot.”

He stayed sitting against the wall and tried to get his brain put back together. But now guilt and agitation were layered on top of the shame and fear and pain.

He was well on his way to his usual self-hating slump when the door opened and Kidd threw something soft at his head.

“THERE.”

The door slammed again.

Law unballed the bundle of faded blue fabric. It was the scrubs that Penguin never wore. He laughed to himself and buried his face in his hands.

It took Law an hour to clean himself and treat his own injuries. He probably shouldn't be walking on his shot-up leg but at least that pain distracted him from the rest. He put on the scrubs, shoes, and hoodie/jacket with “Cora-san” stitched on the back. Just like his med school days, he reflected with thin amusem*nt.

He got his ‘work face’ on again, everything safely locked away.

He found Eustass just down the hall, hanging out with Penguin and Shachi, of all people. The incorrigible nerds were sharing a joint and fabricating some patient charts.

“Law!” Shachi grinned at him, oblivious to the others’ warning looks. “Clowning on Peng’s style, man, I love it!”

“Yeah. Got blood on mine,” Law explained. “Thanks for the room, Peng-ya. Owe ya one.”

Penguin smiled a little. “Yeah, s’cool. Uh. You good? You’re looking… not good.”

“Eustass,” Law ignored this question and inclined his head toward the door. Kidd passed the joint back to Penguin and stood.

“Nono, Law, stay a bit, we finally got your ~man~ here to sit down with us!”

“Shachi,” Penguin hissed urgently at him, “Shut up, jesus.”

Shachi jumped up and tried to steer Law into a chair. Law unconsciously took a step back from the reaching hands.

“He’s got sh*t to take care of,” Kidd inserted himself between them and stared down at Shachi.

“Hey, haha, easy big guy.”

“Another time, Shach-ya, okay?” Law squeezed Shachi's shoulder in apology and made his escape, Kidd close behind.

Kidd followed him into the safe house and stood watching from the kitchen door as Law pulled out the anesthetic he’d plundered from the locked clinic cupboard.

“I can’t do this,” Kidd growled suddenly.

“It’s okay,” Law almost fumbled the little vial in his hurry. “You did what you could.”

“You know what item number two was on that list of duties? Right after ‘keep him from killing the boss?’”

Law didn’t reply. He was assembling a syringe.

“Keep him from killing himself.”

That stopped Law. He set the vial down and tapped his finger on it, thinking. “That why you stay with me after jobs? Do sh*t for me when you don’t need to?”

Kidd shook his head helplessly. “Dunno.”

Law picked up the vial again. “Doesn’t matter.”

The big redhead drummed his fingers on the doorframe and watched him dig for a spot around old scar tissue. Then he went to go through the motions of their post-op ammo inventory while Law got his armful and sank back onto the couch.

“It DOES matter,” Kidd burst out eventually, throwing the spent magazines across the kitchen table.

Law looked over at him in surprise, but didn't move from his reclined position. Realization was dawning on him, slow and distant.

“You're hooked,” he guessed. It was absurd but it made sense. Kidd had been getting more and more agitated each time Law got called in to service Doffy. The guy was f*cking jealous.

“Don’t make it sound like a drug thing, you f*cking addict.”

“Bio-chemically, it’s the same.” Law gave him what he hoped was a sympathetic look. He was aware that this was a painful conversation, but like the pain in his body, he felt it but didn't care.

He was so relaxed, almost glowing. He hadn’t gotten his hands on barbiturates for years now, since Penguin had weaned him off them and onto the benzos, at Law's own request. The pills were safer, easier, he’d gotten used to them. Law had almost forgotten how amazing the old stuff was. He wished Kidd would take some, he seemed like he needed it—pacing and running tattooed fingers through his bright red hair.

“It’s NOT the same. Mary mother of god, I hate you.”

“You don’t though,” Law drawled on. “Even the f*cking nerds can tell.”

“The f*cking nerds don’t know sh*t. You told them you were the social media intern and they believed you.”

“They catch on to weird stuff sometimes… heheh, they’re onto you. ‘Your man,’ they said.”

“Shut up, I'm trying to think...”

“That why you got weird when you saw me like that?” Law thought back to the scene in the upstairs room. “You consider me yours?”

“No. Law. It’s because it was f*ckED UP.”

“Yeah, hahaha…”

Kidd gave up on his pacing and collapsed onto the chair opposite the couch. “Why the f*ck am I trying to talk to you like this.”

“You’re having a normal emotional response to a traumatic event,” Law informed him. “And you’re distressed that I’m opting out of that bullsh*t.”

“Yeah, thanks, doc.”

“And you’re realizing that you’re bio-chemically invested in me at the same time you’re realizing that I’ve made myself bio-chemically unavailable.”

“I think I like you better on the stuff that makes you shut up,” Kidd shot at him.

“Yeah, me too.” Maybe another dose would do it… he was already halfway gone. “No one appreciates uninhibited Law…”

“He's almost as big a prick as withdrawal Law,” Kidd complained.

Law sighed and eyed the syringe again. He was only semi-aware that Kidd was still talking.

“...Not that I’ve ever met sober Law, I guess, but he’s probably even worse.”

“Yeah, f*ck that guy,” Law agreed languidly.

“I’m serious, though. I’m not doing this.”

“So opt out.”

Kidd glared while Law fished under the couch for a minute, then snorted and massaged his temples when the sedated assassin extended a bottle of liquor. “God. Of course.”

Law shook it at him. “Easier than explaining to management that you caught feelings and want out.”

Kidd still didn't take it. He was firmly wedged in the chair and had closed his eyes.

Law thought for a minute. “Wanna f*ck me?”

“Law!”

“What.”

“After that?? You’re… you were… ”

“Well I can’t care right now so you might as well get what you need.”

“That’s not what I f*cking… f*ck!” Kidd abruptly stood and left.

Law watched him go but didn’t move.

It didn’t matter.

He thought differently when he woke alone in the eerie pre-dawn light, head full of crackling replays of Doffy laughing at him. He’d used up that whole vial, and the other stuff was probably in the car.

He was still f*cking wearing the scrubs. Just like med school.

He hurt…

Law curled up in a ball and stacked couch cushions tight around himself, but couldn’t get back to sleep. He sat up.

Kidd’s boots were lying by the door.

And there he was, sprawled on the bed, still with his jacket and holster on and everything.

Kidd's hand went to the gun when the mattress dipped next to him, but he relaxed when he saw who it was. He breathed out heavily as Law fit himself along his side. His breath smelled of liquor—he’d taken Law’s sh*tty advice after all.

“Law—” he started something that sounded like an apology and Law cut him off with aterse word.

He rested his head against Law's instead, and they fell back asleep.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

--Last year--

Of all the useless lackeys Doffy had ever sent to ‘help’ Law on his missions, this one was definitely either a joke or a trap. Law sat stiffly and scrutinized this new challenge, while Vergo went on about objectives and accountability.

The challenge was named “Kidd,” and he was draped over his chair like a detention hall regular, all casual aggression coiled in a tightly muscled build. Not the gym-cloned variety either—callused hands marked with prison ink showed that he’d earned his stature the hard way. And then those black nails and the eye-gougingly red hair… trashy, but like, flamboyant, f*ck-you trashy.

Law would have been all over that death rock, bad boy sh*t like, ten years ago. But he wasn't a stupid kid anymore.

Anyway...

...Interesting eyes, too. Law waited, and deep red eyes flitted over before snapping away. They wandered back, and then away once more. Ah, Law was probably making the guy uncomfortable, staring at him all unblinking from like ten inches away. Now he was trying to pretend he hadn’t looked… Heh. Cute.

Maybe Law wouldn't murder this one after all.

“...to assist you, Law,” Vergo was saying.

“Hmm?” He didn't turn.

“Assist, means like, babysit,” Kidd mocked him, examining the flaking black on his nails.

Oh hey, so yeah, murder.

Vergo droned on. “You'll manage the operation as usual, and your new handler will oversee things, provide support, etcetera. And, Law, AND. If you ‘lose’ this one you'll be shelling out to replace him yourself.”

“I’ll just find you another Terminator knockoff in a trailer park somewhere,” Law muttered and turned his scorn toward his empty coffee mug instead.

Vergo took a breath through his teeth and ignored this. “Donquixote has been concerned about your performance of late. Think of this as a quality control measure.”

Law's hackles went up. “If he wants to improve my performance he shouldn't be hobbling me with all these day release rejects.”

But Vergo was done talking. He folded his arms and grunted a dismissal at them.

They saw themselves out of the windowless office and walked in silence to the stairs. Six flights down, around and around, not saying a word.

“Ugh. Okay, get lost, I gotta pick up my meds from the clinic downstairs,” Law waved a hand at his spiky shadow once they'd reached ground level. “Go bring the car around or something.”

Kidd looked suspicious. “What f*cking meds.”

“Meds. ‘Scrips. Pills, sweetheart.”

“Hah. I knew you were a headcase.”

“You have no idea.” Law tossed him the Lexus keys and brushed past to descend another two levels.

“Peng-ya,” Law teased the NP, appearing at his elbow.

Penguin dropped the pestle, and powder clouded up to coat his obscure indie band tee. “f*ck! Um. Hi. Law.”

“Hi.” Law hid a smile. He'd never exactly been a model med student himself, but something about the college dorm feel of the NP’s office was so over the top. X-files posters in a crime lord’s keep… How was this kid still alive?

Penguin dusted himself off. “Don't worry about the powder, jus rockets.”

“What, the candy? Or.”

“Or yeah. Hey want some cush?? Bossman don't mind. We can just hang, you know?” He brightened. As if anyone ever came down here if they weren't either bleeding out or on orders.

“Meds, Peng.”

“Oh yeah. Okay Shachi’ll be back from a pizza run soonish so he can do em up. Are those doing what they're supposed to?”

“Gonna have to go stronger on the stims. Resistance building up.” Law seated himself on the spinny chair at Penguin’s computer and brought up his own file. He tutted at the prescriptions Penguin had written up for Shachi to fill, and started a new list.

“It wouldn't if you only used it like you’re supposed to. You know? And your bloodwork says you've been mixing it? With all this other sh*t, which we've talked about. Cuz like, it makes it hard to account for the…”

“Mhm.” Law paused after ending his list with a dire promise of evisceration if Shachi shorted him on any of the dosages. Hm… Sounded a little harsh.

“...And dude, codeine ain't candy. Except when it is, cuz one time? Shachi and I had this gumball machine…”

Law finished the note with a little heart. Much friendlier.

The smell of anchovy pizza announced Shachi’s arrival.

“Shup Lah,” Shachi raised his pizza to Law, his mouth full.

“Penguin. Shachi.” Law began in a tired tone. “What’s the wait gonna be like, here?”

“It’s gonna be chill as frick, Law.”

“No, I mean—”

“Music!” Penguin bounced over to the vinyl shelf.

“Chill your ass on that chair, Cap.”

Law sighed and settled back on the spinny chair. He messaged the guy he was gonna kill later, pushing back their appointment by a couple hours, citing family stuff.

Trailer Park Terminator wandered in some time later, bored of waiting in the car. Law was spinning idly in the chair. Penguin and Shachi were arranging pills according to some arcane formula on what appeared to be a battleship board.

“Not ready yet? The f*ck is taking so long,” Kidd grumbled.

Law shrugged. “The nurses are baked.”

“I'm not baked!”

“I'm not a nurse.”

Kidd checked his watch. “Just put that sh*t in some bottles and hand it over.”

Shachi rolled his eyes. “I actually have to account for all this? They're uh, controlled substances? God.”

Penguin chimed in. “Yeah Law might go sell em to kiddies in playgrounds.”

“Ply lonely soccer moms with dark delights.”

“Or worse: eat em all himself.”

“I know exactly how much of each to take, thank you both,” Law was starting to lose patience.

“We’re just arranging it so you can titrate up to the heavy performance stuff a few weeks in advance of a big event, and then detox while alternating with some smoother stuff.”

“...a big event??” Kidd wrinkled his brow at them.

“Yes.” Law shot him a look. “All these sports events I participate in.”

“Some ninja warrior sh*t, right!” Penguin enthused. “We wanna come watch sometime!”

Kidd snorted and walked out again.

Shachi thought for a minute. “Don’t they do blood testing at these events, Law?”

“No, Shach-ya, it’s not exactly an official thing.”

Their faces lit up with adoring excitement. “So metal!”

Kidd was already sure that this whole thing was either a trap or a joke.

As he navigated them through the crammed downtown streets, Kidd kept an eye on the rearview mirror, examining the man lounging in the backseat.

It was early evening on a Tuesday in December and the supposed hitman was wearing dark sunglasses, two days of chin scruff, and an attitude of general disapproval. Dishevelled, but like, fashionably, carefully dishevelled. He couldn’t be much older than Kidd’s 25 years. Probably just some douchey film student hired solely to test Kidd’s focus. Had a face on him that should never see the inside of a prison... high cheekbones, pretty mouth, sarcastic eyes that stared back at Kidd with an unsubtle challenge.

Bait.

Well Kidd wasn’t biting today.

“Lotta pills,” he commented by way of conversation.

Law was looking over the 28-day pill sorter provided by the basem*nt-dwelling nurses.

“Mhm. Stimulants, supplements, nootropics… Nothing fun. These are for work.” He opened up bubbles 27 and 28 on the sorter, and downed the contents with the last of his coffee.

Kidd grimaced to himself and focused back on the evening traffic.

“Hey,” Law was suddenly breathing right in his ear. “Open up.”

Kidd side-eyed him like hell, but snaked out his tongue to take the little capsules being held to his mouth. He didn't see what they were but he did see the ATRPS tattooed on his fingers—serious sh*t, if that was real. He'd only seen those designs once before.

The fingers lingered just a moment too long against his lips. “Swallow.”

Kidd swallowed.

“Good.” Law thudded back into his seat with a smile.

Their first stop was a kitschy little coffee shop in the financial district. Law told him to bring the kit and stay close, so Kidd shadowed him while he flirted with the artsy barista and picked up his overpriced coffee.

The bullsh*t started once they'd reached the park across the street.

“Wrong bag.”

“You asked for the equipment bag,” Kidd ground his teeth. The pills were making him twitchy. “This was the only bag with equipment in it.”

Law sighed and wrinkled his nose at his coffee. “Actually, yeah, I'll need the glock for the barista. This pumpkin-flavored f*ckery, I swear to god…”

Kidd rested a booted foot on the weapon-filled black tote. “Funny. But I checked the other bag and there’s nothing useful in it.”

“Well bring both if you’re gonna be like that.” He turned and took off on long legs toward the far end of the park.

Kidd fumed for a minute and watched him go. Hopefully, once the joke was had, he could get a piece of that bratty film student ass before dumping him in a f*ckING lake somewhere…

He went and got the second bag.

“The f*ck is in this, it’s heavier than the one stuffed with knives,” Kidd complained as he hauled both over to the park bench.

“Drugs.” Law took another dour sip of subpar latte.

“Right.”

Law shrugged and waited, scanning the thinning crowd of tourists. It was well past sundown, and cold as f*ck.

Kidd questioned him, “...so you don’t need the weapons bag. To kill this guy.”

“Nope.”

“Just drugs.”

“Yup.”

“...Bull. sh*t,” he muttered.

“Kidd—”

“‘Eustass,’” Kidd insisted. No need to get personal, here.

“Eustass. I’m gonna need you to shut up for a minute.”

Kidd sneered at the back of Law’s head and slouched down on the bench. He contented himself with casting murderous looks at passersby. Eventually he noticed a man in an expensive suit and cheap shoes walk past them a second time, after staring at Kidd too long on his first pass.

Law chuckled under his breath, “Try to look more like a low-level thug on an errand, will you, I think our man is uncertain.”

“Oh I’m sorry, am I looking too cash over here?”

“Too smoldering. Close your legs and stop eye-f*cking strangers, you look like you’re taking cash or credit for that dick.”

Kidd snerked and crossed his ankles. “This dick is worth it.”

“I don't doubt it.”

After the man’s third pass, Law stood, swirling the remains of his coffee. “Okay, this is taking too long and I gotta prep. Gimme the gold parcel, there. And when the guy finally gets his nerve up, just give him the red one and tell him to f*ck off.”

“What? That’s it?”

“Yeah, he’s not the mark, just his lawyer.”

“Give the lawyer… the drugs?”

“Yeah, lawyers f*cking love drugs.” Law gestured impatiently.

Kidd opened the second tote, and with grave misgivings, gave Law the shiny gold Christmas bag inside.

“Aw f*ck yeah,” he murmured appreciatively.

“What’s in that one?” Kidd wondered.

“Drugs. Eustass.” Trafalgar raised that insulting eyebrow again and took off back toward the little coffee shop.

“Asshole,” Kidd murmured. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the lawyer approaching ‘stealthily.’ He was shuffling from bench to bench, whistling to himself.

“Psst, hey,” the man called in a stage whisper once he was next to Kidd’s bench. “I’m a friend of Aunt Nora. You know, Nora, right? She—”

Kidd shoved the shiny red Christmas bag in his chest without looking at him. “You have a twenty second head start, jackass. Go.”

The lawyer clasped the bag to his chest and ran away through the park.

“Tis the f*ckin season, YES.” Law was suddenly next to Kidd again, wearing gloves and looking much more awake than before. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his head on his neck. “That barista isn’t so bad after all. Hey, hold this.”

He handed Kidd a gun barrel-first (…rude) while he fished a couple more things out of the drug tote.

Kidd looked at it. “This is a cop gun.”

“Yeah, haha, I stole it from the pig parked over there with his donuts and his telephoto lens. Okay now give it back, I gotta go kill the lawyer and make it snow. Christmas is nigh as f*ck.”

“I thought the lawyer wasn’t the mark?”

“Nah, the actual mark’s waiting for him in his car around the corner. He's just a cover body, make the mark look like a bystander. But honestly? The lawyer’s a sh*t human, Eustass. A real slime. I’m gonna pop his brain.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve and waved at Kidd to get up. “So can you handle a gun?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll see,” he laughed. “Game on.”

Twenty minutes later they were running away from a burning cop car as a mushroom cloud of white powder went up above their heads. It drifted peacefully down and coated the fake cobblestone streets of the financial district.

f*cking festive, all of it. Beautiful.

And the most riveting part had been the assassin himself—pulling guns like trick bouquets from his coat and laying waste with precision.

Kidd had already forgotten his earlier resolve to not get taken in. They were strolling down a lightless alley now, laughing and shoving, still drunk on the adrenaline rush of their violent spree.

“So by ‘drugs’ you meant ‘C4’, huh,” Kidd noted, as they paused to admire the chaos rising above the skyline behind them. The finale had been a bomb hidden in the drugs tote, planted in the lawyer’s car and set off at a safe distance.

“I also meant drugs… mostly fake. Can’t stage a buy gone wrong without em.”

“Okay so you’re not a joke,” Kidd conceded.

“Thanks. I’m still undecided about you.” Law turned away with a smile and started back up the alley.

“Hah. And what, you want me to bribe you?” Kidd caught him by the belt loop, and pushed him against a wall. He stood over him, caging him in with his arms.

“If you got something useful to show me…”

Deadly fingers brushed over Kidd's lips again and Kidd opened up obediently. He curled his tongue around them and watched Law stare at the obscene display.

Tasted like steel and latex. Kidd really wanted to taste that pretty face too, but he had this feeling that he'd get his eyes shot out if he went for it. Instead, he turned the assassin's head away and up with a hard hand around his jaw.

This seemed to be the right move. Law melted into the harsh angle with a shiver.

“I dunno if I can accept this bribe in good faith,” he sighed while Kidd mouthed up his throat.

“Aw, why.”

“Well there's the thing where I just got you a prison term of at least like, 20 years.”

Kidd didn't take his mouth off the overheated skin. He started undoing Law's shirt, top button down. “How about you walk me through that one.”

“Well there's your fingerprints all over the cop’s gun, the one I used to execute the lawyer.”

“Nah, there's not. I can hold a gun so there's only partials, and I wiped those. Next.”

“Hm,” Law sounded amused. “Then there's the photos the cops got of you handing off a bag full of drugs to the lawyer.”

“Yeah that almost was an issue,” Kidd admitted, moving on to tongue a nipple. “Until I set the cruiser on fire with the camera and all inside.”

A surprised laugh. “Nice. Well then all they got against you is the barista’s statement placing you in the area at the time, carrying a bag matching the one found in the lawyers car.”

“And you with me,” Kidd pointed out, “and I'm sure you gave her enough blow to keep her happy.”

“Yeah,” Law seemed delighted that Kidd had countered all his scheming. “Okay proceed with the bribery then.”

Kidd dropped to his knees.

He opened the last button on the shirt and admired the blackwork tattoos underneath. Two scythes, crossed at the handles and joined at the points, formed a large heart from his shoulders to his navel. Kidd licked down to the lower point on the tight stomach and Law squirmed.

“Hold still, jesus.”

Kidd grabbed his hips and shoved him firmly against the concrete wall. Sculpted but slender—Kidd could hook his thumbs over the jutting hip bones and wrap both hands halfway around him. He dug the thumbnails in a little and got a good sound.

“Ah, haha…”

“You like that, huh.” Kidd gripped harder. He grinned to himself and sucked a mark into the smooth skin just above his jeans, careful to only slightly, slightly brush over the urgent hardon a little lower down.

“Mhh… I’d like it better if you stopped screwing around and sucked my goddamn dick.”

“Oh hold on a sec, there’s instructions here,” Kidd teased, tugging the jeans until he could see the bold letters tattooed across his lower stomach. “ For-tu-nam in-san…”

“Oh my god can you just,” Law panted.

“Nono gotta read the fine print, tricky stuff gets in there… in-san-um esse et ca… cae?… cae-cam…”

“Do I have to put a gun to your head to get a f*cking blowj*b!”

“Your gun’s not loaded.”

“f*ck…” Law checked the chamber on his personal piece and yeah, empty. He'd already discarded the ones used at the job. “Ugh.”

Kidd offered up his own, grip first.

“A gentleman!” Law accepted the gun graciously.

“Mmhm.”

“Such a rarity. Okay, let's play.”

Law's phone started buzzing.

Kidd paused, but Law flicked off the call without even looking at it.

Kidd's phone started buzzing.

“Oooh no, nono no you don't,” Law warned as Kidd pulled it out and checked the caller.

Kidd raised his eyebrows in mute apology and answered Vergo's call. “Sir.”

“Get. Back. Here. Now.”

Law very pointedly chambered a shot and Kidd ignored him. “We’re just getting clear. We'll come straight there soon as—”

“Twenty minutes.” The call ended.

“You’re not done bribing me,” the irate assassin reminded him.

“It'll take ten to get to our wheels and twelve to drive.” Kidd stood and shrugged his jacket back into place. And readjusted the crotch of his pants.

“Zero stars,” Law growled, shoving Kidd's gun back in his chest and striding off.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

“Is this what you call ‘quiet,’ you little sh*ts?” Vergo shoved his phone at them from across the ancient steel desk. A news clip of a burning cop car and a cocaine cloud was trending online.

Rival gangs wreak havoc, said one headline, At least 20 shooters reported.

Blow bomb blows, read another, toxic fallout renders dozens insufferably perky.

“Hm,” was all Law said.

Kidd stayed silent—it hadn’t been HIS plan.

“Answers, Law,” the severe man rumbled. “Talk.”

“There was nothing in my orders about ‘quiet.’”

The assassin earned himself a jaw-rattling slap across the face. He cracked his neck and sighed.

Kidd stared sideways at him. How the f*ck did he get to sass management without having his kneecaps shot off on the spot? He’d seen his rank tats—he was barely above a foot soldier on the ladder, like Kidd.

“You. ‘Kip,’” Vergo tried next.

“He prefers Eustass,” Law mentioned, and got a warning glare.

“My orders were just to help or whatever,” Kidd explained. “I did, and it all pretty much turned out.”

“It ‘turned out’ two cops and a lawyer beyond your assigned body count. Your orders were to manage this one,” Vergo jabbed a finger at the artfully tousled man looking bored in his folding chair. “Managing means containing volatile situations, not compounding them. Understand?”

“Sir.” Kidd affirmed.

The door opened and an impossibly tall, immaculately dressed blond man ducked through with commanding flair. He grinned at the pair of them.

“Stunning,” he chuckled in an ominous baritone. “Wildly entertaining.”

Kidd sat straight up in his chair. Next to him, Law straightened as well, but more slowly. Their boss, Donquixote himself, settled into the heavy leather chair across from them and pressed his fingers together. Vergo stood at the deskside, arms crossed.

“And only moderately extravagant in expense. The total seems to have eaten through your budget and your professional fee, Law, and come out well into the red… not astronomically, though. Nothing you can’t work off, right?”

Kidd glanced sideways and saw all the sass drop momentarily from the assassin’s face, and something like fear take over. Then blank indifference. “Yeah.”

“You will, in future, stick to your objectives—and your budget—more closely.”

“Yes.”

“And your handler will more assertively take you in hand… oh, have you covered this already, Vergo?”

His stoic lieutenant nodded once.

“Excellent. You do understand, don’t you Eustass?”

Kidd shrugged his assent. “We go too big, we work it off. I get it.”

“Oh, no no no, you’re not expected to make up for anything.” The cheshire cat grin widened. “Just Law here. He’s responsible for the operation; you’re responsible for him. And here he’s back in one piece, so you’re off the hook.”

“I can take some of the blame if I can take some of the credit,” Kidd ventured a little boldness. He’d done his share of stunning damage too.

Law tensed. Donquixote’s grin went lunar.

Vergo scoffed, “He’s a whor* on the side, Kip, he’s gonna work it off from his back. Keep quiet unless you want to help with that.”

“What a thought…” their employer chuckled.

Kidd clammed the f*ck up.

Law ground his teeth audibly and sank down even further in his chair. “I prefer the term debt-bonded dickwarmer.”

Donquixote glanced at Vergo.

Law went on, “whor*s at least get some f*cking variety in their clientele—”

A telescoping baton extended suddenly in Vergo’s hand and whipped across Law’s face. Law jerked and grunted. It wasn’t a heavy blow, and for a moment Kidd thought it hadn’t actually hit him. He didn’t dare look, though.

The unflappable blond man sighed. “Law, I would hate to see that scar up. Go downstairs and have it closed and we’ll get the rest of the debrief from your handler, here.”

From the corner of his eye, Kidd watched Law start to say something, stop himself, look at him, look at their bosses… then abruptly stand and stride from the room. He didn’t meet Kidd’s eye but he didn’t hide his face either. Kidd caught a flash of white teeth through a deep slice in his upper lip.

Donquixote sighed again when Law had left. “I know I'm too lenient with him but I find his audacity endearing.”

Kidd had no idea what to say to any of this, so he waited to be asked a direct question.

“Well now… Eustass.” The boss was looking at him appraisingly now. “You were the one who closed the Diez deal, weren't you? After Bellamy got his foot shot off. Tell me what happened there.”

“I was there, yes. With my crew. Just muscle,” Kidd evaded.

“Don't be coy, Kip, it's not cute on you,” Vergo warned.

Kidd looked at the boss’ inviting expression. He really couldn't tell if this was a trap… not that it mattered. “I took over negotiations when Bellamy f*cked up, yeah. The trade was going fine until he started running his damn mouth. He got shot and I stepped in.”

“Mm. And who shot Bellamy, Eustass?” It wasn't a question.

A moment passed.

“...I did.”

Donquixote let out a genuine laugh, and even Vergo cracked a slight smile. Which made Kidd very very sure that he was about to die.

“Stunning.” Kidd was treated to a full view of extremely white teeth.

“...Thanks.”

“So.” The boss gestured to Vergo, who pulled a file from a drawer and opened it on the desk in front of Kidd. “You’re it.”

“I'm…?”

“You’re taking Bellamy's position and he's taking yours. You and your crew will be the ground team for our little expansion project, managing all the new territory and talent involved. In addition to one or two problem cases that may benefit from your brand of diplomacy. Do you think you can handle all that, Eustass?”

“Yeah.”

“Just 'yeah’?”

“Better than Bellamy can.”

Kidd was amazed when this was received with more good humor. Being half sure he was about to die always made him ballsier than he probably should be, but it was working for him today. He hadn't even gotten the baton, let alone shot in the kneecaps. He'd gotten f*cking promoted.

“I don’t doubt it. Seems you’ve survived your assignment with Law, so I’m convinced. He excels at disposing of those we send to assist him… finds it insulting, I suppose.”

Kidd thought back to Law’s trickery. “Yeah he kinda tried to set me up.”

“Insubordinate little sh*t,” Vergo growled.

“Useful, though,” Doffy waved a hand.

“He’s getting erratic. This job was so simple, and look. An excuse to create chaos.”

“Yes…” Doffy smiled fondly and turned back to consider Kidd. “Hence the new handler. Your methods only seem to encourage his acting out, Vergo.”

Vergo frowned and held his silence. Kidd was f*cking dying to get the whole story here, but he kept quiet too.

“So:” Donquixote raised his eyebrows. “Law. Problem case ‘A’.”

Kidd leaned in a little.

“Your duties in regards to him are threefold. The most basic is to ensure the success of his operations—equipment, transportation, backup. And then to provide thorough reports to Vergo.”

“Every bullet accounted for,” Vergo insisted.

“Okay,” Kidd nodded.

“Second: keep him from harming himself.”

“I mean, his line of work, it's kinda—” Kidd started.

“Oh, nono. How do I put this. Vergo?”

A distinct sneer twisted Vergo's face. “He's a f*cking addict, a pillhead. He flunked out of med school (on our dime) because he was cycling stimulants and sedatives in three-day binges and kept trying to kill himself.”

“...”

“Not that he ever remembered having done so. Bad mixtures, he claims. Then there was an incident, and legal trouble, and some very expensive fallout…”

Doffy pursed his lips. “Well. He says he's found stable combinations now, and he does get very good results out of whatever they are, so I'm sure this will be an unnecessary precaution. But still, watch him closely before and after jobs.”

“Okay,” Kidd agreed, less certainly.

“And most importantly,” Donquixote exchanged an amused glance with Vergo. “Try to keep him from killing us.”

Kidd nodded with rising apprehension, no longer sure that this wasn't a massive joke after all.

The feeling of unease followed Kidd downstairs, where he found his charge stitching up his own lip in the empty clinic.

“Why don't those doctor guys do that?” he eyed the needle and pliers.

“They’re at home, it's like midnight,” Law murmured, not taking his eyes off the mirror above the sink.

“Call em, it's their job.”

“I usually treat my own injuries. I don't appreciate other people telling me what's good for me.”

Kidd leaned on the exam chair. He watched the needle tent the skin from under the lip, stretch it, then emerge like a bud from the ground. Pliers and thread made a strange cat’s cradle and then a knot.

“I should use surgical glue to make sure it doesn't scar,” Law chuckled, snipping the end of the stitch, “but sometimes getting messed up is worth it.”

“Cuz the boss told you to do the opposite, huh.”

“He doesn't own me.”

Kidd was unsure about that. That, and pretty much everything else happening here.

Law paused to rinse blood off the wound again. He thumbed over it to test the sutures, spreading the raw edges slightly, and Kidd looked away.

“You still want that kiss?” Law teased, catching his discomfort.

“I didn't try and kiss you.”

“No, but you wanted to. I could tell.”

Kidd sucked his teeth. “I could tell that you didn't wanna.”

“Well if you're being assigned to me, we should get comfortable with each other, shouldn't we.” He picked the pliers up and readied the next suture. “Come here.”

Kidd stayed where he was. “You only wanna now cuz you think it'd piss him off,” he accused.

“No. I don't care what pisses him off or whatever. I do things in my own way, in my own time— ah f*ck.”

This stitch was way off now.

Kidd came up behind him. “Lemme see.”

Law glowered at the mirror but turned and let him see. He gave Kidd a tired, searching look while a black-painted thumb tested the half-closed wound. “You wanted to kiss me until Doffy got to you… He gets to everyone.”

Kidd shuffled a little. “Look, it's just, seems like there’s a lot of complicated sh*t going on.”

“It’s not that complicated. I work for Doffy in a couple different capacities. And I have my own f*cking life.”

“Yeah, no, that's… I don't care about that.”

“Liar,” Law muttered.

Kidd chewed his lip. “You uh… you learn that stitching stuff in med school?”

Law startled and looked at him warily. “How much did they tell you.”

“Just that you picked up a habit instead of a degree, and it got pretty bad. That true?”

The assassin looked unsure and unguarded for a moment, and Kidd thought he might get some answers. But then he just dropped his eyes and turned away to finish the stitches. Awkward silence reigned as he finished up and sterilized the tools. It continued as they got back in the car and Kidd steered them toward the safe house on the far side of town.

“They were for studying,” Law mumbled after a tense forever. He was staring out the window at the passing lights, chin shoved in palm.

“Huh?”

“The pills. Told Doffy I could do school and take commissions both, but kept getting behind, couldn’t focus… couldn’t sleep…”

Kidd drummed his fingers on the wheel. “So—”

“Got out of hand a couple times, but it’s not as bad as whatever he told you. Okay?”

“Fine… But so, you were working for him already? Doing hits?”

“Yeah?”

Kidd frowned. “So why bother with school? Seems like you had a sweet thing going, and the boss’ favor and all.”

Law made a scoffing laugh sound and looked at Kidd like he’d just realized he was talking to a llama. “Have you f*cking met Doffy?”

“Uh, yeah? We were just—”

“Rhetorical question. He’s a psychopathic black hole, Eustass. The longer you spend close to him, the worse everything gets warped. If you’re smart, you’ll earn your stacks and get the f*ck out soon as you can.”

It was Kidd’s turn to laugh. “Even if I had other options? Hah.”

“You don’t have family? Reasons to wanna end up okay?”

“I got this Family now, and that’s more’n I ever had before. I’m not f*cking that up.”

“Hm.” Law turned an evaluating eye on Kidd’s finger tattoos.

Kidd let him count em, a little surge of pride boosting his mood. Those pieces were f*ckin real, they got him respect. One marked his three-year term inside and his crime (felony assault), others the months he’d spent in solitary (two). Another for having turned 18 while on the inside (he’d been tried as an adult). The last for his crew. Killer, Heat and Wire had been in there with him, and once Kidd had gotten out and earned a spot in the Donquixote Family, he’d been able to hire a f*ckin good lawyer and get them out too.

His crew were loyal to him, he took care of them. They were waiting for him to update them on his assignment, and his meeting with the boss. Kidd grinned to himself. They’d be so f*cking pumped about this promotion thing. They’d be replacing Bellamy’s crew of moronic assholes. Together they’d own this f*cking town.

“You should cover those when you’re out in open air. Like I do,” Law told him.

“I should f*ckin not.”

“It’ll interfere with the daylight side of your work. Draw heat.”

Kidd sneered. “I’m not ashamed of em, and I'm not afraid of cops.”

“Not what I meant,”’ Law sighed. “It’s just a professional tip, don’t take it the wrong way.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

Law stopped him from getting out once they arrived. “I can carry my own bag inside.”

“What, no goodnight kiss on the doorstep?” Kidd mocked.

“Nah.”

Law was over the console and straddling Kidd in half a second, long fingers sliding through the red hair and forcing his face up toward him.

Kidd grabbed his shoulders to shove him away, but the lips sealed over his were so f*cking perfect, the taste of blood and smoke clouding his brain and shooting straight to his dick. He dragged eager hands down Law’s body instead, until he was gripping the narrow hips and pulling them hard against him.

“f*ck…” he groaned, pulling away slightly to breathe. Law pulled him back in.

There was grabbing and grinding. Kidd sucked the damaged upper lip into his mouth just slightly, and closed his teeth against the sutures… Law made a breathy sound that Kidd really really needed to hear more of.

He’d gotten to Law’s belt, and his own erection was seriously about to break through his jeans, when Law pulled back and gave Kidd a… a hearty clap on the shoulder.

“Welp.” Law opened the driver side door and dismounted onto the pavement.

“What?”

Law was digging in the trunk and slinging the weapons tote over his shoulder. Kidd tried collect himself.

“You f*ckER. You… UGH.” He smashed the steering wheel with his fist a few times.

There was a knock on the passenger side window. Law waved at him and Kidd jabbed the button to wind it down.

“Can I HELP you.”

“I just had a thought: rings. Like big, f*ck-off, gold ones, if that whole thing is what you're going for,” Law gestured generally at Kidd’s everything.

“What??”

“To hide your tats, idiot. I feel like leather gloves would be too S&M on you?”

“f*ck OFF.” Kidd started the car and screeched the tires as he pulled away from the curb.

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

Kidd's next assignment with Law was only a few weeks later. At least the frustration had burned down to a low simmer and he could focus.

Law was all business, which was just fine. The assignment was way toned down too. All Kidd had to do was drive the assassin onsite, switch vehicles, and then pick him up with his luggage a couple hours later.

“What’s this one full of?” Kidd wondered as he slung a very heavy black zipped bag into the cargo van. “co*ke or knives?”

“Dead guy.”

“Like, an entire one?”

“Yeah.”

Kidd wrinkled his crooked nose. f*ckin gross.

Law tossed the weapons tote in after it and directed Kidd toward a warehouse on the old docks. They parked inside but didn't take anything out of the car. Law got in the back and unzipped the big bag.

The dead guy was from another gang. Kidd didn't recognize him, but from what he could see of his hand tattoos, he was a mid-ranking officer who'd done a short stint in the same place Kidd had. Nice suit, obvious hair plugs, lot of gold jewelry. He’d been shot once in the head.

Law had laid a plastic sheet down in the back of the van and was cutting the corpse’s clothes away.

“What's he look like to you,” he asked Kidd.

Kidd shrugged. “Nothing special. Lotta showy noise, inkwise, and not much to back it up. He's spent time inside but only like a month, forever ago, and no kills or big scores to explain his rank. Prolly a f*ckin weasel.”

“Hah. Maybe that's why his own bosses wanted him gone. This is a favor Doffy’s doing them.”

He opened the weapons tote.

Inside, among the knives, were tools that Kidd had assumed at first were torture implements, and later decided must be some kinda medical sh*t. Law selected a pair of locking vice grips.

“You’ve seen how we process bodies before?” Law asked, and Kidd shook his head no. “Okay, pay attention. This is half of my work.”

He spun the tool in his fingers and repositioned the corpse’s head, but then looked over at Kidd and frowned.

“Eustass. Don't smoke in here.”

Kidd raised his hands in mock apology and put the cig away. He popped a gum in his mouth instead.

Law went about his gruesome task. He started with the teeth, working them out one by one and dropping them onto the plastic.

Hurt Kidd's teeth just to watch it. He grimaced and stuck another gum in his mouth.

Law paused again. “...Chew with your mouth closed.”

“Fine.”

The grips went away and some heavy clippers came out. Law uncurled one of the rigid fingers and fit the blades around the base.

Even after all Kidd had seen in his life, the wet crunch of a clipped-off finger f*cking turned his stomach. He shifted and crossed his arms. Nine more fingers clunked to the floor of the van, rings and all, and Law looked over to see how Kidd was taking it.

Kidd gave him an insolent stare and blew a big pink bubble. He popped it, smacking.

Law almost choked laughing. “No respect for the dead!”

“This guy? He doesn't mind.”

“Guess not,” Law coughed and tried to get a straight face on again.

“Want one?” Kidd offered him the bag of bubblegum and candies from inside his jacket.

“Hah. Hahaa… No, ahem, I'm good. And I'm not a child,” Law declined.

“Keeps your blood sugar up. When’s the last time you ate?”

“Who keeps track of sh*t like that. Anyway, I’ll manage my own carcass after I manage this one. It can wait another hour.”

Kidd chewed. “You running on coffee and speed, aren't ya.”

Law tsked and sat back on the plastic. He shook his head at the sugar-loading thug, but reached out a hand in a gimme motion. “Fine. Ply me with candy, then. Sketchy bastard.”

Kidd dropped one into his palm.

Law unwrapped it carefully and gave it an experimental lick. “This is probably your idea of a good second date, huh.”

“The dead guy isn't ideal…” Kidd mused.

“Nah it's perfect. Candy picnic in the murder van. So what's the third date?” The assassin popped the whole thing in his mouth.

“Dunno. Never gotten to the second date without f*cking before… Third date better be rings and sh*t.”

Law laughed again, his cheek bulging with the candy. “Well whose fault is the not f*cking thing.”

“Yours.”

“Yours. You're the one who'd rather suck management’s dick than mine,” Law accused with a petty huff.

“I’d rather keep my own dick attached to me,” Kidd pointed out. “And Vergo woulda cut it off if I'd ignored his call.”

“He is a clingy psycho bitch,” Law conceded the point. He picked up one of the fingers from the plastic sheet and offered it to Kidd. “Well, here. Rings.”

“Hah.” Kidd took it and considered the thick gold band on the pale, pudgy finger.

“Seriously. I said you needed to hide the prison ink on missions—anytime we might get stopped by the cops and don’t want any hiccups. You can use bandaids for the outer ones.” He passed Kidd a couple more fingers, and Kidd slid the gold bands off them and onto his own.

It was kinda great, he decided, admiring the effect. He'd have to get a couple more, even.

Law was gathering up the discarded digits and teeth into a plastic bag. “Okay, let’s send him off.”

They hauled the fingerless guy out to the pier and watched him hit the frigid water with an undignified ploosh. The current caught him and he drifted down toward the city.

“Shouldn't we weight it down so it sinks?” Kidd wondered.

“Nah, not this one. He's gonna be found like this, and his bosses can claim it was an outside hit.”

“And the stuff you trimmed off?”

“That’s with me, just for in case.”

That sentence made zero sense to Kidd, but he let it go. The clothes and plastic sheet went in a bag to be burned. Law delegated this to Kidd.

The assassin was visibly crashing by the time they'd finished. After a couple of deep pulls from Kidd’s flask, he even fell asleep on the way back.

“So you don't have trouble sleeping anymore, huh,” Kidd joked when he woke him at the safe house.

Law rubbed his face. “I really really do… this never happens.”

“Sure, heh.”

Law tugged on Kidd's shirt to get him to come inside. Kidd let himself be guided along, wondering, once again, what the f*ck he was getting into. Law threw his coat on the couch, corpse trimmings in the freezer, and downed a swallow of liquor from a bottle on the counter. He shoved the bottle in Kidd’s chest and headed for the back room of the house, shedding shoes and shirt.

Kidd took a deep drink and followed.

It was nearly lightless in the bedroom. There was just the long rectangle falling in the door from the hallway, illuminating Law’s already-closed eyes. He was lying half on the bed with his feet still on the floor. Kidd set the bottle on the nightstand with a quiet clink, and Law’s eyes slid open again. He pulled the redhead down next to him.

“Kiss me back,” he murmured, putting Kidd’s hand to the bare skin of his chest. And then he was gone again, deep in an exhausted sleep.

Kidd breathed out heavily. He let his hand linger, wandering slowly over the dense tattoos, down to the hip bones jutting sharp above his undone jeans. The assassin was completely open and relaxed, his abrasive edges gone and his proud face serene.

The same way the executed man had looked as Law was taking pieces off him.

Kidd reached over and picked up the bottle again. He sat up nursing it and thinking, well into the night.

Kidd dreamed about a body in a black bag in a van in a warehouse in the night. He pulled the zipper down to reveal half-closed eyes, curling tattoos, tight stomach, sharp hip bones.

It was Law lying there, rigid and cold.

Kidd tried frantically to resuscitate him, pressing on his chest and blowing into his mouth. But in the way of dream logic, he instead found himself buried deep in the unmoving body, pumping with equal desperation and kissing him hard.

Felt like sheer f*cking heaven.

Until he felt something in his mouth… he stopped and spat it out.

A tooth.

He spat again—blood, and more teeth.

Kidd looked down at the body he was violating… in time to see its eyes opening wide, pain and horror taking over its serene expression.

He jerked awake, hard as a rock. Sunlight was filtering through the heavy blinds and Law was looking at him with a strange expression

“I find myself curiously unmolested,” the assassin commented.

“Figured you needed the sleep.”

Law chewed his lip and searched Kidd’s face once again. “Guess I did. Haven't slept like that in years, not without taking stuff.”

“Yeah you were out cold as soon as you hit the pillow. Kinda impressive.”

“And you… didn't take advantage of that lapse.”

Kidd shrugged.

A slight smile emerged on the assassin's face. “A gentleman indeed. Where do they make em like you?”

“… prison?”

A laugh escaped Law. He shook his head to himself and stretched out like a cat, all long limbs and languid ease.

Kidd watched the tight frame flex and uncoil. His doubts were all melting away again. He reached a greedy hand over the smooth skin, and when that wasn't enough, he pulled Law over and covered his body with his own.

“What you staring at?” Law challenged sleepily.

“That lip scar looks f*cked up.”

“Good.”

Their mouths met.

They were both hard and straining through their jeans. Kidd ground down and against him with all his weight and felt a deep throb pass between them.

Law’s quiet panting turned to bitten-off curses when Kidd slid down and tugged off his jeans. He was so sensitive, receptive to every touch, almost starved for it. His dick jumped when Kidd licked up the underside, and he seriously almost lost it when he was swallowed down to the hilt.

He grabbed Kidd’s hair to stop him moving.

“Mnn! Just… slow…”

Kidd slowed, as directed. But then sucked with a roll of his head in this certain way that made Law jolt. Kidd leaned on his thighs to stop him moving, and worked over the throbbing co*ck until Law's muffled swearing was being gasped aloud. The assassin was straining under Kidd, arched and taut, almost rippling with the effort of holding back his climax.

Kidd’d had enough of holding back. He kept his rhythm even and pulled back so his lips were slipping tightly over the sensitive ridge, over and over.

That unwound the tensed man. He came hard.

“Ah f*ck, it's… good… f*ck it's good…”

“Damn right,” Kidd caught it all and wiped his mouth. He sat back on his heels, gripping his own erection to keep from coming right after.

Law gazed up as the last aftershocks of his climax echoed through him. He was completely different now, all relaxed and sated. “Mm. Wanna see if I can beat that time?”

“Heh. Um… actually, can you do something for me?”

“Depends.”

“Just close your eyes. Like you're asleep.”

Grey eyes flicked over Kidd’s face, momentarily on guard again. But Law stretched out with his head pillowed on his arms, and closed his eyes.

Kidd hovered and watched him try to keep his breathing even. Tattoos covered him like protective wards, but there he was, still laid out all exposed like that. Kidd dragged his fingers down him again, as if he could grab up everything in two fists.

He could, too… just grab, sink his nails in, gouge, f*ck.

Kidd fit them together, skin to skin this time. He felt Law shiver and tense at the unexpected contact, then go limp again. Perfect. Kidd got so so close, just from grinding slow over the soft, vulnerable skin of the tattooed belly.

Law was hardening again too.

There was a subtle touch at Kidd's hip. Law shifted them both slightly, eyes still closed, guiding Kidd down and against him. Kidd took his cue.

Sharp pain flashed on Law's face when the bigger man started pushing into him. Kidd paused to slick up them both, ignoring the insistent heel that was urging him on.

Then it was all heat and tight, fluid friction as Kidd shoved inside him with a hard stroke.

Law jolted and lost his breath, but stayed otherwise still and silent. Kidd pulled out almost all the way and then plunged in sharply, just to test him. Not even a shadow of a reaction this time… Kidd's dick throbbed almost painfully.

No more testing and waiting. Kidd braced on both arms and fell heavily against the still body. He watched the impacts roll through him, his head rocking back on his neck.

Law didn't come all at once like before. This time it was like a long, wrenching contraction, come dripping onto his stomach in a slow stream and the inside of him clenching helplessly around Kidd's co*ck. He couldn't hold completely still anymore—he was clutching the sheets and gasping airlessly, like Kidd was f*cking the breath out of him.

Kidd grabbed and bent back one leg so he could get deeper. He pitched his angle back and thrust hard into Law’s sensitive spot, hitting it over and over, milking his pleasure out of him to the last shuddering drop.

Then he shoved in to the hilt and held it while he came himself. It was a f*cking intense one, building right from his toes. Holy f*ck…

Kidd collapsed on the pillows, utterly spent. He hadn't actually slept much that night and everything was starting to catch up with him.

“Less gentlemanly,” Law complained at the mess Kidd had left in him. There was rustling as he cleaned up.

Kidd was mostly asleep. He barely felt the long fingers brushing lazily through his hair.

“Is that a thing you wanna do for real? Have me when I’m passed out?”

“Guess so,” Kidd mumbled. “Not something I’ve tried before.”

“...you can.”

Kidd looked over at him. “Yeah? You into that?”

“Well, not so much ‘into’ it. But if it’s you…” Law trailed off, then added in an undertone. “And like. There’ll be plenty of opportunities, honestly.”

“Sweet.” It was Kidd’s turn to fade out, missing the little warning hidden in that offer.

Law was gone when Kidd woke up again a couple hours later.

He found the assassin sitting on the kitchen floor, with all of his and Kidd's stuff spread out in precise patterns on the tile.

“You're… what are you doing?” Kidd stopped at the edge of a candy grid.

“Just making sure we didn't forget anything onsite, don't want evidence floating around. You know you got more candies than bullets on you?”

“I go through em faster...” Kidd's eyes fell on the teeth neatly arranged next to the candies and cartridges.

Law scratched distractedly at his face. “How many candies did you have on you before the job?”

“Dunno.”

Law tsked. “How many bullets.”

“Two full magazines and one in the chamber, same as after.”

Law grinned and popped a toffee in his mouth. “There’s two bubblegum wrappers and one fudgey-thing-wrapper here, and that's what we had in the van. But there's only 11 toffees and they usually come in packs of twelve, so you left a wrapper with your fingerprints on it somewhere onsite and it's going to get us f*ckING KILLED, Eustass.”

They stared at each other for a minute, then Kidd snorted and went to take a shower. “f*cking tweaker,” he muttered to himself.

He came back later and the candies were mostly gone.

“Yeah, help yourself,” Kidd grumbled.

“I'll refill your little goody bag, don't worry.” Law continued his accounting of Kidd’s ID and keys.

Kidd went through the cupboards and found only gourmet coffee and sticky rice. “What do you have to eat around here?”

“Today? Candy.”

“Jesus. I'm gonna go get food. You coming?”

“Can't.” Law examined the ancient picture on Kidd’s license. “Have to stay here until the likelihood of eyes on both this place and the cleaning site goes down. Few days.”

“Huh. Well if I take off are you gonna sit around and pop pills til you starve?”

Law stopped and shot a deadly look at Kidd. “And what does that mean.”

“Well you’re here in the middle of all this… OCD bullsh*t. Clearly gotten into the medicine cabinet already…”

“I’m working, you f*cking novice.”

Kidd grit his teeth. “I’m JUST saying. You didn’t eat yesterday either cuz of that sh*t.”

Law flipped him off. “So be sure to mention in your report to Vergo that I’m still an unmanageable headcase who can’t be trusted with his own maintenance.”

“...Give me my f*cking stuff back.”

Law sighed through his nose and gathered everything up. He was agitated again, pointedly ignoring Kidd. By the time Kidd had gotten his wallet, holster, and everything back in place, the assassin had moved on to some elaborate procedure on the frozen fingers. Kidd looked away from this, appetite waning.

“There's still ten of those,” he muttered on his way past.

“So you can count.” Law didn't turn.

Kidd paused in the car to get his head on straight. He took out a cig, but remembered how much he hated smoking on an empty stomach. He grabbed a couple hard candies from the bag instead, and set out toward Killer's place.

It took him a few distracted minutes before he realized there was something wrong.

He spat the candies into his hand.

A cinnamon heart and two teeth rolled around in his palm, sticky with red sugar.

“He’s f*cking psychotic,” was Killer's measured opinion. He sifted through the contents of Kidd's candy bag—toffees, gum, molars, cinnamon hearts, Ritalin.

Kidd was examining a tooth that was more gold than tooth—very cash. “Heh…”

“‘Heh’ what. ” Killer caught his expression.

“Dunno. It's just. Funny, right?”

Killer gave him a patient death glare. “No.”

“The hell is your problem.”

Heat wandered by in his boxers, coffee in hand. “What up, Kidd man.”

“He’s been dangling his dick in a death trap,” Killer stated blandly.

“Dang.” Heat sipped at the cracked mug. “That pink girl got teeth on the other end too?”

“Shut up,” Kidd growled.

Killer waited til Heat had gone back to wrangling the ancient coffee machine, then leaned in. “You wanted me to tell you when you're getting into something bad, right? This is bad.”

Kidd didn't bother arguing. He shrugged in that way he knew drove Killer crazy, already planning how he was gonna get a new ring made from the gold of the teeth.

Kidd fully appreciated the playful, horrific warning that the teeth were, and didn’t report to Vergo anything more than strictly necessary. About eating habits or pill regimen or whatever. And as it turned out, the uppers were hardly the most concerning part of Law’s cycle anyway. They were for work, as he’d said.

The downers, he used to stop working.

It took Kidd a while to figure this out. And even once he'd seen it all played out, he figured he could handle Law, if anyone could. It was worth it—so exhilarating to watch Law work, and so satisfying to pound him into the mattress after. Even his strange, threatening little games only drew Kidd in more. It was so f*ckin unreal, all of it.

Picking him up from a job with blood on his hands and predatory tension stark in his stance, pulling him into the backseat and onto his dick, f*cking him til he was all worn down to raw neediness… amazing.

Finding him passed out at his obsessive inventory and taking him just like that, on the kitchen table where he'd been draped like a college kid after an all-nighter… unbelievable.

Law would wake up the next day, aching but clean and cared for, and look over at Kidd with something like relief.

Seeing that look, kissing him, feeling the clammy skin heat up and come alive under him while they f*cked slow and close… unexpected.

Kidd started wanting more of that waking intensity.

Law seemed to want the opposite, though. Especially after difficult jobs (of either type), he would goad Kidd into violent kinds of sex, usually with the goal of getting knocked out or somehow damaged.

Kidd rose to these challenges, cuz yeah, it got him f*ckin hard. And it made Law come buckets too. And because putting him under that way was so, so much better than watching the assassin dose too heavy, vomit, start again, vomit, give up and cook em into something injectable before finally passing out.

But Kidd could handle him.

It was his job.

It was a few months into this new routine that the boss called Kidd up to his office.

“The man with the magic touch,” Donquixote treated Kidd to one of his chilling grins. “I have a new task for you.”

***

Bonus content: NSFW art by CerezaSP, after the gap!

by CerezaSP

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

--Now--

In the twelve months that Kidd had known Law, this was the first time he'd ever seen the assassin fail to get his mark. And the first time he'd ever seen something really, truly shake Law.

Not for the first time, Kidd doubted he could handle all this after all. But here he was. Still.

He sat, cigarette in hand and ammo inventory from the previous night half finished in front of him, and watched Law remove a precise square of skin from the tattoo on the back of his hand. One of the wagon wheel spokes in the rota fortunae. The blindfolded woman stared out sightlessly at them from the center of the wheel.

“It wasn't even a real job,” Kidd tried again. “Just a test.”

Law left a razor blade sandwiched under one corner of the skin square, and began working from another corner with a scalpel. “Doesn't matter. I f*cked it up. Have to alter the tattoo to accurately reflect my record.”

“You had him in range and everything, I dunno how you didn't get him. Just some kid.”

Law rolled his bottom lip between his teeth and didn't respond.

Kidd watched him fidget, and started to suspect something. “And you definitely had time to grab that shotgun away from him—”

“Kidd.” Law interrupted. “I think I'm gonna stop doing hits for Doffy—”

“Can you NOT call him that?”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah. And what. You're a hitman, you're in debt,” Kidd pointed out irritably. “This is just what it is.”

Law considered the little square of inked skin. “There’s still my side job, right?”

Kidd inhaled a lungful of ash and almost hacked a lung out. “You're not gonna f*cking quit that??”

“Our employer messaged me with a new number this morning—very generous. I'd be able to work off the remaining debt within the year, just from ‘that.’”

There was no f*cking way. Kidd watched him, trying to tamp down on the irrational anger bubbling in his chest so he could figure out what the f*ck was happening.

“...you're doped up,” he guessed.

“No. I used everything I had already, and I can't go outside, and you won't f*cking give me the benzos,” an edge finally crept into Law's tone.

“I'll give you them after you eat.”

This made Law's jaw clench again but he didn't argue—this was one of their agreements. He returned Kidd's penetrating look with his own.

“What.”

“...you're gonna try and kill him. Aren't you.”

“No. Eustass. I told you already, there's someone who'd suffer if I tried. So I can't get revenge, can't leave, can't even f*cking die. But I'm not gonna be Doffy's pet viper anymore either. Okay?”

Kidd didn't f*cking think it was okay. “But you'll still be his pet f*ckdoll.”

“At least I'll be the only one getting f*cked that way.”

“....sh*t. sh*t.”

“I know.”

“I hate this.”

“I f*cking know. You think I like it?”

Kidd shook his head, clenching his teeth so he didn't spit out, yes, I bet you love this, you damaged freak.

Law got quiet. “Kidd… you don't have to stay for all this. You said you wanted out.”

“Yeah. Well.”

“...Yeah.” Law looked away.

Yeah, they both knew he wasn't going anywhere at this point.

Kidd reflected bitterly on what a raw deal this f*cking ‘feelings’ sh*t was. Law was avoiding his eyes now… which hurt. Kidd wasn't expecting anything from him. All he wanted right now was the reassurance of a little closeness, but Law definitely wouldn't wanna be touched after yesterday. They'd slept next to each other so, so close, but Law had been keeping him at arm's length since waking up.

The silence and distance was getting to him.

Kidd abruptly stood and went to pace around the kitchen so Law couldn't read his face. He looked around for a drink but found everything empty… f*cking typical , f*ck. The cupboard banged shut.

“Stop brooding around in there, the booze is out here.”

Kidd seethed a little. “I'm not f*cking br… I'm uh, ordering stuff. What do you want.”

“Ordering food?”

“Yes.”

“...and then benzos—”

“Yes . Whatever. Then benzos. What d’you want.”

“Xanax.”

“To EAT.”

“...don't care.”

Kidd got his temper under control and ordered sushi on his phone. He paced around a moment longer, then had an idea.

“Hey,” Kidd re-emerged from the kitchen and gestured to the razor still sitting in front of Law. “Gimme a new tattoo, ink rub style.”

“Now? Okay… okay, yeah. What of?”

“There’s a piece I seen a few times, some guys on the inside had it. I'll show you…” Kidd pulled out his phone and brought up an image of a weeping woman with seven swords pointed inward around her. Madonna of the Seven Sorrows.

Law seemed into this task. Giving him something picky to focus on was one of Kidd's usual diversion strategies. He'd gotten plenty of new tats that way, and nice ones too—Law had a steady hand and an artist's eye.

Law traced out the design on the back of Kidd's neck with a pen first. He iced the area until it was cool and the blood had retreated down to deeper tissues. Then he took up the scalpel. The blade went along in neat lines at the exact right depth, scoring the tissue just beneath the skin. The inking was always the strangest part. You had to paint the whole area, then rub back and forth over the cuts so they feathered open and the ink pooled inside. With time, it'd heal in a dark, slightly raised line.

It took a few hours to finish, but Kidd sat still, content just to feel Law’s razor touch on his neck.

“Kidd… what if there was nothing after all,” Law murmured midway through the tattooing.

“Huh?”

Blood and ink dripped down Kidd's muscled back, over the anchor and banner design already tattooed there. Respice stellam, voca mariam, it read. Kidd felt Law trail his fingers through it all, his aversion to touch apparently eased. Benzos must have kicked in…

“If there was no one.”

“No one where?”

Law moistened dry lips. “Uh. Do you ever actually pray or whatever?”

“Me? No.”

“But if you did, you believe someone would hear you. Mary or whatever. Right?”

Kidd hesitated. “...Yeah.”

“What if you found out that there was nothing after all. No one to hear you.”

“...”

“All just words in the dark.”

Kidd’s spine stiffened as long arms wrapped around him from behind and Law hid his face in his neck. Kidd looked over his shoulder at the morose mess of black hair.

“It’s not just words in the dark.”

“But what if it was.” Law sounded muffled.

“It's just. Not?”

“Hah, fine. Whatever lets you sleep at night I guess.”

Kidd would have been offended if he wasn't so nervous. He knew there was subtext happening, Law trying to tell him something, but he couldn't follow it.

“You must believe in something. What about the blindfolded lady on your hands?”

Law considered one partially flayed hand. “Fortuna… is deaf, blind, insane…”

“She sounds like a sh*tty god.”

“She's a f*cking metaphor, Eustass.”

“Shut up, I knew that.” Kidd grumbled and slouched a little under Law's weight. “So what the f*ck is it that lets you sleep at night?”

“Drugs.”

“…okay but I mean. What do you got that makes anything worth anything?”

Law lolled his head thoughtfully on Kidd's shoulder. “...I have a family. A father, mother, sister.”

“Really?”

“I think so.”

“You think so??”

“I mean, I believe so…”

Kidd was lost. “...Are uh. Are they also a metaphor.”

“No, they are not a f*cking metaphor, Eustass.”

“Fine.”

“Or… hah. Maybe they are. Dunno.” Law peeled himself off Kidd's back. “Ugh. I'm getting my tit* in your tats, here. Lemme clean off and I'll finish your thing.”

The assassin got up and went banging around the kitchen, clumsy with agitation, slamming drawers and dropping things.

Kidd stretched the stiffness out of his joints and watched him, thinking. Trying to unravel their conversation. What if there was nothing…?

“Law. You don't just got nothing. You know that.”

Law scoffed in reply.

“You got skills. Standing. You got… someone.”

No reply this time.

Kidd gave up, confused and stung.

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

“He’s either gone over the edge or he's planning something,” Kidd growled into the phone, massaging his bandaged neck.

“I'd surmised as much,” Vergo replied. “I was shocked that he agreed so readily to return to his evening work. I was prepared to convince him the usual way.”

“He can't do any kind of work yet, this sh*t’s been throwing him, bad. Needs a couple months to—”

“The time frame is up to Donquixote.”

“You’re gonna have one hell of a volatile situation on your hands if—”

“Are you scolding me, Eustass?”

“No. Sir.”

“I’m well aware of the situation, and extra precautions will be taken. Expect a call with new instructions soon.”

“So you're uh. Switching up the meds? Trying something new?” Penguin was giving Law a look that meant he was trying to say something. Law wasn't interested in whatever it was this time.

“Am I?” he murmured. He was clicking through the staff medical files on Penguin's computer, looking for something.

“The extra Klonopin,” Penguin started.

“That's temporary. Recent stress.”

“And. The stuff for… for your upstairs appointments?”

Law frowned. “What?”

“I mean, it just seems like a lot? Like. A lot. You could tranq a horse with all that.”

“I didn't ask for different stuff for upstairs.”

“Oh,” there was that look again. “I must be mistaken.”

“Guess so.”

Jesus Christ, Penguin must have figured out that Law's monthly allotment of roofies weren't recreational after all. The recovering addict's paid vacation, he'd told the earnest nurse. Penguin had believed him, like always. So there was another protective cover of lies gone. Law didn't need this sh*t right now.

He scanned through file after file, not finding anything.

“Peng-ya, is this everyone in the organization?”

“Oh, naw. Just the official list, and half faked. In case we get raided.”

“And the rest?”

“I dunno. Vergo keeps super spreadsheets, but like, super locked down.”

“Of course…” Law didn't want to imagine what tangle of traps surrounded Vergo’s lair. So that was a dead end. He fired off a quick message to someone who owed him a favor, and wracked his brain for another approach.

“Yeah. Cesar told me about it, crazy encryption and this like,degaussing coil in the door frame—”

“Cesar told you?”

“Yeah, the sysadmin? Runs network security stuff.”

“...Cesar runs a meth lab out of a school bus on the edge of town.”

“Oh.”

“You know the job descriptions in your files aren't real, right? We've had this conversation.”

“Uh, yeah? Yeah I know things…”

“Mhm.” Law sighed, and clicked idly into Kidd's file.

“I hear things… Um. Law?”

Kidd's file was unremarkable. Pills for a sleeping disorder (fake), occasional stitches and tetanus boosters (real), and… Viagra? Haha, fake. That was one thing Kidd definitely didn't need. All those extra prescriptions were getting passed along to Donquixote's elaborate network of pushers.

“Law, what if I heard something bad,” Penguin tried again.

“Penguin… if it's about the upstairs stuff, I really, really need you to not pry. Please?”

“But they've been hurting you—” he blurted.

“Peng. Drop it.”

“It's true, though…”

Penguin looked so unhappy. Law felt another surge of guilt. He gave up on the clinic files and spun the chair around with a sigh.

“...wanna smoke a joint?” he offered.

“Yes,” Penguin sniffed. “God yes.”

Law's phone flashed some time later, and he angled it toward him, waving smoke away from his face. They were hotboxing the clinic’s storage closet with a towel stuffed under the door.

Upstairs tonight, 10pm.

“...Peng-ya, you got those horse tranqs ready?” He swallowed and stared stonily at his screen.

“Oh, uh. No. Shachi isn't around… but I guess I can… Wait, right now?”

“Not right right now, but I'll take em with me. I have some other sh*t to do before I go upstairs.”

“Mh. Uh, kay. Yeah…”

Law was pointedly not paying attention to Penguin's hemming and hawing. He tapped out a curt reply to Vergo's summons. This evening. This f*cking evening… It hadn't even been a week yet.

His buzz was turning bad.

“Could sure as f*ck use a f*cking vacation…” Law grumbled to himself.

“You could always do your goodies down here. You know? Shachi and I could watch you while you're out, monitor your vitals and like… make sure everything is okay.”

Law handwaved this away. “I have to do them upstairs. It's part of the agreement. Can you just get them for me?”

“Kay… um. I'll just, yeah.” Penguin rose and went to fill the order, tripping over brooms and buckets. “...just get you a to-go box.”

Law hid a brief little smile. It faded as he tapped out another couple messages on his phone.

Business. It was all just business. And Law was a f*cking professional.

You 13:45 Secure?

BB5 13:46 Hold on

BB514:47 Secure now sry

BB514:47 Hola hon, you good? I met this guy down here, Colombian, reminds me of you haha <3 but not a pissy sh*tstick

You 14:50 So, that massive favor you owe me. I need that and then another.

BB514:51 Im fine btw thx for asking

You 14:51 Favor 1:

You 14:52 Flevance district outside the capital, we used to source pure from there. Old hospital in north sector, a processing site.

You 14:52 Don't know if it's still there. Check it out?

BB514:55 that's it? recon?

You 14:56 Favor 2 is to keep management ignorant.

BB514:58 hm... maybe I'll do it

BB514:58 if you tell me what it is to you

BB515:10 ...Law?

BB515:18 are you gonna even tell me what I'm looking for?

You 15:19 Thanks B

BB5 15:20 you really make ppl hate you sometimes.

BB5 15:21 you should get that checked out

You 15:04 How would you know anything about degaussing coils, you f*cking clown.

Clown15:09 i kno more then u trafalgar

Clown 15:09 who u been talkn 2 psycho

You15:09 The nurses. They believed your bullsh*t. Just leave them alone.

Clown15:10 uhhh I wired up all that security sh*t in boss office psycho

Clown 15:10 i kno every trap n pw

Clown 15:10 i am a god

You15:12 You're a pedophile and a liar, Cesar.

Clown 15:12 virgo office compy has evthngall accounts n cam feedshe sees it all... his hd has like 100000 bits encyption itd take 1000000000000 yrs to crack...degaussing coil in door wipes any tech u try n take out... sound bomb if u try hack it

You15:20 Liar.

Clown 15:20 pw is doffy4lyf so f*ck u psycho

You15:21 I see. Impressive.

Clown 15:21 i kno

Kidd 15:02 im here where the f*ck u gone now

Kidd 15:07 i swear to god law

Kidd15:10 listen vergo said to drive u over for 10, i said u couldnt go bc ur sick wuth something contagion

You 15:14 That was unnecessary. I'm already at HQ. Tell him I'll deliver myself.

Kidd15:14 wat tjr ACTUAL f*ck

You 15:14 Pick me up at 4am.

Kidd15:15 ur srsly doing this?? fcking headcase FREAK

Kidd15:15 u like this sh*t or smthg? u want it??

Kidd15:25 law

Kidd15:35 LAW

Kidd16:00 i didnt mean that stuff jus reply

Kidd16:01 or whatev idgaf

Joker 15:45 I do hope you're well enough for an evening call. I'll admit I wasn't careful last time.

Joker15:49 Law. Respond.

You 15:49 You did as much damage as you meant to, Doffy. I'll see you this evening.

Joker15:51 How little you think of me. I only got carried away.

You15:55 You deliberately violated the terms of our agreement.

Joker15:55 And I paid you very generously in recompense.

Joker15:59 Respond, Law.

You16:04 You violated me

Joker16:04 You came.

You16:04 I hate you I f*cking hate ylu

Joker16:05 You came choking and begging with my hands around your throat. So full of co*ck that you screamed. Remember?

Joker16:06 Want me to do it again?

Joker16:06 Doesn't matter, I will. Not this time, but soon.

Joker16:08 Respond.

You16:13 Don't do this

Joker16:14 Oh, my Law. You do pull my heartstrings.

Joker16:14 We'll make it an easy one this time, okay? I requested something stronger for you. Take it all. Sleep. Remember nothing.

You16:15 And you'll pay our agreed rate. The new one.

Joker16:16 Yes of course.

You16:16 kidd,

Kidd 16:16 yah

Kidd 16:21 law what

You16:36 Pick me up at 4am?

Kidd 16:36 yah obvs

You16:52 Kidd

You16:52 can you maybe just come and wait

You16:52 in case I'm done early

You16:52 or something

You16:52 .

Kidd 16:52 yah ill be there

Vergo was in the room when Law entered this time, and Law just about bolted again. But the stoic man only handed him a second cup of pills.

“I'm already on a f*ckload,” Law grumbled.

“A further precaution,” Vergo explained flatly. “Take them now.”

He waited while Law downed them and showed his tongue to prove he'd swallowed.

f*cking stupid, he thought, as Vergo left and he sat down to wait for it all to come on. If it were up to Law, he'd take twice as many.

He had a brief moment of panic when darkness took over his vision and his body began to shut down from the fingers inward—this wasn't the usual stuff.

But then sleep came and it didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

Law surfaced to pain and darkness this time, and for a moment he was relieved.

He tried to move his arms but they wouldn't listen to him. He thought his eyes might be open, but he couldn’t move them, and nothing that swam into view made sense. Just patches of light in the darkness.

It was the opposite of usual—his mind was on but his body was off.

Paralyzed. sh*t.

There was movement, but it wasn't his. A jarring rhythm, shaking everything in his head loose as he tried to orient himself. There were sheets under him. Stifling heat on top of him. Not enough light, no f*cking air…

The next thing that registered with sudden clarity was the pressure of a heavy co*ck drilling deep into him.

He was being f*cked, and there was nothing he could do.

“He’s moving,” a voice noted. “Did you see that?’

“Couldn’t be, not on the new dosage, and with the extra stuff I gave him…”

“Hm.”

“Turn his head over here. Let’s see.”

The rocking movements paused and a hand angled his head too far back. It turned him this way and that while the voices buzzed at him.

“Nothing.”

“Do a pain test, just to see.”

Knuckles ground against Law’s sternum. He would have grabbed the hand and f*cking broken it, if any part of him was functioning. Not even a twitch. Pinches at the cartilage of his ears and pressure between his eyes came up the same.

“I said it was nothing, didn’t I.”

“...Vergo, look at his eyes. The pupils.”

Slowly, the indistinct mass in front of him solidified into two nightmare shapes. Doffy and Vergo, seated at a table and peering at him. Law’s vision cleared enough to see the maniac grin start to spread across Doffy’s entire face.

“Well,” Doffy practically licked his lips.

“He didn't take the pills after all?” Vergo wondered.

“Him? Of course he did. He'd have taken more if it were up to him.”

“Must be those f*cking pothead doctors downstairs. We shouldn’t have clued them in. No doubt they’re trying to help him.”

“No matter. This only moves things along.”

“—ffy,” Law tried to move.

“Haha, he’s coming around… What are you doing?”

“Dosing him again.” A third voice.

“Leave that. Just f*ck him. And keep his head turned this way.”

A pause.

“Are you deaf? Get going.”

After a moment, the jarring pace started up again.

“Nhh! Hh!”

“Harder than that,” Vergo ordered whoever was on top of Law.

Someone f*cking strong… someone whose many rings were pinching Law's skin painfully as a strong hand held his leg folded way back. The grip on his face let up as their position shifted, and Law caught sight of bright red hair.

“Ki… dd…?”

Kidd stuttered to a halt. “sh*t…”

“Nnn…n-no, no…”

Doffy sneered, “Don’t get distracted, Eustass, come on.”

“Law, just… just close your eyes.”

“… no, no, no…”

“Law, stop it, you'll f*cking make this worse. Just stop.”

Law hadn't even realized he'd been pushing and clawing at Kidd's chest weakly. His heart was hammering painfully in his throat. It was Kidd.

A stream of sinister chuckles and commands issued from the hazy shadows of Doffy and Vergo.

“f*ck him.”

“Breed him.”

“So it hurts him, come on.”

“f*ck him!”

Kidd moved to obey them stiffly, like a puppet on a string. He pushed his way back into Law with teeth grit tight and Law just wanted to f*cking die.

“Haha… again. Make him make that sound again.”

“More. Bruise him.”

“Bleed him.”

“Hit him. He likes that, right?”

“Don't hit him, you might put him under.”

“Yes, hit him, I want to see him come with his face broken.”

“Later. Need to see his expression while he's taking it.”

“Well, then f*cking make him take it. Faster.”

“Yes. Harder. Pound him apart.”

“Ruin him.”

“Rape him.”

Kidd stopped again.

“Christ,” Vergo swore, surging out of his chair to shove Kidd aside and grab Law himself. He loosened his belt and spat in his hand. “f*ck him hard or get out of the way, boy.”

Doffy was half a second behind. Law was pulled out from under Vergo and there was a snarling exchange of shoves and curses—dogs fighting over ragged scraps. He struggled.

“Just hold him still!” Doffy's voice hissed.

“God, I want to wreck his face…”

“Vergo, move, I said later.”

“...f*ckin… kill you…” Law's strength was seeping back, but too slowly. He clawed and twisted until he tore something solid.

Vergo swore and caught his wrists. “Hold these. Hold them!” Vergo instructed Kidd, and Law's hands were yanked above his head and held crushed against the sheets. Vergo held his leg and neck.

He gulped air, trying to suppress bursts of panic. But he was truly trapped, spread open and pinned like an insect.

The crime lord hovered over him, watching him struggle, and massaging a massive erection. Law turned to Kidd instead, but there was nothing on his face. He was staring right through all of it.

“Kidd, just put me under… hit me, dose me, f*ck me up, do it, do it, f*cking do it…”

The grip on his wrists tightened, but that was it.

“Hah. Really, Law, this isn't anything new,” Doffy pulled Law's lower half up onto his lap and evaluated the used hole with a tsk. “You’ve been taken like this—just like this—many times.”

It was a new kind of excruciating when the monster co*ck started to penetrate him. Doffy seemed intent on shoving into Law all at once but was prevented by his size. He leaned down and into him, grinding and stretching and forcing the flesh apart. Pain and urgency surged through Law's sluggish limbs.

The sensation of it dragging out smoothly, and that nudge before being impaled again… that's what got to Law. Not just being hurt, but being f*cked.

“Ah! AHH!!!”

“I’ll tell you how it usually goes,” Doffy continued. “Your helpful driver opens you for us—he has some skill at doing it without tearing anything. And then we take turns, back and forth, to see how many times we can f*ck you before you bleed.”

“Doffy! Stop… stop… stop… ”

Of course he didn't stop. The blond giant just took up the rhythm of his pleas, punctuating each with a jabbing thrust. Deep and even and f*cking mindshattering—

Law came even before Doffy had, and Vergo cut him for it. A long rip across his inner thigh, the blade dragging dully and the skin gliding apart over the fat.

The shame was worse than the sting… Law hadn't even realized he was hard. Another cut was applied for screaming, and a new game was agreed upon.

By the time Doffy had pulled out of him and handed him off for Vergo to have, there were four deep slices in his left thigh—Doffy’s score.

Law's legs were patterned like wickerwork, and Doffy seemed to have spent the larger part of his malice. With a lazy wave, he finally allowed Vergo to mess up the assassin's face. As long as he didn't accidentally knock him out.

“What do you take me for,” Vergo complained, pulling Law’s hands away from his face but leaving him in his curled position on his side. He delivered precise blows into the side of Law’s face and head, until he was hard enough to take the beaten body where it lay. A shudder and a grunt, but no protest.

Another blow to the cheek and a tear opened in the puffy flesh.

“f*ck!” Law tried to shake the blood out of his eye, but Vergo had him firmly by the neck as he f*cked him. “Nnggh! Hahhh…”

“Oh well done, that's a point. I thought for certain you'd knock him out before getting anywhere.”

“Trick is to strike down across the face, not toward the brain,” Vergo explained.

“Ah. Are you taking notes, Eustass?”

A non-committal grunt.

“What's wrong? You're usually so much more relaxed.”

Kidd actually had the audacity to not respond this time. Doffy's mood couldn't be dampened, though. He let it go with an indulgent smile.

A knock came at the door not long after. Doffy was lounging in his chair, picking little bones out of his teeth, his fine shirt undone but otherwise flawless. Kidd was still sitting by, distant, but not looking away. Vergo was alternating between beating Law's eye shut and pounding his ass open.

Doffy rose and finally went to answer the timid knocking at the door.

“Ah yes! Thank you for making the trip up. I wanted to ask about our resident assassin's most recent prescription…”

Law strained his neck to look over but he couldn’t see around the towering blond man. Doffy was leaning on the doorframe casually. A lazy gesture at hiding what was happening behind him.

“Really? Because it almost seems like they did nothing. Law was so disappointed. It's a bit tragic.”

More frightened murmuring. Law tried with everything he had not to make any noise. But the slopping from Vergo plunging into his much-used hole was loud enough. Vergo noticed him trying to stay quiet and delivered an echoing slap to his face. Law grunted but held his tongue stubbornly.

“Oh you thought it was too high. You thought. Well in that case.”

A sudden punch to the stomach and a sharp thrust broke Law's restraint. “Hngh! AHH!”

“No, that'll be all, thank you so much, Doctor. Or whatever you are. Vergo: another point already?”

“Hkh…! AaAAH!!”

Footsteps retreated down the hall and Doffy tapped his fingers on the doorframe thoughtfully. “On second thought, Doctor… I am a little upset that you deliberately undermined my orders. Linger a moment so we can talk? I'm almost finished here. Yes, come in, take a seat."

“No, n—AHH! AAh!—no, Doffy…”

"Caviar? No?"

Law found the strength to struggle again. He could take all this, every way Vergo wanted to break him, but he couldn't stand the thought of Doffy ripping anyone else away from him.

“Shouldn't be long, Doctor. Eustass—our guest.”

Kidd yanked Penguin into the chair next to him without looking at him. Doffy grinned even wider and turned to Vergo.

“Vergo, let's call it a draw? I'll finish it off.”

Vergo snorted. “You can call it a draw, I'm not f*cking done—” blood flew from Law's nose “—with him.”

“Don’t completely break him, there'll be nothing left for later.”

“Good.”

“Not ‘good,’ he's my asset, not yours—”

Law felt himself being tugged back and forth again, grabbed and groped and wrenched. He must have made some pathetic noise because both men suddenly laughed and descended on him at once.

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

They'd given him half a dose of the paralyzing stuff partway through, to keep him manageable without knocking him out. But it wouldn't have mattered. Law was so thoroughly ground down.

Once he wasn't writhing and screaming anymore, his tormentors quickly got bored. A lifeless Law was old hat.

Someone checked his pulse.

“Yes, he's alive. I told you.”

“He’d better stay that way, I'll be upset if I lose my favorite diversion. I'll leave the rest to you, Vergo.”

“Of course.”

“Oh, and see to the doctor as well, if you would.”

Doffy departed and Vergo grunted an order at the corner. “Get up. What was your name again?”

“U-um!”

“Sir,” Kidd interrupted. “Need to discuss a thing.”

“Later, Eustass.”

“Not later. Sir.”

There was silence, footsteps, a door, then a low, heated argument from the adjoining room.

Law focused on trying to swallow. His instincts told him that all immediate threats were gone from the room, but his skin was still prickling like… like someone was reaching out to grab him—

He snatched the hand out of the air. A thin, knobbly wrist.

“Jesus… f*ck,” he swore once he recognized Penguin, kneeling at the bed. Law's fumbling, flightless guardian angel. He let him go.

“Sorry, I was just… can I evaluate your condition?” Penguin tried not to sound tearful.

“Don't touch me,” Law mumbled distantly.

“Law, you're hurt bad. Please let me—”

“Don't touch me,” he hissed more forcefully.

Penguin withdrew into a huddle by the bedside. “I’m sorry. I thought you didn't know.”

“I didn't know it was him…”

“I thought if you were awake, you'd just, stop it. Kill them. I dunno.”

“I get paid for it. I don't wanna be awake when it happens.”

“Oh… So will you stop doing it now?”

What a stupid f*cking question… Law was silent for a moment as he forced himself to think about their situation.

Eventually he cleared his raw throat.

“Penguin… get out.”

“Law! Just let me help!”

Law grabbed his arm and hauled him close. “Listen,” he murmured. “You probably got about 5 minutes before they send Kidd to put a bullet in your brain. Get Shachi. Ditch your phones. And f*cking run.”

Penguin turned white, but he stayed stubbornly at Law’s side. “I’m bringing you too, okay? I'm gonna—”

“Or they'll send me, and I f*cking promise I'll do worse than that. GO!”

His look of betrayal was probably the worst part of this. Penguin scrambled to his feet, looked at Law one last time, and ran.

The door opened not long after Penguin had left and Law was ready to get him out again, over a shoulder if necessary. But it was Kidd.

Law scrambled unsteadily to his knees. Kidd hung back, but he wasn't avoiding Law's eyes this time. They regarded each other for a long, unbalanced moment.

Finally Kidd took a breath and stepped toward the bed. “They said we have to clear outta the room by—”

“f*ck off,” Law snarled, backing away.

Kidd put his hands up, like he was calming a feral animal. “Hey. It’s okay.”

“It's not—”

“It'll be okay… Listen. I delayed long enough for the nerds to get out.”

“You’re full of sh*t. Y-you’re…”

“I’m here. Like always.”

“You're theirs…”

He snorted sourly. “We f*cking both are. Law—”

“DON’T call me that.”

“—I’m still here, and you’re still alive, and Penguin and the other guy are still alive, and everything’s the same as always.”

Law held himself and swallowed. He watched Kidd’s feet, so he didn’t have to look at the rest of him and wonder how the f*ck he’d so badly misread all the signs.

Kidd was still trying to talk to him, “…this is just how it is. You f*cking know that…”

The f*cking drugs were still messing with his system. The walls were wavering in and out of solidity and his stomach was churning. Law somehow got his feet under him and headed toward the bathroom.

Big hands were reaching out to support him and he shoved them away.

“Come on,” Kidd growled, “You’re barely standing.”

Law whirled. “I don’t want you touching me, ever again.”

“Law just let me… f*cking let me just…!”

“I said don't touch me! f*ck OFF.”

“Don't you f*ckING turn away from me!”

Ringed fingers caught his arm. Law had a sudden flashback to handprints blooming on his wrists, his thighs, his face—it’d been Kidd’s bruising grip all along. He fended off that soured touch, retreating back and back.

He found himself on a cold tiled floor in a tiny space—the bathroom. He was trying to kick the door closed but there was a demon on the other side, banging and clawing.

The door gave way under a bulling shoulder and Kidd fell through. Law kickedout and felt the crunch of his foot connecting solidly with the other's head. Droplets spattered on the tile, but Kidd didn't even seem to feel it. He was on top of Law now, holding the thrashing body still with his weight and dripping blood onto Law's busted face.

Kidd shook him and spat, “Who the f*ck else did you want it to be?!!”

“Anyone else!”

“Anyone else would do worse. I seen em do worse, pathetic jerkoffs not fit to even touch you… degrading and damaging you and laughing at you… It had to be me. I had to.”

“Anyone but you…”

“You chose me... me."

“KIDD—!”

Kidd couldn't even hear him. “Who else would put themselves between you and them? Who else would stay and wait and witness, when even you couldn't stand to be there…”

Somewhere in the snarling, bleeding tangle of them both, Law was aware of being shifted and pried apart, crushed and gouged.

“AHH! Aahhhh—”

“No one. Just me."

More sensations were coming into focus beneath the pain: Hard little bathroom tiles against his back. Slipperiness as he kicked and clawed away, making red snow angel streaks on the white floor. Kidd jerking him back. Then a wet sound, like meat hitting a butcher block over and over. His head knocking against the wall when he gave up.

Law was fading out finally, shock taking over smoothly as the drugs wore off.

He hoped, vaguely, that Kidd had been paying attention to how Law processed marked bodies. Hopefully Kidd would spend the extra effort to dissolve him instead of just dumping him somewhere. Or at least that he'd take his head, so that when his abused corpse washed up full of the leavings of three different men, Law could at least have the respite of anonymity.

“Law, say you need me,” Kidd was shaking him and yelling in his face.

Law wasn't there anymore.

“You stubborn f*cker, you need me.”

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

Law woke up.

“ Aw f*ck… ”

He f*cking woke up, fully aware if not fully intact. Alone in the clinic, which showed signs of having been ransacked. Lying on the clinic bed, naked under a thin sheet, cuffed to the side rail.

His body was clean, and his wounds patched crudely. Looked like Kidd's w—

Kidd—

Everything inside him clenched at once. Law managed to haul himself onto his side in time, and vomited weakly off the side of the bed. There was nothing to bring up except slime and bile, though. He was cold and sweating at the same time, and his vision was crackling just from moving. Dehydration and withdrawal... He spat until the slime thinned.

There was a saline drip bag on a stand, and a needle and IV tube to go with it. Thank god. Getting f*cked mostly to death and then dying of dehydration… that’d be the f*cking cherry.

Law grabbed them with weak hands. Kidd had never gotten the hang of needle stuff.

Something else clinked when he picked the tubes up from the cart… a tiny glass vial of anesthetic. Not enough to OD on, but enough to go under.

Law gave an empty laugh at this cruel mercy. Doffy's work, for sure. Never content with having taken something by force, now he wanted to see Law give himself up to it.

He clutched the little bottle so hard his hand shook.

Then he inserted the needle and fit the IV carefully into place.

The door opened an hour later, and a shadow fell over the still form on the clinic bed. A shake of Law's shoulder got no response. A check under his eyelid revealed only whites.

There was some rustling around—the clink of the empty glass vial being checked, the IV examined, and the door locking—before the sheet was pulled away and someone big climbed atop Law.

There was no preamble this time. Whoever it was just wedged themselves between his legs, rubbing a blunt hardon against him. Fingers probed his hole and found it slick and open, the flesh puffy from repeated abuse.

There wasn't even a twitch from the brutalized body. Beaten and raped and beaten and raped… of course it couldn't protest anymore.

Not even when it was penetrated with a slick push, and f*cked with blunt violence just like that, chained to the clinic bed.

Rough hands turned the purpling face side to side as the whole bed jerked. The dense bandages were ripped away and the sliced-up thighs kneaded and pinched. When that wasn't enough, hands wrapped around the exposed neck and squeezed down, until the shallow breathing stopped and the sound of f*cking took over.

They let up before too long, though, and moved on to sample other abuses. The man seemed to be getting frustrated, trying and failing to find some new horror to get off to.

There was the shhnk of a knife being flicked open.

The man paused, co*ck twitching inside his victim now, and tested the reach of the chain binding Law's hands to the bedside. He examined the letters on each finger—ATRPS—and the skin already cut away from the back of one hand.

He unlocked one hand and pulled the cuff off.

A surprised exhale was the only sound before Law threw the IV tube over the man's head and tightened it around his neck. He locked his legs around his attacker and held on.

Vergo's eyes were popping in rage. His face turned red, then purple, veins bulging on his head. He grabbed at Law, and probably could have done enough damage to loosen the assassin's hold…

But that’s the beauty of suffocation. At a certain point, a person's primal instincts take over and they stop defending themselves intelligently. They'll basically just hang themselves for you. Lizard brain only knows how to f*ck and die, after all.

“Did you have a good f*ck, lizard?” Law mocked the larger man.

Vergo pulled and pulled the cord away from Law but only tightened it around his own neck. He struggled and it tightened more. Law just held on.

“I knew it was you. The other two don't ever f*cking shut up.”

Only once the blood vessels had started to burst in his eyes did Vergo release his hold on Law and start scrabbling desperately at his own neck. Law had won.

He held on.

Vergo slumped on top of him, flopping like a beached fish. A few moments more and he was jerking and shuddering mechanically, and Law realized that the dead man was spilling his dying emission inside him…

He let go. Vergo's body fell sideways, his still-rigid co*ck slipping out of Law wetly. The IV tube whipped through the bedrail where Law had looped it for leverage, and everything crashed to the floor.

Law sat up to find the angel lust oozing out of him in obscene gobs. f*cking everywhere, corrupting deathseed, caustic but cold.

“O-oh my god. God…”

Shaking took over his abused frame for a long moment. He clutched his knees and tried to breathe.

“Localized trauma to the… to the lower cerebellum, results in priapism, possibly ejacul*tion, perfectly natural… bodily function,” he reassured himself. “Lizard brain f*cks its last… haha, ha…”

He looked over the edge of the bed at the body, purple-faced and erect. It was still gulping and twitching, as the last bursts of electrical activity filtered through the brain.

“A good medical team could probably keep you alive like this for months,” he told it.

He found the key to the cuffs among the sheets, and freed his other hand. He examined his own body and found no lethal damage. Plenty of other kinds, though.

“The intersection of psychological trauma and physical functioning is at best incompletely understood,” he told it, tracing the Christmas ham slicework of its thighs with a soothing hand. “There's not much even a good medical team could do for you.”

Law stood. f*cking fell on the floor. Massaged his numb legs until they started working again. Wished, suddenly and wrenchingly, that Kidd was there.

“That's f*cking illogical,” he told the palms of his hands, pressed to his face.

The next thing he wished, was that he hadn't thrown away the anesthetic in that little bottle. But that was as pointless a thought as the last. He had sh*t to do.

“How about you wish for a gun instead,” he scolded himself.

Vergo's gun… it was there, in its holster, right in front of him.

Okay.

He got up. Obviously his own stuff wasn't there, and Vergo's clothes were way too big, but he found Penguin's old scrubs discarded in the pile of stuff in the corner. No shoes but whatever. He took Vergo's holster, and his knife. And keys. And phone.

“Holy sh*t,” he approved, checking and finding the gun loaded. He blinked at the watching eye of the security camera. “This what you'd call Providence, huh?”

It didn't say anything.

“Oh f*ck off, I know that's not a real thing,” he told it, and disappeared down the hall.

Chapter 13

Chapter Text

In a locked drawer in Vergo's office, messages were flashing up on Law's phone screen, unseen.

BB5 10:45 secure?

BB5 11:43 Law, get secure and call

BB5 11:48 Or just tell me what you want with that hospital… you getting me into smthg bad? Listen I do a lot of sh*t but not rhis

Missed alarm 12:00 — get up and eat

BB5 14:35 Law

BB5 14:52 It was a f*cking death trap

BB5 14:53 place condemned yrs ago but still standing and the whole Flevance district is a ghost town, fenced off

BB5 14:55 it was ours, Doffy's, but it wasn't pure they were processing it was something chemical, a weapon

BB5 4:55 I had no idea I swear I just traffic blow

BB5 14:56 but law the chemical got in everything in the walls in ppl in their f*cki skin

BB5 14:56 they're all still there, not rotting just

BB5 14:58 dry

BB5 14:59 I saw your name on a door

BB5 14:59 Dr Trafalgar

BB5 15:02 like seeing your gravestone… was that you? But ur not a doctor… are you related? Is that someone you know

Missed alarm 15:30 — for real get up and actually eat

BB5 15:47 …

BB5 15:48 Why arent you replying

BB5 15:58 Why is no one replying

Missed alarm 16:00 — ur doing okay, just fkn eat

BB5 16:50 It is something bad isn't it

BB5 17:25 Law if your still alive im going to ground, and its not the place I told you about. You won't see me again.

BB5 17:29 plz don't die

Daily reminder 17:59 -- Change f*cking phone password.

They heard steady gunfire from downstairs and Kidd was the only one not surprised. Didn't these guys f*cking know who they'd been screwing with?

He listened to Bellamy blab officiously to the boss about securing the outer perimeter. He rolled his eyes. The three of them were standing in Doffy's upstairs office and watching the security cameras go black, one by one. Gun-toting thugs and scurrying techs alike were falling before some invisible force on the screens, and then blinking out of reality.

Bellamy crossed his ape arms. “Sir we need to call in all our guys if that psycho's tryna escape. We'll surround the place and then rush him.”

“Yeah call in everyone you wanna get rid of,” Kidd countered.

“You got a better idea?” Bellamy sneered.

“Yes.”

“Where the hell is Vergo…” Donquixote wasn't even listening to them. He was sifting through a wave of frantic messages on his phone.

“Sir!”

“What. Bellamy.” The towering man looked down at him.

“Do I have your permission to—”

“Bellamy this is not Die Hard. Kindly do your damn job.”

Bellamy blinked. The beet-faced troll turned to Kidd next. “Call your crew in, if they're any good.”

Kidd ignored him, and he stumped off to yell instructions into his phone.

Kidd cleared his throat. “Sir. If you have some leverage over Law, now’s the time.”

He couldn't see Donquixote’s eyes under the dark shades, but Kidd knew they were on him. “...Leverage.”

Kidd pushed. “He's always saying there's a reason he can't just do… what he's about to do. So use it. Rein him in."

“And what do you imagine that leverage might be, Eustass.”

“His family? He says he's got a family, anyway, so. So you… you have eyes on them or something, right?”

Donquixote looked back to the phone in his hand, where one message had caught his attention:

Babygirl5 18:37 daddy I did a bad thing

“He had a family. Once.” The warlord laughed, but he wasn't smiling anymore.

“Oh… f*ck.”

“Yes.”

Babygirl5 18:38 I found the hospital

Babygirl5 18:38 law asked me to

Babygirl5 18:40 you shouldve told me

Babygirl5 18:40 now he's coming for you and I won't have no more daddy when he's done

“His parents ran a hospital that I appropriated as cover for a little side project. Long ago and far away. Initially it was Law I took as collateral, to ensure the parents’ cooperation. He was just a teenager then, and oh, very talented, as it turned out. Keen little psychopath… But the project ended very badly, and… well. So did they. Along with everyone else within several miles. I haven't been to the site myself since learning of it, but I'm told it's quite atmospheric.”

Kidd swallowed. “Does he know?”

“Hm. Seems not? I had thought he’d try to contact them sooner. He must've known, at least suspected… But then. I suppose he needed to keep the fiction alive in the absence of all else.”

“I guess…”

Kidd's mind was racing, a fly caught buzzing between glassy impressions... Haunted, echoing hospitals. Mournful prophecy traced with a finger in blood and ink on his own back:

What if there was nothing after all.

Donquixote pocketed his phone and gave Kidd a flash of cruel grin. “Fortunately I found something to distract him. And just in time—without your help this pleasurable pursuit would have ended a year ago. He would have reached his limits, discovered his loss and simply left.”

Everything in Kidd's mind stopped.

“Did you love him, Eustass?”

“...What?”

“He loved you. Ah, did you see his face when he realized he'd lost you?”

“He didn't ‘lose’ me, I was always, it's, I still—”

“True. Can't lose what you never had. I don't imagine he'll forgive the deception, however earnest the intent.”

“I’m not a f*ckING double-crosser. Okay?”

“No, I know. I am grateful.” A hand even bigger than Kidd's gave him a comforting squeeze on the shoulder and he felt strangely small. “Ah, you are an asset, Eustass! I do hope you survive Law's little final blaze.”

The dapper monolith turned to leave, waving away Bellamy's attempts to get his attention.

“Donquixote,” Kidd called.

“Eustass?” He lifted his head in polite concern.

“Sir, you are a f*cking prick.”

“Heh! Indeed. Bellamy, defend the facility. Eustass, handle your volatile situation. Conclusively.”

He left.

Kidd swallowed the something threatening to rise in his throat. He tried to ignore Bellamy and just f*cking think, until he heard the idiot utter a familiar name into his phone.

“...Yeah, you and Heat and whatshisname, Wire. He says you all have to do what I say, the boss put me in charge of defending HQ. So get down here, front gate, bring your biggest guns and—AAHH GOD YOU SHOT ME! YOU SHOT ME RIGHT IN THE FOOT—”

Kidd grabbed the phone as Bellamy flailed on the floor. “Killer, do not go to the front gate. Get Heat on a roof with eyes. Get Wire to cut the power. Get your ass to the shipping doors and meet me there.”

Killer's tone was indifferent as usual. “f*ckin Kaidos, or what? Big army?”

“Nah. Just one psycho.”

“… … God. f*cking. dammit. Kidd.”

“Don't gimme that sh*t, just come back me up.”

“Just burn the place,” Killer advised.

“I seen him walk out of burning buildings before. Need a confirmed kill.”

“Kidd, I f*cking told you—”

“I f*ckING KNOW, YOU ASSHOLE.” Kidd threw the phone across the room and sent a hail of bullets after it. “I know! I know it's my… my f*cking fault…”

Shots turned to empty clicking and then silence. The phone sat, case dented but still perfectly intact, on the floor. There was a pause, and then an accusing blip as Killer ended the call.

Bellamy had fallen silent for all this, but he took a breath again. “It's uh, bullet proof—hey! hey, easy…”

Kidd had swung the gun around toward him. “You believe in redemption, Bellamy?”

“Whatever you want, man.”

“Hah.” Kidd pulled the trigger.

The blond lump cringed and yelped but there was no gunshot, of course.

“Oh look. A f*cking miracle.” Kidd threw the empty gun at his head and it bounced off. “Idiot.”

He took Bellamy's gun and went to reap what he'd f*cking well sown for himself.

Chapter 14

Chapter Text

Law padded through the whitewashed basem*nt halls in his scrubs, leaving red footprints behind him.

He hoped vaguely that the civilian staff had fled already, but then… who here was truly an innocent? And it didn't matter. If they ran, he let them; if they even hesitated, he took them down with surgical precision. Ankle, neck. Ankle, wrist, neck. Neck. Neck.

Easy.

So f*cking easy that he briefly debated whether he was dreaming his revenge, still chained to that bed, unconscious and being violated. Or dead. And being violated.

Some invisible force knocked him off balance and he paused. A neat little bloom of red was soaking through the faded blue on his side…. He'd been shot?

“Huh.”

Law waited, and yes, it started to hurt.

“Guess I'm alive.”

He let out a burst of gunfire at the group trying to snipe him from behind a toppled table… a chipboard table. Sawdust flew and the gunmen fell with shouts of surprise.

“The doors are all metal here,” he reminded them.

He stepped across their fallen bodies, and felt one tense under his weight. A faker. He stopped and looked down with disdain at the tightly shut eyelids.

Law shot him twice in the chest—once each lung. There was gulping and gagging as the faker's lungs filled up with blood, and Law sat down astride his torso to watch him drown.

“Jesus, how old are you?” Looked really young from up close… a teenager, little blond thing.

He looked at Law with stark fear. Law kept his weight in place and his tone conversational as the boy struggled to roll over and spit out the fountain in his mouth.

“Still a baby, seriously. What are you doing here?”

More gulping.

“Did Doffy bring you from far away too? Did he tell you he'd educate you, give you power… did he tell you how talented and unique you were.”

No answer. Law nodded thoughtfully.

“Did he f*ck you.”

Gulping, weaker. More pulp than blood now—lungs just purple slop slithering out his mouth and nose.

“Yeah of course, huh. Was it before or after he had you f*ck my dead-eyed corpse? And he did do that, I f*cking know he did. That's how he gets his hooks into you… he treats you special, shows you so many glittering secrets, thrilling transgressions. He gives and gives until you realize that he's taking you, like an animal, on the floor in the middle of the night.”

The boy was already gone. Law sighed, marked off his count, and rose.

“All the talented little toys he keeps in this dollhouse... He must have found at least one sharp enough to replace me by now. Someone less ‘erratic’?”

There was furtive movement from around the bend and Law sent two shots lazily into the dark. Curses and two heavy thuds sounded. Easy. Ugh.

“So where the f*ck ARE THEY, HUH??” he demanded. “I'm here! Wrecking your sh*t! Just this one guy!”

No one responded. His voice echoed away down the hall.

“Don’t do this to me! Like I coulda just f*cked up the whole place anytime? Gimme a f*ckING FIGHT!!”

Nothing.

“sh*tty,” he complained, discarding his empty guns and plucking two more from dead hands. A quick check of jacket pockets turned up a couple nice little baggies too. “Who the f*ck runs security here.”

He turned away from the exit sign glowing before him, and headed deeper into the echoing industrial fortress.

Bellamy's crew wasn't taking this seriously, and Kidd was almost insulted on Law's behalf. But the assassin had always kept a low profile, even within the organization—these guys just had no idea. They were laughing and taking bets on who'd get him. Kidd was tempted to send them all up for slaughter without a word, like some kind of blood offering to an angered pagan god.

But he was a f*cking professional. And this was a job.

“He's not tryna escape,” Kidd mentioned grudgingly to Bellamy, who was limping around with his foot tightly bound.

“Course he is,” scoffed the other.

“No, those cameras weren't going dark toward any exit. He was going up and in, probably to the upstairs office block.”

“HAH. You’re tryna get me killed. Just carry out your assignment if you can. I'll be there with the calvary when you f*ck it up.”

“... cavalry,” Kidd corrected him. Law would be rolling his eyes so f*ckin hard.

“Shut up. Gimme my gun back,” Bellamy grumbled.

“The guy who can't stop shooting himself in the foot? I'm doing you a favor, limpdick.”

Kidd saw Killer screech up in the hummer and went to coordinate his own raid.

Donquixote strode through emptying halls, fine leather soles clicking with purpose. His halls, echoing with distant gunshots, and his people, running like rats from a sewer fire. They streamed out, ducking their heads to avoid his eyes, and he drifted on by, indifferent to them all.

Vermin. Replaceable. The only truly indispensable piece in the whole set was Vergo, and he was almost certainly dead. Vergo, with his unparalleled mastery of the Donquixote empire's everyday minutiae. Which, really (it had occurred to Doffy on the way to his waiting car), came down to his unparalleled mastery of its finances and records. Vergo's hard drive might well serve in place of the man. Not in all respects, of course, but he could put the thing in a particularly dour bucket of cattle prods and achieve a fair approximation of the man's company.

A regrettable loss, certainly.

But perhaps he'd still be able to see for himself the manner of the man's defeat… That would be interesting.

The thought put an eager clip in the crime lord's step. Somewhere in these endless white halls, his hand-raised pit mongrel had clashed with his stalwart hound, and had prevailed. Surprising, and intriguing. Especially given the assassin's exquisitely damaged state… so broken and still clawing his way onward.

Made Doffy want to find him and do it again.

He'd always meant to snuff the boy sooner rather than later. Preferably skewered on his co*ck like a butterfly on a pin and screaming out his last breaths… but he hadn't done it yet. Yet. A matter of resource management (or whatever cheap corporate catchphrase Vergo always used). If he used the kid up all at once, he'd never be able to do it again. And again, and again. God… how many times had Doffy taken him, forced his way into his body, spit in his bleeding mouth and wrecked him every way a human could be wrecked. And then, to watch him bounce back, take all the pain and channel it into sheer murderous vitriol, deployed in the service of his abuser, no less… money couldn't buy such a gift.

It was probably imprudent to have kept such a time bomb uncontained and free-roaming all these years, but therein lay the thrill. The hunt was always on that way.

There was a taste in the air that intensified as Doffy went along… rich and familiar. Pungent. A sharp tang like hot metal, offal, sex.

The hunt.

Doffy let it carry him onward, a new plan in mind now. This time he'd finish it, and Law would be awake to watch himself bleed out all over the floor. His life gushing through his cut throat and between tattooed fingers while he was taken from behind. Or suffocating on Doffy's co*ck, looking up as his vision went black…

The huge man was so distracted he almost tripped over the source of the deathly smell. He caught himself with an impatient huff and surveyed the mess.

Fallen soldiers, precisely dispatched but then left in sad little piles everywhere. Doffy hadn't even noticed that he'd been tracking their blood halfway down the hall. Ah, what a waste. Whata tragic waste…

Fortunately he had a man who was just brilliant at getting blood out of Italian leather.

Doffy paused over one particular body, more shot up than the others, gore spilling out its mouth.

“...Dellinger?”

His newest recruit. A promising kid, pretty as an angel, and even crazier than Law had been, if not as clever… Just meat pie now. Ugh. There'd be no getting the blood out of that.

Doffy knelt to survey the delicate remains, and something strange caught his attention. A number, traced neatly in blood, on the floor by Dellinger’s head: 59. He rose and moved on.

Further down the hall, two more bodies were similarly marked: 58, 57.

Bare footprints in sticky red led away down the hall and out of sight beyond them, and Doffy suddenly wondered how many of his soldiers were left in the building.

He followed that trail, uncomfortably conscious of the sound of his own footsteps, and found 56, 55, 54…

He stopped, intuition blaring.

Somewhere, at the end of one of these identical white halls lay bodies 4, 3, 2… and then a creature that Doffy had created himself, honed to a deadly edge in his service and gorged on all his idle cruelty. Waiting for him. And Doffy suddenly wasn't sure which of them was destined to be body 1.

The giant made a low growl in his throat.

And then he turned around and strode briskly away, toward the exit sign glowing behind him.

Killer and Kidd waited at the shipping doors of the old converted warehouse as Donquixote's personal car pulled away into the night. They let Bellamy's platoon of toughs form up and barge in the front door, and then signalled to Wire.

The building went dark and silent with a whirring sigh.

They flicked on their night vision gear and stole into the lightless labyrinth.

Darkness fell over the assassin's shoulders. He paused and waited as the backup power stuttered on and the red eyes of the cameras came back alive. Emergency floodlights clicked on at the exits—pools of blinding illumination in the dark.

“Hm.”

He let Vergo's key card fall to the floor and started strapping guns and knives tight to his chest.

Chapter 15

Chapter Text

Bellamy tried not to let his limp ruin this moment. He was riding the high of the hunt, surging through the halls at the head of his heavily armed company of bruisers. They'd get to see him f*ckin nail this freak, they'd all know who owned this place.

Two underlings pried the lock on the next set of doors and Bellamy kicked them open.

At the far end the hallway, a ghoul dressed in surgical scrubs was hunched under the glare of the floodlight, busily picking fallen corpses clean of weaponry.

Bellamy sent a spray of bullets at it with a really hardcore roar. It turned and was gone around the corner.

He barked out orders. “Bar this door, and that one! Sweep the hall! You four: go around from the south hall and we'll trap him. He's got nowhere to go. Patch, get your straggling ass to the front. Go!”

The main company reached the bend and caught a glimpse of their quarry under the next set of lights, at the far end of the hall. It darted off. They followed.

A volley of gunfire went off as soon as movement was detected around the next corner, and a volley returned.

“AAH GOD I'm got! Bastard got me!!”

“Kevin?!!”

“STOP, STOP YOU f*ckS,” Bellamy shoved his men aside. “That's our own guys!”

“sh*t…”

“Kevin you c*nt.”

They left the injured two to patch each other up and cuss each other out under the light, and the whole group went to circle back around. Four long black hallways, and four corners illuminated by emergency lights. They passed the light where they'd first spotted him, and stepped uneasily over the bodies still sprawled there.

But they looped back around to the unfortunate pair without seeing the assassin at all.

They arrived to find Kevin and his buddy resting against each other serenely, eyes glassy and staring up at the radiant beam. Dead. If they'd looked closer they'd have seen the numbers 53, 52.

“...where's Patch?” someone asked.

Patch, the straggler, was curled up under the next light, red blooming across the floor under his head.

51.

At the next light, they could swear there were more bodies than last time.

50.

49…

At this point the whole crew was hearing noises and sending random shots into the dark, and it took them another twenty minutes and four rounds of the circuit to realize that their ghoul was gone.

Kidd and Killer waited in the bowels of the cavernous loading bay, and listened to the chaos unfolding just down the hall.

“Bellamy trying to stampede him or something, huh,” Killer deadpanned, voice mechanical under the filter of a full-face mask of his own design. Eight empty eyeholes stared at Kidd.

Kidd just wore the night vision goggles. He couldn't f*cking breathe in that full kit, and he didn't wanna look like a robot spider.

Finally there was a different noise—a scraping high above them.

Killer shoved Kidd, who shoved him back, and they tensed at the ready.

Law pushed a vent cover off and climbed out of the ductwork up near the ceiling. Kidd could see him through the metal grating of the maintenance stairway, ghostly under the filter of the goggles. No clear shot, though.

The assassin climbed up atop the cluster of pipes that spanned the room, and started across. Kidd gestured to Killer to follow at an angle opposite.

Somewhere along the way they lost sight of him amid branching pipes and struts. Kidd paused and listened for footfalls.

Nothing. Vanished.

“The f*ck…?” he heard Killer mutter, almost— almost —inaudibly.

Oh f*ck—

Sparks flashed next to Kidd, and Killer was propelled violently backward. Kidd grabbed him and threw them both behind a forklift as more shots showered around them.

“Fluke,” Killer insisted, shoving Kidd off him. His mask was dented on one side. “He couldn't have seen me.”

“f*ckin bat-eyes, I told you.”

“He's not Batman you dolt.”

“You don't know that.”

A cold voice called down from its unseen vantage point, “...That better not be who I think it is down there.”

Kidd chanced a look up around the forklift and a string of bullets narrowly missed him. He rested against the cold metal and grimaced. “Who the f*ck else did you want it to be.”

“Idiot. I f*cking told you how this’d end! I told you and told you.”

“Come down here and remind me.”

“Oh, I'll f*cking remind you,” Law hissed. “You should've run when you had the chance.”

Kidd glanced over at Killer, who shook his head and motioned to keep him talking. No sightline yet, then. Kidd sighed and kicked a restless boot on the floor. “You too, jackass. I thought you’d get gone as soon as the drugs wore off… The f*ck are you still doing here?”

“Some business that’s none of yours. And some pleasure—you catch my trail of carnage on the way in?”

“Yeah, it was okay.”

“Ugh, you don't appreciate my carnage like you used to.”

Killer signalled with a sudden jerk of one hand, and Kidd sent up a burst of cover fire as Killer found his mark and…

“f*ck!” Killer held his clipped ear. The mask was cracked this time. “Ah f*ck… nnnh… no hit, f*ck.”

“It was a near miss, to your credit,” Law mocked.

“How bout you just f*ckin come down here and we can DO this thing!” Kidd called. “Isn't that what you want??”

“I know this is a difficult concept for you, but I have other, non-you priorities right now. People waiting on me, who, again, are not you.”

Kidd chewed his lip and scanned the darkness, thinking of Doffy's cold grin as he spoke of that faraway hospital and the fate of those inside.

“You don't, though…” Kidd muttered, only half to Law.

“What?”

“Uh. Nothing. Just… nothing. Listen, you don't got... time. I give it five minutes tops before Bellamy gets here with the calvary,” Kidd called, and waited.

Law popped up angrily over the pipes. “Oh my f*cking god it's CAVALRY, YOU—AAhhk!!”

“sh*t,” Kidd swore, thunking back down into cover next to Killer. He'd gotten Law but had missed the headshot. Shoulder.

“You sentimental HACK,” Killer growled. “How the hell did you miss that shot.” Now they had to go up there and finish it, and probably get a couple parting shots in em both before it was done.

“Would you shut up! He's gonna—”

“Gonna give us the rest of the vocab lesson by the time we—”

“Hold it, he’s moving.”

Killer listened. “No f*cking way. That was an incapacitating shot.”

“Yeah well. He's probably snarfed enough powder to suplex Satan…” Kidd listened to the dripping trail somewhere. Toward them? sh*t. He motioned to Killer to move and stay quiet, and Killer flipped him off but followed.

He led them back toward the doors and the cover of the crates stacked there, straining to hear the dripping over his own pounding heart.

In another heartbeat, the doors had busted open and noise and light tumbled through.

“Get out of the way, we're on his tail!” Bellamy ordered as flashlights glared directly at Kidd and Killer.

“f*ck! You UTTER f*ck, BELLAMY!” Kidd tore his goggles away from his stinging eyes.

A heartbeat later and the rest of him exploded in pain too—thigh and chest. He was dimly aware of Killer crumpling next to him, and Bellamy's platoon swarming out to return fire at the unseen gunman. There was shouting and wild shooting into the air…

Kidd grit his teeth and collected himself enough look up.

Law was gone, melted back into the ductwork. Bellamy's crew was standing around, still sending the odd shot into the darkness but mostly yelling at each other.

Obviously these idiots couldn't've caught him… “Heh. Haha…”

“Shut up,” Killer bit out next to him. “You're just f*cking lucky he's as sappy as you are or that would've been it.”

“He didn't f*ckin miss on purpose.”

“Uh huh. And neither did you. f*cking bullsh*t, this whole thing…”

Kidd got himself up on his knees and chanced a look down at himself. Manageable. Totally manageable…

“That's what I like to see,” Bellamy stopped to mock him.

Jesus, what a f*cking idiot.

Kidd punched him square in the dick.

“Clinic, Kil,” Kidd wiped his nose and staggered to his feet as Bellamy wheezed on the ground. “Let these jerkoffs try him for a while.”

Kidd avoided the open door of the surgery room where he'd left Law, forever ago, and went instead for the nurses’ locked office door.

But Killer went and leaned on the door frame in stony silence, surveying the scene within.

“I assume you already know what's in there,” he questioned Kidd.

“Vergo, I guess.”

“Vergo.”

“...yeah.”

“With his dick out…”

A deep shudder worked down Kidd's spine. Weak. He growled and slammed his fist on the door to dull the feeling.

“...And a hospital bed where it seems someone was chained.”

Kidd couldn't f*cking concentrate with those robot spider eyes staring at him like that. “You want me to say something?”

“I kinda wanted you to say something before you got me into this twisted sh*t.”

“I told you what you needed to know.” Kidd gave up fiddling with it and just forced the lock. It gave way with an ear-splitting screech.

“Also known as lying through your f*cking teeth.”

“About what. The bosses been messing with him since I dunno. Things went bad like they were always gonna, and he busted out, like he was always gonna. You want the whole f*cking account?”

“f*ck no.” Killer dug around in the cabinet for supplies, grinding his teeth. “But I thought this was some secret double agent sh*t he'd been planning all along. It’s a whole other kind of trouble if the guy has no goal except carnage. That's necessary info, jackass.”

“Well, you heard him, there's one thing he's after that isn't carnage.”

“Hm. And what's that?”

“His family. He's looking for a way to find them, or find out what happened to them. Somewhere in the upstairs offices, I guess there's something that'll tell him—that’s where he's headed.”

Killer considered this. “Okay, that's something to go on.”

Kidd grunted around a mouthful of gauze. He’d snipped a hole in his pants and was trying to dig the bullet out of his thigh, but blood kept seeping up and getting in the way… and his stupid thick fingers just fumbled the little nugget around.

“... right, Kidd?”

“Mn-hnnn.”

“Kidd.”

“Mn.”

“Now's when you tell me the rest of the sh*t you failed to mention before.”

Kidd spat out the gauze and sighed. “They’re dead. He doesn't know yet.”

Killer started pelting him with medical supplies.

“Ow! What!”

“So now he's gonna go up there, figure out he's got nothing to lose, and the situation is gonna go TO HELL!”

“Well what the f*ck did you want me to do!”

“I wanted you to f*cking do your job and shoot him in the f*cking head when you had the chance!”

“STOP CHUCKING sh*t.”

Killer threw the last thing at the floor instead, and the jar smashed and scattered.

Kidd sneered and turned back to his oozing, much-enlarged wound.

Killer watched him mess up his thigh for a while longer before making an impatient sound and marching over. “Okay stop. Stop it. I'll f*cking do it.”

“f*cking go for it,” Kidd relented, sour-faced but relieved.

He didn't have Law's skilled hands, but he still managed okay—always had. Killer knew how to work bad situations. There was no bullsh*t with him, no games, and no sympathy. Just solid sense. It'd kept Kidd alive many, many times.

They got each other patched up in silence. It didn't take more than an hour—they really were lucky hits.

Kidd went into the surgery room before they left again. Not like it'd help anything, but he wanted to… face it or whatever. Make sure he could still take in this sh*t.

Vergo was huge, even crumpled in death. His skin was white up to the cinch embedded in his neck, his head like a purple balloon deflating slowly on its IV tube string. His dick was stiff and bruise-colored.

Kidd was kinda surprised it hadn't been cut off or anything. The body was completely intact, still with all its fingers and teeth. So weird to see one of Law's kills left unprocessed. Also weird that there weren't any open wounds to go with the number written in blood by Vergo's head: 75. So, not Vergo's blood.

“Bitch,” Kidd spat at the corpse by way of benediction.

He departed the unholy sepulchre, going in search of its grim escapee.

Upstairs, Law was approaching a different dark portal. A wide metal door, humming with the echo of unseen forces.

He unlocked it and pushed it open with his gun.

The door swung open onto a large room, sparse office furniture around the edges and a sparring mat in the middle. The main presence in the room was a wide metal desk like something out of a bomb shelter, with a tall leather swivel chair. Atop the desk, a laptop was connected to a bank of hard drives, all still whirring away in the dark and blinking their little eyes at him. A single camera stared at him from the opposite wall.

There was something else in there too, some mechanism priming with an almost inaudible squeal. Coming from all corners of the room… Law knew what that was likely to be.

Okay, clear.

He crossed the room and sat at the desk, with only a passing sneer at the big, winged chair. Like an overstuffed throne in the middle of a mental ward.

He woke the laptop and entered the password Cesar had so kindly provided.

He was in.

Law steered himself firmly away from the surveillance files, and went digging instead for news of his past.

“He's been the bosses’ f*cktoy for longer than I been involved. At first I just had orders to manage him in the field, but they started taking an interest in me, things got more and more weird, I dunno. They knew about me and him… they thought it was funny . They kept trying to give me insane bonuses to send them videos of us together, even just casual stuff, they made it sound like some game I was in on. I think they actually hacked my phone? So I never… I don't actually have any pictures of him at all.”

“...”

“Probably should've just gone along with that one… the other stuff was worse. They only straight-up ordered me to f*ck him for their entertainment once, with him drugged up like they do him. And I just f*cking did it, and they didn't make me do it again. But then they still wanted me there all the time, just to get my reaction if they couldn't have his, I guess. They'd be all, does he like it this way, does he let you do that… all this f*cked up stuff. And the little sh*ts they brought in to try him… I don't f*ckin know. I'd go and rough up the other guys at first, make it clear what'd happen if they ever came back or said sh*t to anyone. But that went over bad with Donquixote. So yeah… It was just easier to. And I mean he, Law… he chose me.”

“...” The mask remained unmoved.

“No, I didn't f*cking tell him what was going on. Okay?”

“I didn't say anything,” Killer said flatly.

“You were thinking it.”

“No, you were thinking it.”

“Shut up. He always had it so he was knocked out while it happened, and he never wanted to talk about it… So I figured he didn't wanna know.”

“...”

“Okay I can f*cking hear your little Killer-brain going. So just say it.”

“Yeah? You done spilling your guts?”

“Sure. Shoot,” Kidd growled.

“Okay: f*ck your sad and sorry sh*t. You had your f*cked up little gooey-eyed thing, you got your dick wet, woohoo, whatever. Feel bad or don't; sh*t still went how it did.”

“I know that, jackass. I just mean as far as he—”

“No,” Killer cut him off, “f*ck him too. It's not him you gotta answer to, in the end.”

“Probably not all good with the man upstairs either, if you really wanna go there—”

“And f*ck God while we're at it. I was talking about our employer.”

“...”

The eight empty eyeholes stared at Kidd. “I have never got any paycheck from God. No holy whor* paid my way outta prison, and neither did Trafalgar, speaking of. We’re Family men, bought and paid for, alright? And we do our jobs until we die—there is no bigger picture here.”

The rest of the long walk upstairs was done in silence, except for the heavy thudding of boots over bodies and bloody marks. Nothing more to be said anyway—it only remained to take the course marked out in fading footprints, to the place where the numbers ran out.

Chapter 16

Chapter Text

The sickly blue light of the laptop screen illuminated the assassin—his hunched shoulders and wide, disbelieving eyes. Law clicked through the next file, and the next. There they were: His family's records, meticulously maintained by Vergo, as far as their usefulness to the Family went.

They were all dead, of course.

They'd been dead almost as long as he'd been away… and he'd never even tried to find them, let alone save them.

He went back to the first result again: Lamuerta D. Trafalgar. There were only a few notes, the oldest a profile: Fourteen; star student; no history of trouble; juvenile diabetes. Unsuitable, noted the file. Then, three years later: deceased - company incident.

Law's own file was much larger, but it too had a profile as the earliest entry. Lawrence D. Trafalgar: Sixteen; homeschooled; behavioral issues; healthy. Workable, it concluded. Then, three years later: inducted as asset.

“Workable,” Law echoed. “Unsuitable…”

Lammy would have hated that so much—just the idea that she hadn't measured up in some area. His sweet, stern little sister… She'd always wanted to be a doctor like their parents, and work in the hospital. If she'd been brought here instead of him, she'd still be alive. Would have made it through med school, no problem. She'd… she'd probably be running the hell out of that clinic, pushing Penguin and Shachi around and forging perfectly airtight patient files. She'd never have started into the sh*t Law had. Never have gotten taken in so thoroughly… never stopped trying to find a way back home. The nurses would have helped her, they—

Law was almost taken by surprise when Bellamy's crew burst through the door.

“Haha, found ya, freak!” Bellamy crowed, levelling a full-on assault rifle at Law. His crew crowded around him, brandishing a variety of hand cannons and shining flashlights in his eyes.

Law waited for a moment, and when the mob didn't immediately fill him up with lead like they really should’ve done, he sighed heavily.

“Thank you all for coming,” he pressed the sleep button and swivelled in the high-backed leather chair to face them, “on this sad occasion.”

Bellamy jabbed the gun in his direction. “Don't try any mind games, freak. First you're gonna tell me what the hell you're doing over there, and then you're gonna come with us nice and quiet.”

Law made a big show of cleaning out both ears. “I'm sorry, I'll f*cking what.”

“Up, get up.” Bellamy waved the rifle and Law stood. The blond troll limped around the desk and elbowed Law out of the way, to stand and frown at the laptop.

“...it's a computer,” Law started.

“Shut up! You're breaking into Vergo's sh*t and f*cking something up, aren't you! Tell me what it is or I'll shoot your dick off and feed it to you.”

“I was looking someone up in his personnel files.”

“Bullsh*t. Tell me the password and we'll see.”

“Doffy for life.”

“What?”

“That's the password—”

“Obviously it's the f*cking password…” Bellamy glowered at the keyboard. He tried typing it in. Wrong. And then again.

“... ... D,” Law supplied. “O...”

“I KNOW.”

Law watched him tap it out a third time: doffyforlife. Incorrect.

The air suddenly exploded in a wave of sound so sharp it almost seemed to cut their skin. Everyone around Law clapped their hands to their ears and crumpled in pain.

He stayed looking around for a moment, watching Bellamy's crew writhe on the floor while the sound bomb blared. It was sharp enough to penetrate the gel plugs Law had put in his ears at the start of this inane exchange. His whole head was f*cking ringing, every bruise and fracture Vergo had put there pulsing. But he stayed perfectly calm as he went around, pulling up each of Bellamy's useless underlings by the hair in turn, putting his gun to a bleeding ear and pulling the trigger.

f*cking satisfying. Not just the weighty retort of a bullet popping through a skull and tugging a body to the floor… It was the orderly nature of the whole thing. How the ringing drowned out everything and rendered his victims immobile, and he could proceed methodically without all the screaming and struggling and frantic bullsh*t.

Finally, the noise cut out, and Law looked around at the scene: seven bodies arranged face-down toward him, with identical wounds. Like penitents at an altar.

“Okay what number we at,” he wondered out loud to the assembled dead men. He considered the tickmarks carved into the back of his forearm. “f*ckin… 46? Yeah, 45, 44, 43, 42, 41…”

He paused as he marked down 40.

“Wait, that’s assuming I got those two idiots back there, which… ugh, that was sloppy. I’ll add them on the way out if they stayed down. So actually 42…” He rubbed, then frowned at the two extra little marks on his arm. “f*ck, can’t erase that sh*t. Who the f*ck came up with this scoring system? Ugh.”

Law fell back into the ridiculous leather swivel chair with a huff, and prodded Bellamy with a foot. “Okay, so I was saying ‘thank you all for coming,’ and then you sidetracked the whole thing.”

“Jesus… god, aaughh…”

“Bellamy.”

“Aaarghhh…”

“You're not even listening.”

Bellamy wobbled to his knees, blood streaming from two ruptured eardrums. “You f*cking psycho—AHHH GOD MY OTHER FOOT!”

Law frowned at the empty clicking that came instead of the next shot, and reloaded with an air of forced patience. “Yeah, you know what? That's enough of that ‘psycho’ sh*t. You people work for Vergo, for f*ck sake… guy maims an underling like every other week, and I'm the unbalanced one? Nuh uh. Listen: this is a funeral.”

“Huh?”

“Look, here, read my lips. See?” Law made an exaggerated gesture at his own face with the gun. “This. Is. A. Fu. ner. al.”

“A-a funeral??”

“Yes, Bellamy. Not that I've ever been to an actual funeral…”

“Whose funeral? KYAAHHH!”

Law scoffed as Bellamy clutched his shot left hand. “Oh, not yours, idiot. Please . It's for my family, and you and your crew are the sacrificial guests. That's a biblical thing, like the Last Supper, probably. I'm not exactly up on religion. But then… I never had to get acquainted with death before, did I. Like, really acquainted.”

Bellamy clearly wasn't getting any of this. He was just staring at Law's mouth making words, wearing a frantic look.

“DID I, Bellamy. No. See?” Law shook his head and Bellamy caught on, shaking his head dully. “You are a good listener after all, that's why you're still alive. You have to take my confession and then I can go to heaven and find my family. Okay? Nod. ‘Yes.’”

A sullen nod.

Law sighed. He considered the surveillance files without really seeing them, rubbing his chin with a distracted hand. ATRPS flashed at his doomed hostage.

“...Obviously I'm making this sh*t up on the fly. But that's how faith works. First you wanna believe something. And then you just do, and that makes it true. Right? Yes.”

Another nod.

“That’s the first part of the confession: I don't believe in anything. Here's the rest: In Doffy's service I've killed seventy-five people, and that's the major hurdle to the whole ‘heaven’ thing, I think. In penance, I've stricken down thirty-three of his cronies so far, so I have like, forty…” he checked his arm like he was checking a watch, “forty-two to go til absolution. There's also the handful of people I snuffed for my own reasons, but they f*cking tried to get a piece of me, so that doesn't factor either way. Doing God's work or whatever.”

Law paused in his accounting to frown at his captive audience.

“Don't make that face, they deserved it. My roommate in med school, first of all. He and his buddy used to find me passed out on sleep aid stuff, check my vitals and get me into bed and whatever, and then just help themselves. I'd be out for days sometimes, and they'd just f*ck me on and off. Idiots didn't know what they were getting their dicks into… I made em dance on air. And the supervisor who covered for them, and the cop who told me that I couldn't call it assault if I'd taken the pills myself, and the doctor who testified that there'd been no evidence of force…”

He stopped and thought.

“Wait, f*ck, rape isn't a sin, is it. But I think getting f*cked is? Is it?”

Bellamy caught his expectant expression and quickly nodded again.

“Right. Of course. So I guess all that actually counts against me on the cosmic scale… Okay well, let's get that whole confessional category out of the way. I have no idea how much lustful contact I've actually had, being unconscious for much of it, but let's see... There were the older dirtbag boyfriends I had as a kid back home—one, two, three. There was Doffy—four. There was med school—five and six. Then Doffy again—he took a renewed interest after learning of that whole roommate thing, and there was the repayment deal cuz he shelled out to cover up five bodies… anyway, then I guess Vergo and whoever Doffy invited along, let's say seven, eight, nine.”

He paused.

“And there was Kidd. Ten.”

A longer pause. Law listened to something he thought he could hear deep in the building somewhere, getting nearer. Or maybe he was imagining it—his ears were still ringing and his mind spinning. He brought up the live feed of the security cameras and watched it flick through empty, dark halls.

Bellamy seemed hopeful that Law was done his tirade. “I got like, tons of money if that—AAAAsh*t! What the f*ck!”

Law shook off the intuition, with barely a glance at his guest's newest miraculous wound.

“You know, I think the times with Kidd were the only wanted sex I've ever had? Does wanting it make it more of a sin? Probably… ugh. But then HE—I mean on his soul scale, that just makes it worse that he was… was just taking it outta me like everyone else, all along. Right? Or… or I guess that's not a crime against god, just against me, and you don't have to atone for that…”

He looked at Bellamy and scoffed impatiently.

“Okay look, this is my confession, not his. He can scam his own way to paradise just fine. And I got a whole bunch more sins to list, but the blow is wearing off and I'm over it.”

Bellamy seemed to sense that the monologue was finally over. “So can I uh—”

Law shot him between the eyes and he crumpled without further protest.

Law arranged him face-down opposite the others, and was just admiring the symmetry when a high-pitched mechanical whine stung his inner ear. Some new device adjusting, somewhere nearby. He glanced at the security feed, and… yes. Unwelcome guests approached.

He took a final look around at the congregated dead, and slipped into the shadows.

Kidd could see dim light flickering through the doorway of Vergo's office as they approached. It strobed in his goggles, making everything seem slow motion. A laptop, Kidd saw as they reached the door and took up positions to either side. Something must be playing on the screen.

A quick scan, a nod, and they were through the door.

Kidd had been expecting to be attacked the moment he got inside, but there was nothing—no movement except the flickering of the laptop screen, and the little red lights on the external drives lined up nearby…

“Stay alert,” Killer breathed, but Kidd wasn't listening.

He was halfway across the room when he stumbled over something. A body—one of Bellamy's men. He kicked it aside with a growl.

“You see something?” Killer started, and Kidd jerked a hand at him to stay where he was.

He reached the desk and turned the laptop.

“The f*ck are you doing?” Killer hissed, still hovering by the door.

“Just… checking something, stay there.”

Surveillance footage, a single frame flicking through each of the key arteries of the building. Kidd watched it for a couple cycles. Nothing moved anymore; everything was quiet. He hesitated, then clicked out of the building feed and skimmed through the others. There was terabytes of it… everything that went on under the Donquixote’s reach, all fed here and was kept for Vergo’s review. Each folder seemed automatically generated, dates or feed number or something -- except one.

DD to review. Kidd clicked in, and found a collection of video files, some of which had been flagged… he clicked the earliest.

Security footage of the safehouse. Every room in the safehouse flashed up for a few moments then cycled to the next room. Of course, f*cking of course they'd been watching the place. By the look of it, must've been months and months back, before he'd ever been invited to the upstairs room…

There was Law, passed out in the bedroom. And there was Kidd, smoking and drinking and counting bullets according to Law's stringent guidelines. Kidd watched himself counting, throwing back his whiskey… the living room, the bathroom blipped by… the bedroom, where he was shaking Law and getting no response… kitchen, living room, bathroom… he was sitting on the floor and drinking the rest of the whiskey, idly brushing his fingers along the hand hanging limp over the side of the bed…

A few cycles more and he was faced with his own back, Law obscured beneath him as he pushed his brute way in. He seemed to be saying something to the comatose body (...kitchen, living room, bathroom...), holding its face in one hand, turning it back and forth, murmuring to it (...kitchen, living room, bathroom...). The tattooed hand hung limp beside them.

He scanned forward through more of the same with blank dispassion. Then blank discomfort, when he got to the part where he'd finished and was arranging a still-unconscious Law under the covers with painfully obvious reverence.

Kidd glanced up to make sure Killer hadn't gotten in sight of the screen, but the masked man was just guarding the door with arms crossed.

Kitchen and living room and bathroom, and then Kidd, passed out still clothed atop the blankets, next to Law, wrapped up under them. Kidd scoffed at his stupid self, and the empty kitchen, living room, whatever. He was about to close the laptop when it cycled back once more to the bedroom and he was looking straight into Law's eyes.

The assassin was very much awake, stretching and staring right at the hidden camera with distaste. He gave two middle fingers to the camera and mouthed, f*ck off Vergo. Then he threw a blanket over the both of them, and fit himself up against Kidd's back to sleep. There was a hint of smugness on his face…

f*ck.

Kidd clicked out and checked the file details. Dated right before the bosses had brought him upstairs to do the same thing for them.

f*ck.

He clicked the hell outta there and leaned heavily on the desk. Stuff was going on in his f*cking chest, and stuff, like Killer said, was bullsh*t and got you and your entire crew dead. He needed to turn it all off, f*cking just… tear out whatever it was that made him weak like this.

“Killer,” he laughed humorlessly, “I gotta get my f*cking dick chopped off.”

There was a fumbling clatter right above their heads, and a gun dropped out of thin air between them.

A muffled curse. “...sh*t.”

They both whipped out their guns as a dark blur scythed down onto Killer.

“AAAAGHH!”

There were flashes from the muzzle of Killer's gun, the screeching of metal on metal, a whirl of bodies, a fan of blood.

Law was clamped onto Killer's head and driving a knife down into his neck and shoulders again and again as Killer dropped to his knees—

“Kil!” Kidd scrambled for a clear shot.

“f*ckING SHOOT HIM!”

Kidd grasped the barrel of his gun and threw himself at them both instead. He whipped the grip of his pistol into the assassin's skull with a crunch that stilled him for a half moment.

Killer finally broke loose. He threw Law off and went for his dropped gun.

Law hit the wall but was somehow back atop Killer a split second later, dragging the knife deep through the back of his arm and snapping all the little strings there.

“AAAAAAHH!”

Kidd grabbed him. He found himself on the floor, struggling with an unfamiliar, demonic creature for control of the knife. Its face was half ruined, its lips cracked, and the skin of its arms patterned with angry red grooves. A moment later and Kidd had grabbed the knife by the blade… and held on. Blood streamed down his arm and slicked over them both.

There was a moment of stillness as they hit an impasse, locked in an impossible back-and-forth. Then they broke apart and both darted for their guns.

They rose, guns on each other.

Killer staggered to his feet beside Kidd. “I'm in favor of the dick chop plan,” he muttered.

Law’s breathing was labored. “Why didn't you just f*cking run… you coulda been gone already, out of my f*cking way.”

“I don't run.”

“Nah, you just lie—”

“I got people to take care of here—” Kidd started.

“What, this people?”

Law shifted his gun imperceptibly left, and Killer slumped to the floor next to Kidd.

Kidd looked down in disbelief. He knew what he was going to see—Killer’s mask blown open and his face gone—and he f*cking knew better than to take his eyes off Law but. He still looked.

The next two shots hit his chest and knocked him to the floor, and a third made pulp of his left elbow.

Law reloaded slowly and deliberately. Kidd hauled himself up against the wall and surveyed the damage with dull acceptance. Red eyes found Law at last and took him in, slowly.

“...I thought I'd killed you. Before, in the upstairs room.”

“Yeah, so did I.” Law didn't look up. “You should've made sure to finish it, huh.”

“You were cold. I dream about you like that sometimes, about trying to save you but just ending up hurting you.”

“Tragic. Must be so hard for you.”

“I wanted… I was trying to keep you alive—”

“That,” Law interrupted, “has always been Doffy's preference, not mine, and you f*cking know it.”

“...yeah.” Kidd did know that.

Law chambered his round and pointed the gun purposefully at Kidd's head. But a beat passed and he hadn't shot yet. Instead, he sighed through his teeth and made a flippant gesture with the gun.

“Well? Don't you have to pray for your soul or whatever, to get your angel chariot? So do it. Hurry up. I'll let you have this one thing.”

Kidd just kept looking at him. “No, I… dunno.”

“You don't know what. You f*cking always say that!”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Law gripped the gun in anger. “It should matter, asshole. Your f*cking god or whatever is watching.”

Kidd scoffed bitterly. “If he is just watching all this sh*t, he's a sick asshole. Or a f*ckin coward. But no...” He grit his teeth and raised his gun.

“Kidd—”

“There's nothing.”

Two shots. Pain like his heart being ripped out and then—

Yeah, nothing.

Law's eardrum stung, the cartilage of his ear grazed.

Kidd's head lolled to the side, loose atop his shattered spine.

Gone.

“F-f*ck…”

In the glaring silence of the moment after, Law was suddenly, dizzyingly faced with what nothing actually feels like, for those left alive to feel it. Real nothing—no one to hear you or watch over you or f*cking hurt you or just give a sh*t that you exist. Like missing a step and falling forever.

Law found himself kneeling by the body and searching its glazed eyes for signs of life. f*cking absurd… he was gone. Law knew he was gone.

He cradled the sagging head in both hands and murmured to it, as though Kidd could still hear him.

“You… Idiot, f*cking idiot. If you'd just… just…”

If he'd what. What could have possibly f*cking changed anything.

“No… It was always gonna be like this, wasn't it. I'm the idiot. You were put there, in front of me, to guide me to this. I was chosen to bring ruin to this evil place, and you were chosen to die. There's a reason for it all, it's okay, you did what you were supposed to. You kept me alive for a little while and… it's okay now.”

Law tried to wipe the blood from the pale face, straighten him up at least before leaving him behind to rot. Law had things to do still. Preordained sh*t. Had to go.

But he stayed kneeling there.

“Kidd? I don't think I can stay alive by myself, I don't… don't even know what that thing I like at the takeout place is called. Y-you always got it for me, and… I didn't even really want it, you were just so happy that you'd found something I'd eat…”

Somewhere in the building, the backup power flickered to a halt. The emergency lights faded, leaving the barefoot assassin spilling all his useless words to no one in the dark.

Chapter 17

Chapter Text

Law knew now what must have happened. He must have already died, maybe more than once, but was being brought back until he'd fulfilled his final purpose.

It was some divine plan. God's fault, after all—not Kidd's, and not his. Law just wished he'd realized in time.

He walked down endless dark hallways lined with trapped souls raging soundlessly at him. Some were his own victims, others unfamiliar, but all screaming for his blood. Everyone he'd sacrificed to Doffy's regime, under the vague excuse of protecting people he used to know.

He knew what he was being called upon to do: To perform his redemption. Cleanse the halls with blood and fire.

Blood—done.

Now came fire.

It started with distant explosions, one after the other, from the direction of the loading bay. The last one rumbled through the whole building just as Law reached the front lobby. The front doors were jammed open wide. Outside, sirens, flashing lights and confusion waited, and laser sights danced on the floor before his feet. A pitched battle was already raging.

He turned instead to a side door just inside the lobby. Nothing inside—just a closet. He entered.

Something massive and powerful came surging through the halls just as he closed the door behind him. It sent singeing breath through the cracks, and turned the door to a hot plate that seared the flesh from Law's fingertips, but the greater part of its fury raced out the front doors to consume the sinners massed there.

Law thought he heard them all scream, and then even that was eaten by the roar of angelfire. He waited until the roar had peaked, eased, died, then opened the door and went outside.

Thick smoke blanketed everything, tinged blue in the early dawn light. Here and there violent red glowed—burning cars and bodies. Around the edges, scattered gunfire and cut-off screaming. He didn't even have to lift a hand anymore. Judgement spread out around him and brought down everything touched by this evil place.

Law walked out amid the haze and flames, and waited for it to take him too.

He walked and walked with smoke curling at his back, into a city cold and empty as a tomb. No one left in the whole world.

And then a light glared in his eyes, so bright he stopped and shielded his face.

Finally.

There was someone in front of him, backlit in the brightness. Some angel come to get him out of here and take him to his final reward. He didn't even have anything left in him to reach out to it—he was already on his knees, barely holding his head up.

It was calling his name, almost warily.

“Law. Um. Law?”

Law stared into the light. “Lammy?”

“…Huh?”

But the voice was all wrong for Lammy. It wasn't his sister after all, or his father, or mother, or even Cora. Law’s ghostly guide solidified out of the glare: a lanky figure in a dorky hat. Shachi.

The blinding headlights blinked off. Penguin was parking a short yellow school bus half on the curb and running up to them just as Law slumped to the ground.

“Who’s a llama?” Penguin caught up with Shachi.

“I think he's a little scrambled… look at him, how the f*ck is he still going?”

Law laughed mournfully into the pavement as the two checked him over. God, his poor nurses. “f*ck… so they got you guys after all. I was hoping you two at least would… survive somehow…”

But they were here now, and who better to ferry him to the other side? Of course it wouldn't have been Lammy, of course Law couldn't follow his family to heaven after all the sh*t he'd done. He hadn't slain enough demons to redeem himself, and now he'd never see them again.

But hey. At least this way he could descend to the bad place with his little reprobate crew. He could even meet Kidd again… somewhere far away from Doffy.

“So we heading to hell?” Law asked as the nurses hauled him upright and looped his arms over their shoulders.

“Uh. Florida,” Penguin muttered.

“So: yes,” Shachi complained.

They loaded Law onto a rough pallet on the bus, and Penguin tended to him while Shachi navigated them through the grimy pre-dawn streets.

“The dead shouldn't cry,” Law scolded his attendant, who was trying with unsteady hands to mop up Law's side, shoulder, arms… everything. He must look f*cking gruesome, wearing every kind of damage a body could sustain.

“Haha…” Penguin sniffed and wiped his face on a sleeve. “Well, someone gotta mourn our hellbound souls.”

Shachi interjected from the front, “Oh dude, Cap, Penguin SHOT a guy.”

“He what.”

“He shot Cesar in the ass and stole his kitchen bus!”

“His… kitchen bus.” Law looked around at the grimy interior. The seats had been removed, the windows blacked out, and a series of school desks with lab equipment bolted to the floor. Some angel chariot.

“Well,” Penguin huffed in embarrassment, busily wrapping Law in gauze, “we needed wheels and whatnot and we didn't know who else to go to, and he wouldn't give em to us, and we really needed to come get you cuz we heard there was explosions and dangerous stuff, so I kinda…”

Law missed the rest. He was fading out, but almost peacefully this time. He gave in to Penguin's insistent ministrations and let everything go black.

The yellow bus careened away down the highway, going who the f*ck knows where. Maybe they're in a better place now; maybe not. Maybe it's best not to know.