SKELETON KEY • heart pirates

01 SLEEPING SEASON

Note:  Whelp, this is the inevitable result of me overdosing on Flower Face lyrics.

This oneshot references one upcoming spoiler for my longfic Chimayoi, as this does occur within that universe (in the near future), though hopefully this can be read as a standalone.

I'm still not sure if some other details in this will be strictly "canon" in the main story though, so I will tentatively consider this an AU for now.

Pairing(s) - Law/Arisa.

Warning(s) - smut & angst.  Also insinuations of past SA.  

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It must have occurred sometime after the thirtieth heart. Right on the cusp of obtaining the thirty first in fact, but of course they had lost it. It was nobody's fault – not even a case of compromised information from an asset. Just one misopportune coincidence stacked atop several others. Wrong place, wrong time, Hakugan had remarked with a shrug, fingers interlaced behind his spiky brown locks. It happens. And he was right. But these sorts of cases were growing worryingly more frequent, and subsequent delays frustrated Arisa more than she was comfortable expressing to any of the others.

Time was running out for her. And as a result, for Law too.

The monotony aboard the Polar Tang the day following the botched mission only served to dampen her spirits further. The Log Pose wouldn't reset for another two days according to Bepo, leaving them with little to do beyond the usual motions of restocking. Eventually she couldn't take it anymore and had broken away to town, but the hours she spent meandering alone did very little to temper her swirling anxieties. He found her at a nearby park, sitting at the base of an old maple. By then it was close to nightfall. The trees had darkened to thin, shadowy spires around them and the air had cooled somewhat.

She was staring listlessly up at the sky, counting the stars as they slowly winked into view. This was one of the rare occasions she heard him approaching before she sensed him otherwise. Riyu and Himuro would have no doubt disapproved, but at this point the prospect of honing her Observation was the furthest thing from her mind.

There was a certain honesty to Law's voice then that drew her to look back at him when he called her name. Maybe a lack of pretense was more accurate. She noted how the sharp angles of his features appeared all the more starker when cradled by the growing dark. He didn't have Kikoku with him tonight and she found herself wondering why, if a concrete reason even existed to begin with. It wouldn't have been surprising to know there was one, knowing how he could get sometimes. Him with all his elaborate schemes.

This time, something told her otherwise. He looked about as tired as he'd sounded, enough to blunt most of her immediate frustrations for the time being, those feelings momentarily replaced with a familiar protective instinct. She wished that he would listen to Rakko for once. To lay off on the all nighters and get some actual sleep – and no, those intermittent periods of somnolence he called "naps" certainly did not count, as the cook was so knowingly wont to chide. She was half in the mind to say so herself.

"Hey," she greeted instead, trying yet failing to keep the glumness out of her voice.

Law said nothing – only sat next to her, his arm just barely brushing hers. Most likely it was accidental but she found herself dwelling on it much longer than she should have. A coincidence, she told herself. Just like all the past times she'd caught his gunmetal eyes trained on her and found herself momentarily lost in the indecipherable calm of his gaze. All the times she overthought things and ended up feeling like the fool she was for attributing those moments to anything other than mere happenstance.