Chapter Text
For those who traveled the Grand Line, it was well known that some of the most dire consequences often came from quick, split-second decisions made in the heat of the moment.
“How do you even walk like this?” demanded Law as they ran. It felt like his legs were made of jelly; every time he extended one to take a step, it was like he was just throwing his foot forward and praying that it landed in a position he could put weight on without it rolling over and buckling beneath him.
“I could ask you the same thing!” said Luffy, whose legs were also flailing awkwardly beneath him, almost like he was waging a battle against his own bones. “Why is your body so stiff? It feels like someone put sticks in my legs and stuck hinges in all my joints!”
“That's how limbs are supposed to work!” snapped Law.
The booming clatter of boots against the ground served as a pointed reminder of the army of Pacifistas that was currently chasing them, storming through the narrow corridors in a single-minded effort to erase two of the most notorious pirates in the Grand Line from the face of the planet. The shrill whirr of a dozen charging lasers echoed through the twisting halls, the walls of which were still riddled with bullets from the Strawhats’ initial invasion. If one were to look carefully, they might still see the occasional unblemished silhouette of Luffy surrounded by holes from the bullets that had missed him.
“This is all your fault!” panted Luffy. “Why would you switch our bodies in the middle of a fight?”
Law's cheeks - well, Luffy's cheeks, technically- went bright red. “You were about to take a direct hit from a laser beam!”
“Usopp took care of it!”
“He was in the other tower! How was I supposed to know he was even aiming at the Pacifista that was attacking you, let alone that he would make the shot?”
As they rounded the corner, it was clear they were both struggling to make the turn on their new legs. Luffy snapped his left arm out as if to throw his hand at an exposed pipe along the wall so he could swing around the bend only to cry out in pain as his - or rather, Law's - joint threatened to snap from the force at which it had been extended. Meanwhile, Law attempted to push off with his right foot only for his entire leg to buckle like a wet noodle and send him face-first into the wall; his only saving grace was that the impact didn't cause him any pain, allowing him to recover quickly and continue sprinting after Luffy.
“So, wait, you thought I was gonna get shot by a laser, and your plan was to switch minds with me?” said Luffy. “Are you stupid?”
“Oh, that's rich coming from you!” fired Law right back.
“I'm serious!” said Luffy. “If you already had the Room up, why didn't you just teleport me out of the way?”
“The Vice Admiral was putting out too much haki!” said Law, a little irritated that Luffy trusted his judgment so little as to make him explain himself. “A mind swap was the best I could do!”
“So then what? You were gonna die in my body, and I'd be stuck in yours for the rest of my life?” said Luffy. “With solid bones?”
“Bones are supposed to be solid!”
“Not for me, they're not!” said Luffy, and punched Law in the shoulder. Seeing as he was in Luffy's body, it didn't actually hurt, but…
“Watch it!” barked Law. “I'm having a hard enough time staying on my feet in your body without you punching me!”
“You wouldn't even be in my body if you'd had any faith in my crew!”
“I couldn't even see your crew!” argued Law. His observation haki didn't reach nearly as far as Usopp's.
“Just because you can't see them doesn't mean you shouldn't trust that they're there!” said Luffy as they came upon a fork in the hall.
Law raced ahead, refusing to address Luffy’s ridiculous assertion:
“The EMP device that Lilith told us about should be in the room to the right!”
The two of them stumbled around another turn only to be greeted by a massive iron door. It was bolted shut, with no locks or keypads in sight. Law surmised that it had probably been closed by some remote lockdown mechanism.
“Gear Three!” said Luffy, clearly intending to break it down with an oversized fist, but his attempts to inflate his arm resulted in little more than the sound of a blown raspberry as his lips flapped uselessly against his (well, Law’s) flesh. “Damn it! Quick, Traffy, switch us back!”
Law gritted his teeth. He'd known this moment would come ever since it became clear that he wasn't going to die, and he'd been dreading it so much that he almost wished Usopp had missed.
“I can't,” he said quietly.
“What do you mean, you can't?” said Luffy. “I've seen you do it before!”
“I could do it then because I was still in my own body,” said Law, pressing his fingers to his temples. “But right now, the only devil fruit power that I have access to is this.”
He held out his arm, which flopped downward like the bones had been removed.
Luffy's eyes widened.
“Wait, but that means…” he said, staring down at his tattooed hands with wide eyes. “I have to be the one to switch us back?”
Law nodded grimly. Luffy’s expression turned serious.
“Okay, then; no problem!” said Luffy with his typical unfounded confidence. “I'll just do that thing you do! Roo-”
Law slammed his hand over Luffy's mouth.
“You can't just use the Op-Op fruit!” said Law. “It isn't like other Paramecias; instinct alone isn't enough to do what you want. You actually have to understand the mechanisms of the body parts you're affecting, or you could leave us both brain-dead!”
“What?” cried Luffy. “But I'm not a doctor!”
“No,” agreed Law, deep in thought. “You're not.”
“This is the worst!” said Luffy, frantically pacing. “How am I supposed to hit people when my punches only go as far as my arms do?” He punched the air a few dozen times, as though trying to figure it out.
The sound of a laser charging up behind them snapped them back to attention. Luffy instinctively threw a punch backwards to interrupt it only to be reminded once more that Law's arms were not extendable.
“Traffy, I love your body, but I hate your body!” screamed Luffy, and they both dove out of the way in opposite directions.
There was a loud whistling noise as the laser fired between them. The blast left a gaping hole in the door, the edges of which glowed red hot from the heat of the plasma. Law and Luffy wasted no time dashing inside.
The room was a mess of wires and broken-down devices scattered across various shelves and tables. Piles of cardboard boxes had been stacked to the ceiling, filled with enough random bits and pieces of tech that their closed tops bulged. Law wasted no time digging through the chaos in search of an object matching the description that Lilith had given them, tossing various pieces of random junk to the floor as he went.
“Where is it, where is it…” muttered Law as they frantically searched the room.
“Did you find the eeyempee yet?” he heard Luffy ask from the other side of the room. “I’ve looked everywhere, but all I can find is this emp!”
Law spun around to see a cubical device with ‘EMP’ in large black letters across the front sitting in Luffy's hands. At the top was a big, red button with a glass cover.
“That's the EMP, you idiot!” barked Law as the Pacifistas ran into the room and began charging up their lasers. “Press it! Press it now!”
Luffy brought a haki-infused palm down on the button cover, smashing straight through the glass to the button beneath. There was a soft buzzing from the cube, followed by a massive boom and a strong pulse of energy.
One by one, the Pacifistas dropped to the floor, and all was quiet save for the sound of Luffy and Law's heavy panting.
“You think the Vice Admiral is coming after us?” asked Luffy.
Law shook his head. “I saw Zoro fighting her while we were being chased out by the Pacifistas. Assuming he doesn't lose immediately, we should at least have a few minutes before she comes after us.”
“‘At least?’” said Luffy, looking deeply offended on behalf of his swordsman. “You know, ever since we rescued your crew from Blackbeard, you've been such a pessimist!”
“Being defeated and having your ship destroyed will do that to you,” said Law dryly.
“Not to me!” said Luffy with a grin that looked wholly out-of-place on Law's face. “The Thousand Sunny is our second ship, and Kaido took me out in one hit the first time we fought! Just ‘cause you got your ass handed to you once doesn't mean you won't win the next time!”
“Hn,” was the only response Law gave to Luffy's naive proclamation.
“And besides, that new submarine Franky and Lilith built for you is so cool!” said Luffy with starry eyes that, again, looked VERY out-of-place on Law's face. “Torpedoes, jet thrusters, bubble gatlings, that weird claw thing so it can attach itself to the Sunny… Have you guys even named it yet?”
“...Polar Tang Two,” he said after a moment.
Luffy made an ‘X’ with his arms. “No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no?’”
“Nobody in my fleet is gonna have a ship with a number in its name,” said Luffy firmly.
Was he being serious? “Your ship is called the Thousand Sunny!”
“That's different.”
“How?”
“Because the Thousand Sunny is a cool name!” said Luffy, like that was all the answer Law needed.
Law could feel an eye twitch coming on.
“Why did I agree to join your fleet, again…?”
“Because you ‘love me more than you've ever allowed yourself to love anyone before,’ and ‘would follow me to the ends of the Earth just to see my smile,’” said Luffy cheerfully, roughly paraphrasing what Law had said moments before their first kiss.
Law's cheeks went bright red. Luffy had the attention span of a caffeinated toddler! How was it that he could remember Law's cheesy love confession almost word-for-word?
“Anyway, you need to come up with a better name,” said Luffy. “That's an order!”
Law ‘tsk'd.’ “Why am I the only one in the fleet who gets ordered around like this?”
“Because your crew is the only one in the fleet that I actually wanted there!” said Luffy with a grin. “I don’t really care what the other captains do, but you’re my favorite, so you’ve gotta have a cool ship name!”
Even in Law's body with Law's voice, he said it with such pure and unfiltered warmth that it was impossible for Law's cold heart not to melt. Damn him…!
“Fine, I'll come up with something else,” said Law, defeated. He really needed to stop letting Luffy have his way all the time. He was already the type of person who rarely took ‘no’ for an answer; it was only going to get worse if he didn’t put up some token resistance now and again. “More importantly, we need to figure out how to get back into our own bodies!”
“Oh yeah,” said Luffy like he'd somehow forgotten about their predicament despite the fact that he’d been staring at his own face for the entire conversation. “I have an idea!”
Law blinked. “Really?”
“Yeah!” said Luffy. He pointed to the other side of the room. “You stand on that end of the room, and I'll stand on this end, and then we'll run as fast as we can towards each other! If we hit each other hard enough, maybe our minds will go back into the right bodies!”
With a weary sigh, Law pressed his back to the wall and slid down to the floor, face buried in his floppy hands. Try as he might to come up with an actual solution to their body swap predicament, he could think of nothing that might switch them back. At least, not without giving Luffy a crash course in neuroscience. Much as Law loved the man, he wasn’t exactly the brightest star in the sky. (Well, he was literally the brightest star in the sky, but that was beside the point.)
“I really fucked this up…” he said.
Luffy was quick to kneel in front of him, quietly grunting as he landed just a bit too hard on his solid kneecaps.
“Hey,” said Luffy, reaching forward to push Law’s hands down and out of his face. “You were just trying to protect me, and you wouldn’t have felt like you had to do that if I didn’t end up in a position where I needed saving to begin with. That makes it both of our faults!” He gently stroked Law’s head and grinned. “Relax. We’ll figure this out!”
Law wished he could share Luffy’s optimism, but it was hard to be positive when the only option he could come up with to fix this mess involved teaching an idiot how to do magical brain surgery. Still, he appreciated the sentiment. (It did feel a little weird being comforted by his own body, though.) In any case, for as dire as the situation seemed, it wasn’t going to be fixed by sitting around regretting his decision to swap them.
He rose to his feet, as did Luffy.
“And hey, this might actually be kinda fun!” said Luffy, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “I can’t wait to rub it in Zoro and Sanji’s faces how much taller I am than them now!”
“Not a chance,” said Law firmly. He was in full-on damage control mode now. “We can’t tell anyone what happened until it’s fixed.”
“What?” said Luffy, looking like a child who’d just been told they weren’t getting dessert. “Why not?”
“Because the second they find out that their three billion berry bounty captains are useless in a fight, they're going to panic! Well,” he amended. “Not all of them, but I don’t trust the stronger members of our crews to be able to keep it secret from the weaker ones.” He pressed his fingers to his temples. “And if any of them somehow let it slip to anyone outside of our allies that an Emperor of the Sea mysteriously forgot how to use his powers - and yes, Luffy, I know they would never do it intentionally, but all it takes is one slip of the tongue - literally everyone in the world is going to come after us.”
“I'm not afraid to fight the world!”
“Well, you should be!” said Law, grabbing Luffy by the shoulders and squeezing them tightly to try and get the point through his thick skull. “We might as well be fresh off Reverse Mountain for all the good we are in a fight right now. Do you really want the World Government to start sending admirals after you and your crew when you aren’t in any kind of state to protect them?”
Luffy crossed his arms over his chest and pouted at the ground. “...No.”
“Good boy,” said Law dryly, releasing his shoulders to reach up and give Luffy a condescending head pat. Luffy tried to act upset, but he couldn't help looking like a satisfied cat with the way he closed his eyes and pressed his head back against Law's hand. “The fewer people know that anything is wrong, the less likely the information is to reach someone who might come after us if it got out. That means that, at least until we figure out where to go from here, you need to pretend to be me, and I need to pretend to be you.”
“Isn’t it gonna be super obvious something is wrong the second we have to fight anybody?” said Luffy.
Law nodded. “We’ll have to avoid combat as much as possible. Luckily, you’re a Sea Emperor, meaning most marines won’t be allowed to engage without cause, and most pirates will probably try to avoid us. The only ones we really need to worry about are the marines in SWORD, and reckless pirates like Kid who might try to make a name for themselves by taking you down.”
“I have a friend and a relative in SWORD,” said Luffy. “They probably won’t come after us as long as we don’t give them a reason.”
Law nodded once more. “That leaves stronger pirate crews looking to make a name for themselves as our biggest threat. We’ll have to stay on the move; the longer we stay in one place, the more likely it is that word of Strawhat Luffy’s whereabouts will get out to the ones looking to challenge you.”
“Isn’t that basically the same as running away?” said Luffy, his brow furrowed.
Law reached up, grabbed Luffy by the collar of his shirt, and yanked him down to eye level.
“What did we just talk about?” said Law. “Neither of us are in any condition to fight. If anyone even remotely strong attacks us, it’s going to be almost entirely up to our crews to fend them off.”
“I get it; sheesh,” said Luffy, batting his hands away. “Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”
“I don’t give a damn if you're happy about it or not!” said Law. “I need you to promise me that you'll keep your mouth shut until we come up with a plan!”
“Alright, already!” said Luffy. “Man, someone's a grouch today.”
Law opened his mouth to snap at him only to stop, take a deep breath, and try to regain his composure.
“I'm sorry for yelling,” he said after a moment. He pressed his fingers to his temples, which squished under the pressure in a manner that briefly startled him before he remembered that he was made of rubber now. “But with all due respect, Senior Captain Luffy, I've literally never met anyone in my life as bad at keeping secrets as you are.”
Luffy looked like he wanted to object, but he held his tongue. Trying to deny that he was a bad liar would be as futile as trying to deny that the sky was blue. Instead, he just looked away.
“I just have to pretend to be you, right?” said Luffy after a moment. He grinned deviously.
“I know that look,” said Law, already feeling a headache coming on. “What are you planning?”
“I'm not planning anything!” said Luffy, innocently batting his eyelashes. “Just thinking about how much fun it'll be to act all cool and mysterious and stuff.”
Law could feel his cheeks heating up. “...You think I'm cool?”
“Of course! Everyone knows the Surgeon of Death is the coolest member of the Worst Generation!”
He was full-on blushing now. “...Yeah, well, with all the weirdos in that group, it's not like the competition is fierce,” he said, refusing to meet Luffy’s eyes. “Anyway, we should head back before the others start wondering what happened to us.”
He took a few experimental steps forward, trying to make sure he'd gotten the hang of Luffy's legs. If he focused on keeping them solid, they seemed to harden up enough to put weight on. Just to make sure he had it, he took a moment to balance his entire weight on each leg, and breathed a sigh of relief when they didn't go limp beneath him.
Luffy, too, seemed to be testing the limits of each of his new limbs, a look of intense discomfort on his face as he did so.
“Your body makes me feel- What's the word for when you can't stand being in a really confined space?”
“Claustrophobic?”
“Yeah, that!” said Luffy. “Is this really how everyone else feels all the time?”
“Don't you remember?”
“Not really,” admitted Luffy with an awkward laugh. “I ate my devil fruit when I was six, and even when I’m underwater or touching sea prism stone, it doesn’t feel this…” He tapped on some of the bonier places on Law’s body, like his knuckles and elbows. “...solid.”
“Well, you’re going to have to get used to it fast,” said Law. “If someone attacks us, and you forget that you can’t deflect bullets with your body, there aren’t gonna be any second chances.”
Luffy swallowed, the true gravity of their situation finally appearing to sink in. Good. He needed Luffy to understand that they needed to be careful if they wanted to have any hope of surviving the next couple-
Law frowned. The next couple days? Weeks? Months? It was impossible to say. All he knew was that they were going to be operating at significantly decreased performance levels until they switched back. Luffy, for much as Law loved him, wasn’t smart enough to take full advantage of the Op-Op fruit even if he were to spend a lifetime training with it. As for Law, he knew Luffy's power was nothing to sneeze at - a Mythical Zoan for a sun god, he'd been told - but there was so much he needed to think about just to walk in Luffy’s body, let alone fight in it. He’d never really appreciated just how much training Luffy had probably needed to do to take full advantage of his body; he always made it look so natural in combat, like an artist so talented that they almost gave the impression that they’d been painting museum-worthy masterpieces straight out of the womb. To Luffy, the Gum-Gum (or whatever it was really called) had become freeing. For Law, it was like he’d gone from steering a sailboat to being dumped into a giant mecha with hundreds of thousands of buttons, dials, and switches, and he had no idea what any of them did.
And as if that weren't enough, there was no way in hell that Law was going to be able to get used to kissing and fucking his own sorry ass instead of Luffy's! No, this was not an acceptable long-term situation; not at all!
“Let’s head back to the ships,” said Law.
“Yeah! I’m starving!” agreed Luffy eagerly, and Law shot him a look. “What?”
“You’re me now,” said Law. “Stop smiling so much.”
“But I love it when you smile!” said Luffy, smiling even brighter. “It makes my heart feel all warm and fuzzy!”
Law bit down on his tongue to try to keep himself from smiling involuntarily.
“It’s not about what you want; it’s about keeping up appearances,” said Law. “Now come on. We should get back before the others start to worry.”
“You got it, Traffy!” chirped Luffy, only to clear his throat and correct himself. “I mean, you’ve got it, Strawhat. Let us venture forth dauntlessly to, uh… Something-something big words, LET’S GO!”
They were so doomed.
“Luffy!” said various members of the Straw Hats as Law came aboard.
“Captain!” cried Bepo and the other Heart Pirates as Luffy followed after him.
“Hey, guys!” said Luffy cheerfully, only for Law to elbow him. “I mean, uh… Hmph. Everything went about as well as could be expected.”
“We were able to deactivate the Pacifistas with the electromagnetic pulser device left by Doctor Vegapunk, but the Pacifistas destroyed the chip reader before we could check the records we came here for, so it looks like we’re going to have to go back and see Lilith if we want to access its contents,” said Law, holding up the chip in question. It was Luffy's turn to shoot him a look. “...At least, that's what Law told me.”
“Law?” said Robin, and Law immediately realized his error.
“Haha, yeah, Traffy was getting sick of the nicknames and told me to cut it out,” he said, a bead of sweat running down his neck.
“And you listened?” said Nami. The other Strawhats looked equally alarmed. Law turned back to see Luffy wearing the smuggest grin on his face.
‘NOW who's blowing our cover?’ he seemed to be saying.
Law gritted his teeth. Pretending to be Luffy was clearly going to be tougher than he thought.
“Well, anyway,” said Luffy, placing his hands on his hips and grinning that half-moon smile of his in Law's body. “I'm starving. What's for dinner, Sanji?”
“I'm glad you asked!” said Sanji. Wait, why wasn't anyone suspicious of Law acting out-of-character? “Jinbei and I actually managed to fish up some rock shrimp while the rest of you were raiding Punk Towers-”
“Shrimp?” said Luffy excitedly, a trail of drool dribbling down his lip.
The Heart Pirates, at least, seemed to recognize that something was different about their captain.
“Wow, captain,” said Bepo. “I didn't know you liked shrimp that much!”
Law’s smile tensed. He knew they were trying to avoid detection, but come on! Surely that warranted at least a little suspicion!
“Well, if that's the case, I think you're going to enjoy tonight's dinner,” said Sanji with a showy flourish. “I've prepared a shrimp étouffée-”
“Oh, wow!” said Law with the biggest, stupidest-looking grin he could manage. “That's a big word, Sanji! I think you might need to dumb it down for me!”
“Of course!” said Sanji while Luffy stewed in the background. “It's shrimp simmered in a blonde roux - that's a type of sauce - and served over some rice with-”
“That sounds amazing, Sanji!” interrupted Luffy. “But Luffy was just telling me the whole way over that what he's really craving is some warm, buttered bread!”
Despite being visibly annoyed by the repeated interruptions, Sanji somehow managed to keep his cool. “That's fine; there are some leftover rolls from yesterday that I can warm up."
Luffy was lucky he was currently in Law’s body, because if not, Law might have gone ahead and killed him.
Luckily for Law, the leftover rolls in question had already been pilfered by Luffy the previous night. Luffy had known this when he brought it up in Law’s body, of course - he wasn’t quite aggravated enough to put his boyfriend in a position where he’d be forced to eat copious amounts of something he hated - but he did end up getting Law-in-Luffy’s-body scolded pretty badly by Sanji to the point of getting a haki-infused roundhouse kick to the head. Oops.
No matter. It was dinner time now, and surely Law couldn’t stay mad at Luffy through a good meal! Only a complete sociopath could eat Sanji’s cooking and not feel their mood improve tenfold!
As Sanji began serving dinner, Luffy stared at his plate like it was the only thing in the room that mattered. Steam rose from the generous serving of glistening pink shrimp nestled in a fluffy bed of perfectly-cooked rice, blanketed by a thin red sauce that smelled of garlic and tobasco. Saliva pooled in his mouth as he fought back every instinct screaming at him to pick up the plate and shovel the food into his mouth like it would be the last meal he'd ever eat, and he briefly wondered if he could find some way to excuse a sudden bout of uncharacteristic gluttony.
No. He was Traffy now, and Traffy ate his food one bite at a time. Luffy gritted his teeth, bracing himself for what could very well be his toughest battle yet.
The others hadn’t begun eating yet, instead opting to politely wait for everyone to be served. Luffy had never participated in this particular societal convention before, nor had anyone ever expected him to; trying to get Luffy to wait before he dug into a meal was like trying to hold back a flood with wire mesh, especially now that the Heart Pirates had started eating with them and doubled the time it took Sanji to serve everyone.
But…
…he was Traffy.
Luffy swallowed thickly. He couldn’t dig in yet, he reminded himself. He had to wait, because that’s what Traffy would do.
“Is something wrong, Luffy?” asked Nami.
He lifted his head to see Law eating at a pace that would have looked fast for a normal person, but for Luffy, it might as well have been leisurely snacking. Rather than take advantage of Luffy's rubber cheeks to maximize the amount of food he could stuff his face with, Law was only putting a single spoonful of food in his mouth at a time, and he didn't swallow until he'd chewed it up into a paste.
Luffy frowned. Hadn't he deep-throated Law enough times for the man to know by now that Luffy could swallow an entire watermelon whole without issue? As though that weren't enough, Law didn't even respond to Nami until his mouth was no longer full; Luffy would have just answered straight away and let the crumbs fly where they may.
“What do you mean?” asked Law.
“It's just…” she said, looking genuinely concerned. “You're eating a lot slower than normal.”
Sanji, who was still in the kitchen plating up more dishes, froze where he stood. “What?”
“It's nothing, really!” said Law. He tried taking a few more bites in rapid succession, chewing as fast as he could, but Luffy would have been demanding plate number three by then. “I'm just not that hungry.”
The entire room went silent, Strawhats and Heart Pirates alike. They’d all been together long enough to know that Luffy was never ‘not that hungry.’
“Is…” began Sanji, looking like he'd just seen a ghost. “Is there something wrong with the food?”
“Nothing's wrong; it's great!” said Law, even as everyone else began eyeing their plates suspiciously.
Luffy grinned. With Law attracting everyone's attention, this was the perfect opportunity for him to shovel down as much food as he could without being noticed! He picked up the dish and scraped as much into his mouth as he could fit inside his non-rubber cheeks before swallowing.
It was at this point that Luffy was reminded why most people didn't eat like he did.
“HRK!”
He let the plate fall to the table with a noisy clatter, and every gaze that had been fixed on Law was suddenly locked on him as he slammed his fist against his chest in an effort to dislodge the unchewed food currently stuck in his throat. Law seemed to recognize what was happening almost immediately, and hurried out of his seat to wrap his arms around Luffy from behind. With a few sharp squeezes, a whole shrimp flew out of his mouth and landed with a faint splat at the center of the table.
Zoro was the first to speak:
“What the hell did you put in this?” he demanded, staring straight at Sanji. “You tryin’ to kill us?”
“Can it, Mosshead; there's nothing wrong with the food!” snapped Sanji, but even as he said that, he moved from pot to pot frantically taste-testing every component.
As he did so, Luffy shoved another oversized spoonful of food into his mouth and swallowed it, only to start choking again.
“Chew, God damn it!” hissed Law into his ear as he Heimlich'd yet another shrimp out of Luffy's throat.
“...Maybe we should just do sandwiches tonight,” suggested Nami nervously.
“I- I don’t understand,” said Sanji, rapidly putting together a small plate for himself so he could try a spoonful of the full meal and see how all of the ingredients tasted when they were together. “It tastes fine!”
Zoro grinned. “Looks like all that smoking’s finally cost you your tastebuds, shitty cook.”
“I- I-” stammered Sanji. Usually, he would be firing back a few handcrafted insults of his own, but for once, Zoro’s words appeared to have genuinely shaken him. He covered his mouth with a trembling hand, his eyes wide with horror. “I can’t be… There’s no way!”
The sound of Robin’s laugh cut through the tension radiating off of Sanji in waves.
“Here, I’ll give it a try,” she said, only for Sanji to zip out from behind the counter and swipe the dish from out in front of her.
“No! I could never force a beautiful lady such as yourself to suffer for my mistakes!” he said, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. “I’ll freeze the shrimp étouffée and eat it myself later. Just... Just give me a moment to go put together some sandwiches for the rest of you.” Luffy could see Law wrinkle his nose in response to the news of their replacement dinner. “Law, I’ll heat up some leftovers for you.”
There was a brief look of relief on Law’s face until he realized that Sanji wasn’t talking to him. Luffy could only smile sheepishly as Law glared daggers at him from his own body.
Shortly after dinner, Law practically dragged Luffy back to his private quarters on the yet-to-be-named submarine for an ‘emergency captains’ meeting.’ Not too long ago, this might have attracted some attention from their respective crews as they wondered what the hell their captains might need to talk about so urgently, but ever since Luffy had accidentally left the door to Law’s soundproofed quarters ajar that one time, no one questioned their habit of running off alone together anymore. Luffy, as they'd later found out, was very, very loud, enough so that the entire Heart Pirate crew had been forced to evacuate to the Sunny to escape his impassioned cries.
On this particular day, however, Luffy was not shoved face-down onto the bed to be brutally (but very much consensually) ravished. Instead, Law grabbed him by the shoulders to violently shake him.
“What the hell was that?” demanded Law. “How do you nearly choke to death twice?”
“Like you were doing any better!” said Luffy, yanking himself free of Law’s grip. “You know I don't have a gag reflex; why were you eating so slow?”
“Your teeth are made of rubber!” said Law. “It's crazy that I was able to chew as fast as I did!”
“Just make them harder!”
“Make them- What?”
“You know, tense them up!” said Luffy. “Haven't you ever tensed your teeth before?”
Law looked at Luffy like he'd just asked him to jump into the sea to be rescued by a magical sentient ship.
“No!” he said at last. “That's not a thing!”
“Really?” said Luffy. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't seem to control the hardness of his teeth at all in Law's body; they were just permanently solid. Weird.
“Wait, so whenever you need any part of your body to be solid, you need to harden it manually?” said Law, his gaze almost pitying. “How do you live like that?”
Luffy shrugged. “It's not something I really think about; I just do it, kinda like how you unconsciously swallow your saliva so you don't drool all over the place.”
Law sighed and pressed his hand to his forehead. “It was probably an instinct you picked up when you ate the fruit.”
“Hm?”
“When you first ate your fruit, there was a moment not too long after you got your powers when you suddenly understood the changes it made to your body, right?” said Law. “You still needed to practice in order to get any good with it, just like a baby still needs to learn how to walk even if they’re born knowing how to move their legs, but you immediately understood how to do things like hardening your teeth enough to bite into food, or hardening your legs enough to walk.”
“Oh yeah!” said Luffy, thinking back to when he’d first eaten the fruit. He remembered feeling really weird after that first bite, but he’d just chalked it up to the fruit being rotten. (This assumption hadn’t stopped him from finishing it off, of course.) He hadn’t properly realized that he was made out of rubber until Shanks grabbed him, but he remembered feeling like his body had suddenly gone a bit slack, and how all the teeth in his mouth suddenly felt weirdly bendy as he chewed up the rest of the fruit, like every single one of his baby teeth had gone loose all at once.
“A large part of the reason my mind swap is such an effective tactic with power users is because being moved to the body of another devil fruit eater doesn't imbue you with those instincts, since you never actually ate the fruit,” continued Law. “A Zoan-to-Zoan or Logia-to-Logia transfer might be easier to adapt to, since the underlying mechanisms are similar, but a non-Logia like Tashigi struggles to adapt to their body suddenly being made of smoke, and a non-Zoan like Franky has no idea how to transition from one of Chopper's forms to the next.”
“Ha, yeah, that was hilarious!” Luffy cackled. “Why don’t you do that more often?”
Law opted to ignore this question in favor of continuing his spiel:
“Your fruit is especially annoying since it's so unique; you’re a Zoan with no base form that acts like a Paramecia until Awakened, at which point it becomes something halfway between the two. Even if it was someone like Chopper in your body, they'd probably be just as lost as I am,” said Law. “If you were a normal Zoan, then at least I could try referencing some textbooks written by other Zoan-eaters to try to figure out how transformation works. Even another power-based Paramecia like the Slow-Slow might have been easier to adapt to, but there are no records of fruits that produce similar effects to your body. And since the last known Gum-Gum eater was from the Void Century, it’s not like I can just look around to see if he wrote anything about it.”
“You could ask me,” said Luffy.
Law just raised an eyebrow.
“Fine. Can you explain to me how exactly you go about ‘hardening your teeth?’”
Luffy opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again. Trying to describe how he hardened his teeth would be like trying to describe how he moved his arms; it was just something he did.
“...No,” he admitted after a moment.
Law sighed.
“The next time we make landfall to resupply, you and me are going to find a secluded spot to start practicing with each other’s powers,” said Law. “At the very least, we should try to reach a level where we don’t have to worry about being taken out by random schmucks fresh out of Paradise.”
Luffy nodded in agreement. Law was right that he was a hell of a lot weaker in his body. Sure, he could probably still put up a decent enough fight if he got close enough, but - much as he hated to admit it - anyone halfway skilled could probably smoke him at a range, especially now that he’d lost his bullet immunity. He just didn't know Law's limits well enough to know what he could take and what he needed to avoid, or even what he could avoid.
“According to Nami, the next island is only a day away, and completely uninhabited,” said Law. “We’ll tell the others that we’re going out to look for food and slip away together to train. If they ask why we came back with nothing, we’ll just have to come up with an excuse.”
That wouldn’t be a problem. “They’ll probably just think we had sex.”
Law’s cheeks flushed red, and Luffy grinned. He always loved the look on Law’s face when he got flustered, even if he wasn’t in his body at the moment.
“...We’ll just have to deal with that for now,” said Law through gritted teeth.
“'We?' You’re the only one who gets embarrassed about people knowing,” Luffy reminded him.
“It’s completely normal to not want to broadcast our sex lives to our crews!”
“But don't you always say that you want the whole world to see Emperor Luffy kneeling at your-”
“Bedroom talk doesn’t count!”
As the two of them curled up in Law’s bed for the night, Law couldn’t shake the feeling that something was seriously amiss. Initially, he dismissed it as him just struggling to adjust to the feeling of being in a completely different body, but no matter how hard he tried to dismiss the bubble of concern forming in his chest, he couldn’t quite seem to shake off the feeling of being…
…unwelcome.
“You sure you don’t wanna have sex?” mumbled Luffy, sleepily trying to adjust his snuggling position to account for the fact that he was suddenly a half-foot taller than his boyfriend.
“Do you seriously need to ask that?” murmured Law back at him. “I’m not having sex with my own body.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s weird,” said Law. “How am I supposed to get off to myself?”
Somehow, Luffy managed to look confused by this. “But you’re so sexy!”
Law could feel his cheeks heating up once more, almost like his beloved little sun god had gone and scorched his face. “So you’d be fine having sex with yourself?”
“Sure, ‘cause I know it’s still you in there.”
Law chuckled and, despite the inherent weirdness of it, managed to shove down his discomfort long enough to give his boyfriend a kiss on the forehead. “You’re kind of a freak, aren’t you?”
“You know it!” said Luffy, a shameless grin on his face. “Well, g’night, Traffy!”
No sooner had he said ‘good night’ than he fell fast asleep, a trail of drool oozing from his mouth to stain the pillow. Law rolled his eyes and tried to make himself comfortable, desperately trying to push down the feeling of being watched.
He closed his eyes.
“Hey there, trespasser,” said an impossibly cheerful voice. “You’re a long way from home.”