The Alabasta sky was never really dark. It was intrusively bright past the hours of early morning, damp and moist with its unforgiving sunlight; in the afternoon, the sun descended closer to the earth, its heat pulsating from the roads; even at night, it had a light that the city never allows for. It all feels wrong. The comfort of a holiday in a place where winter doesn't really exist during a Christmas break; it settles wrong in your muscles, makes your stomach twist with the impression of guilt. Like you were a child waiting outside your parents’ bedroom because you've just puked all over your sheets.

Normally, a trip to Alabasta during winter would be unheard of for you; you were a student working minimum wage, but Law. Law was already a successful surgeon with an abundance of funds because up until this point, he was a workaholic who rarely indulged. Law was perfect— to every stretch of the word, plucked out of a romance novel where the mc somehow gets entangled with an attractive man who so happens to be so financially dependable.

This kind of holiday was the kind you expected him to be used to, the way he'd just told you to pack your bags ‘cause you guys were going to Alabasta, you'd expected him to be. But, he'd confessed, this was new for him too— workaholic, you remembered.

Stars flickered in and out of the stretch of dusky blue ahead of you, winking like it knew your secrets; the sand soaked up all the colour, a panel of blue so deep that it nearly looked like the sea. The wind twists through your hair, easing up the sticky sweat you'd picked up during the day as you kick your feet back and forth in the pool on the rooftop of the hotel. It's surprisingly empty, people dotted around the corners of the large pool, the bar somewhere to your left, sunbeds.

A shadow bends over you. Law takes a seat beside you, dipping his feet into the pool like you are and presses himself warmly against your side. “You're thinking yourself into a circle,” he tells you like he knows, “want to talk to me about it?”