Five months.
That's how long it's been since Penguin had shoved Law into a house party he hadn't wanted to attend, and Law had spent the first forty minutes by the snack table planning his exit strategy, and then you had appeared next to him, stolen a chip from the bowl he'd been guarding.
He'd stayed the whole night.
Week three, Shachi had looked at him across the break room — Law mid-text, doing the thing with his mouth he didn't know he did — and said, flatly, "You're down bad."
Penguin had pointed. Bepo had nodded sagely.
Law had not corrected them.
He still wouldn't.
The text comes in at the tail end of his shift, when he's pulling his coat over his scrubs and running on his fourth coffee and the specific kind of bone-deep exhaustion that twelve hours under fluorescent lights leaves behind.
"Okay, so I was thinking. What if I did a full meal prep for you this week? Like proper food 🍳 tell me what you want, and I'll figure out the rest."
He reads it once.
He checks your location. Still moving — somewhere near the market, two blocks from your apartment.
He pockets his phone without replying and heads to his car.
He finds you in the produce aisle.
Basket hanging from the crook of your arm, phone held up close to your mouth, recording. Your voice floats through the cold air between the vegetable displays, soft and easy, like you have nowhere to be and nothing to do except tell him things.
"— and the cat was so fat, Law, I'm serious —" a small laugh, warm at the edges, "— she just sat there and let me give her three treats like it was her divine right. Which, honestly? It was. She earned it."
He stops at the end of the aisle.
You haven't noticed him yet.
You're moving the way you always move — slowly, like the world is something worth looking at properly. Your free hand drifts over the apples before picking one up to inspect it.
He doesn't move.
"Oh, and the sunset today — it was that kind of orange that looks fake. Like someone turned up the saturation. I almost sent you a picture, but I wanted you to have to imagine it instead."
A beat.
"Also, I found a place for lunch today, and it was so good, Law. Embarrassingly good. I already looked up the menu for you. I think you'd actually like it, they have this—"
You reach out without looking and pick up a small container of strawberries from the display beside you.
Turn around and find him standing at the end of the aisle.
The laugh that escapes you is soft and sudden and completely unguarded — it goes straight into the voice message, still recording — and your whole face does that specific thing, that Law has quietly decided he would rearrange his schedule for.
He walks over.
Stops in front of you.
The kiss is quick — it's always quick when you're somewhere public, a press, a punctuation mark — but his hand comes up to your jaw for just a beat longer than necessary before he pulls back. His voice when he speaks is low, roughened by twelve hours and four coffees.
"Give me the basket."
You hand it over. He takes it, shifts it to his own arm. Settled. Obvious.
You hold up the strawberries.
"You need to eat properly," you tell him, with the particular tone of gentle seriousness that he pretends to find annoying and absolutely does not. "Real food. Not whatever you were going to order at midnight."
He looks at the strawberries.
Looks at you.
He doesn't smile, but his eyes do. Quiet. Unhurried. Warm in a way his face hasn't quite learned to catch up to yet.
He takes the strawberries and drops them in the basket without a word.
Two aisles over, a pair of older women exchange a look. Soft. Knowing. You catch it. Smile back, your cheeks turning a soft pink.
One of them catches your eye.
And smiles.
Somewhere just beyond the edge, someone clicks a picture of you two that would go viral tomorrow.