#slawbo

it's honestly so random that i wrote AND finished this lol. i am a notorious hater of AUs that aren't set in the canon (hence why this is still in the OP universe Except Law Is A Vampire), so I'm lowk surprised at myself for pulling this off ayyy lol

(okay i guess HATER is too strong a word, I just personally heavily prefer stuff set in canon bc I feel like it's hard to capture the themes & characters of a story if it's completely removed from it's original context - some people do an excellent job w/this, it's just not usually for me lol).

more slawboverse coming next year when ive graduated from grad school and am not studying constantly <333

anyways! this fic was really fun to write lol. i originally conceived of the idea based upon the Allen test, which is what law performs on sabo in this fic before drinking his blood.

this is the type of shit i come up with while procrastinating. bitches will do anything but study up to & including writing an entire au fic

as usual this extended author's note will contain some discussions of medical stuff & some diagrams, but nothing real or gory. this is primarily for me to explain some of the medical stuff in the fic - for anyone new here, i'm in school (almost done! #freeme) to become a medical practitioner and i love to throw medical stuff into my fics, especially w/law. so here's the lowdown! enjoy!

so. the (modified) allen test is to assess the circulation of your hand, specifically via the radial and ulnar arteries.

it's used most often before doing an ABG (arterial blood gas) test, which is a semi-rare instance where you actually harvest blood from an artery rather than a vein as is typical.

when i say 'most often used'. ..kind of a misnomer bc in my experience, it's rare that someone actually does an allen test (modified or not) before an ABG - i mean sometimes the patient isn't lucid enough for that anyways lol

basically, it goes like how it did in the fic. patient makes a fist, provider cuts off blood flow to one artery, patient opens fist. you're looking for the hand to get blood flow back within ten seconds, which indicates that the artery is appropriately patent (meaning 'open,' aka blood flow is strong enough to get an ABG orrrr drink blood from the wrist lol)

here's a nice visual guide:

so there you have it lol. it's kind of an antiquated method (if you're really concerned about patency, it's easier these days to just do a doppler, which is a little handheld ultrasound probe that can tell you if there's a pulse and all that) - but tbh if law is a vampire i feel like he'd go for that sort of thing. also are there ultrasound machines in one piece????? im not gonna worry abt it.

okay other medical things i should explain. welllll obviously i had to parody the insane paperwork every medical office makes you fill out...and then like 3 separate people ask you all those questions anyways so like ???? what were the papers for ??????

let me tell yall, as a medical provider - we're just as lost as you guys. they train us hardcore to ask all of those social history and family history and past medical history questions to the patients, and the entire time they're drilling this into us I'm sitting there thinking like. this could've been an email. this is all in that damn packet, am i not allowed to look at that????? in real life, is that not ALWAYS the case??????? and then when you're training you won't bother the patient with 100000 questions bc it's already in their chart and then your preceptor scolds you for not asking shit. like bro i could just look in the chart. and if you DO ask them then you get scolded for taking too long with the patient, AND the patient is like 'why are you asking me this it's in my chart/i answered these questions in all that paperwork already.' CAN'T WIN anyways lmao

law mentions a CBC and a CMP at one point - those stand for complete blood count & complete metabolic panel. these are the two most 'basic/standard' labs (blood tests) you can get on a patient, and are often considered 'baseline labs.'

a CBC shows all your red & white blood cell counts, plus platelets. you can get it w/diff (differential) for a more thorough breakdown of exactly how many of each type of white blood cells you got going on.

a CMP shows a bunch of stuff, including electrolytes (except magnesium and phosphate bc fuck them ig. you have to order those separately if you want them which you almost always do, especially mag), liver enzymes, glucose (blood sugar), blood acidity (measured thru carbon dioxide), and other stuff.

i imagine that Law, as a vampire (in this case), would want to at the very least make sure sabo isnt anemic or hypoglycemic or dealing w/electrolyte imbalances or something before he bites him

also! the part where Law talks abt how vampire saliva has special properties that make some people feel euphoric and other people feel kinda shitty...I actually based that off of opioids and people's reactions to them lol bc that's basically how it goes. some people get dizzy and nauseous when they take opioid pain medications, and other people get a nice euphoric feeling (hence why they're so often abused and therefore are a controlled substance). there IS a middle ground where it takes your pain away and that's about it. without fail tho, everyone WILL be constipated (not gonna include that w/the vampire lore, it's not sexy enough).

when Law checks Sabo's pulse in his neck and says "two plus bilaterally," that's a measurement system used to quantify how strong someone's pulse is.

you would neverrrrr write out 'two' for that tho. or 'plus.' its 2+. but that looked way too weird in writing so i changed it lmao.

handy image:

lmao i love that this one uses 'obliterate.' that just means that the person doing the pulse feeling is able to stop the pulse by pressing down hard enough (and yes, it is an official term), but i find it sooo funny.

LAW. OBLITERATE THAT PULSE.

also law did the right thing by checking his carotids one at a time! that's the only case where you don't check both sides at the same time (like you'd do anywhere else, in the wrists or ankles or feet or etc). bc if you obliterate both carotids at the same time, the person might pass out, since the carotids are one of only two blood supplies to the brain. lmao

and towards the end of the fic when law says 'no TPN if PO is an option' - this refers to Total Patenteral Nutrition (which is when you get all nutrients via IV, avoiding the GI tract altogether - used if patients cant eat/drink at all for a variety of reasons, etc...it's on the more extreme end of things, when stuff like feeding tubes aren't an option), while PO stands for 'per os' which is latin for 'by mouth.' this is the term we in the medical field use for that. so if you take a pill by mouth we say 'route: PO'

basically law is saying what any medical professional will tell you, which is that there is NO need for a patient to be on TPN / for a patient to be NPO (meaning 'nothing by mouth') when they have a working GI tract. ALWAYS go PO unless there's some compelling reason why you can't!

the body looooves to shunt blood flow away from the gut when it has the chance, so TPN carries a risk of bowel ischemia/death if the body is like 'well damn okay if you aren't using those intestines then im gonna redirect ALL this blood, also bc something is terribly wrong like cancer or a bad infection so we need this blood elsewhere anyways, bye bye intestines, hope you didn't need that blood!' Spoiler alert your intestines still need blood and that's how you end up with acute bowel ischemia

also sabo pulls his IV out and ik that probably made some of yall cringe (honestly same) BUT for those of you who don't know, IVs are not actually needles that sit in your arm - when you place an IV, you stick the vein with a needle, and then you pull the needle OUT and leave behind a flexible catheter that was chillin within the needle. so yeah fun fact but the needle part of IVs is just a very temporary transport vehicle to deliver the true IV, aka the catheter.

so while pulling an IV out CAN be a bloody affair, you're not like, scraping up your arm with a needle or something. so yeah

one time i almost passed out while getting bloodwork done bc i didnt eat beforehand (it wasnt a fasting lab either I just didnt eat breakfast and then i had to get surprise bloodwork and they took a LOT of blood) and they gave me a juice box and sat me in a wheelchair after and i felt like an invalid and a kindergartner all at once. so there was a little inspo from that involved in here w/law giving sabo a juice box and crackers lmao

then at the end, when law is squeezing sabo's fingertips - he's checking his capillary refill. so basically he squeezes hard enough to push the blood out of his fingertips, then upon releasing, sees how long it takes for the fingertips to turn pink/red again (which indicates blood flow has resumed in the capillaries). so kinda like an allen test! but yeah if your capillary refill is delayed it can mean a lot of things, all of them bad, including not having enough blood in your body or the blood in your body not flowing fast enough.

then when law pushes on sabo's shins - he's checking for pitting edema, or just edema in general, which is where fluid accumulates (can happen anywhere but most common to see in the lower legs) outside of the circulatory system (whoops that shouldn't be there!), which can happen for a lot of reasons including heart failure (and liver failure, and kidney failure, andddd). tbh it isn't SUPER relevant here but i have been thoroughly trained to check this on like EVERY patient (i swear someone will come in with a laceration on the face that needs suturing and i will STILL check for pitting edema. every patient gets that & a heart/lung exam thanks) that I kinda transferred that trait to law. let's say that law had some teacher or read some book that was WAY enthusiastic about checking for edema and he's in the habit.

well there are a bunch of different types of shock, and you can see edema w/some of those, so lets say law was checking to see if he threw sabo into shock by drinking too much of his blood.

also lmao i just Had to talk about medical exam rooms bc cmon lol. the crinkly ass table paper....the glaring fluorescent lighting...the random framed stock photos....it's a wild yet specific vibe.

but yeah, that's all the medical stuff I believe!!!!!

this fic was supposed to come out on halloween but school has been TOO INTENSE so that did Not happen lol

i can't think of too much else to say honestly! this was such a fun concept to explore, and I really liked writing the slawbo dynamic in a different setting.

i didn't write the scene where they meet in the bar because ive already written that exact concept in slawbo 1 haha

as I said above this is supposed to be an au where everything is the same except law is a vampire, AND ALSO you are not supposed to look at any lore implications bc we are here for slawbo with a side of medical nonsense and thats it :D

unlike most of my fics i didnt outline this even a little so i just wrote based on vibes. i had a couple notes, though, and one of them was for the part where law deduces that sabo is a revolutionary.

(side note, I would have looooved to have that part be the summary - sabo talking about owning a hardware store was one of my fav bits. but it would SO give off the wrong impression of the fic lmao)

the note i had talked about how before realizing that sabo is specifically a revolutionary, law had a feeling he was SOME sort of Secret Agent Man, but couldnt pinpoint what exactly his deal was. combine that with sabo's determined attitude, and it came off like sabo was on an assigned mission to seduce law for [insert nefarious reasons]

which is why law was mostly fucking with sabo and also not really reciprocating his advances before that. in my mind, law is interested in sabo immediately, but is held back here by the idea that sabo might be seducing him for a mission (which, if that were the case, that would be hilarious bc sabo is Not being subtle abt it at all lol). so once he figures out that sabo is a revolutionary (rather than a marine or cipher pol or something) AND he isn't here on business (other than the business of GETTIN DOWN), then law is open to things actually progressing from there.

at the end of the fic, i was gonna just have it fade to black with the implications that they might fuck the following day, but ruth said that sabo should get to fuck after all he'd gone thru in the fic and yknow what she's right. he earned it

so! slawbo 3. FINALLY. this has actually been finished since like june UGH but summer was crazyyyy and fall has been too and editing this was a slog. but here we are! and it's even longer than the rest of the series combined!

behind the scenes stuff: so the bouncer/security guy, Smith - in the early draft he was actually a locksmith, so his name was a pun lmao. it stuck thru the changes, even tho its not a very one piece name lol (full disclosure, I'm terrible at naming stuff, both characters and places)

the original draft had sabo asking a local locksmith (Smith) to let him into his 'office'...Smith wouldn't buy it, Law would come along, and they would make out to convince smith that they really were dating

obviously all of that changed in the final draft but bits of it remain!

actually the original premise for this fic was JUST fake dating, and the handcuffed together thing was gonna be a different fic, AND the thrown in jail together fic was gonna be separate, but they all ended up being combined here.

shoutout to ruth for MANY things in this fic: i'll list all of them throughout, but the first one here is that she named the character Sangria (based on her holding a glass of sangria). THATS such a one piece name lol

so there is SOME medical talk here lol - so the bit where Sabo gives medical advice...i wanted to tie back to the last fic, so i had him talk about aortic aneurysms/dissections lol

(like the last fic, this is about AORTIC aneurysms - most of the time when people say 'aneurysm' theyre probably thinking about a brain aneurysm, which is a similar concept but with one of the blood vessels in the brain).

basically, an aneurysm is - contrary to what most people might think - just the widening of the vessel, where the dissection is the actual tearing (which usually leads to death) of the vessel

crazy enough, if the aneurysm is small enough, you just kinda monitor it 😳

so you can see that the aneurysm is alarming as fuck but not necessarily fatal, where the dissection involves the actual vessel tearing, causing blood to leak everywhere (and this is all the aorta, your body's largest vessel, so that's really bad)

TAA = thoracic aortic aneurysm; AAA = abdominal aortic aneurysm

fun(?) fact: if a AAA is large enough, you can feel it - if you press down on the midline of your abdomen, you can feel your abdominal aorta pulsating there - but if you can feel it realllllly far to either side of your midline, that could be an aneurysm!

(please dont worry if this is the case for you, your pulse can reverberate and some people have a wide pulse normally, this is very general lol)

anyways. i feel like sabo would do some hate-research after the events of the last fic, and that leaves him with some handy medical knowledge to get law all hot & bothered with lolll

what else...ah, northwood. mr captain flint northwood. in case it isnt obvious, his name is a play on clint eastwood: clint-->flint, and north instead of east lmao. s/o to ruth for LOTS of help with his character 👏

also shoutout to ruth for thinking up the whole 'multiple physical medical licenses' bit, AND the 'trafalgar leg' name lmao. it was initially a one-off gag from the first fic, but it ended up fitting well here, so we get the triumphant return of leg

law is right about the sternal rubs actually! that IS how you try to arouse a patient who's in a stupor - it's part of how you grade somebody's mental status for the glasgow coma scale

i had to hold back so many medical terms/bits for sabo's pov lmao. ruth Went Thru It while beta-ing. next fic we'll be back w/law and the medical BS will be back

northwood just kinda appeared. i think themed marines are soooo funny so i had a lot of fun writing him lmao

also, ftr, law really DID just happen to be in town lmao. that's three times these fools have run into each other by chance...maybe somebody they'll interact INTENTIONALLY (stay tuned!)

this fic actually has some ANGST in it whoaaaa. as yall can probably tell, im more of a humor writer than an angst writer, but i still had a good time with that

as yall mightve also noticed, i really love exploring sabo's amnesia (shameless sabo amnesia character study fic plug), so i really enjoyed having him reveal his amnesia to law and talk about it a little

that line where law offers to fix sabo's amnesia and asks to look at his brain - i've had that snippet written down since about 2018, when i first wrote 'make me burn the candle right down' [slawbo pilot fic], so i was REAL happy to finally have a chance to use it haha

i can sooooo picture little baby sabo hitting his head on stuff trying to see if percussive force will fix his amnesia lmaooooo

i also give ruth full credit for the exchange where the mayor says law saved him 'with his own two hands' and northwood replies '...the hands that have death tattooed on them?' ty for that genius tidbit, and also the 'pirates will steal anything these days' bit as well 🔥

i really like having law in situations where he isnt the straight man (like he usually is w/the straw hats), bc i think it's interesting to explore that side of him. plus, like we outlined in the manifesto, this is smarmy smirky pre-canon law we're dealing with!

so yeah, he gets to go full Actor Mode with sabo at the end there lol

not sure if its clear but i didnt really intend northwood to be homophobic by being vaguely uncomfortable at the PDA - more like he's just uncomfortable w/PDA no matter who's involved

i figured these two might need a little push to get to the 'making out' point in their little situationship, so here we have it

also, the kissing is SUPPOSED to be pretty awkward (especially at first), fwiw. imo, they're both pretty inexperienced, PLUS they have an audience, so there's a learning curve

will northwood return? great question. stay tuned to find out!

will sangria & the mayor of this unnamed town return? honestly, probably not, but you never know!

will slawbo return? YOU BETCHA! I have big plans for slawbo 4, and I also have two other sabo-centric fics cooking (including a sequel to the above-mentioned sabo amnesia character study fic), so expect those to come around this next year.

this past year was VERY busy for me w/grad school (sadly, becoming a medical practitioner in this world is much harder than it is in one piece), but this coming year i'll be doing rotations, so much more hands-on training and much less studying til i pass out. yippee!

that also means more time to write! I refuse to publish things until they're complete, so it might be a few months, but those sabo fics I mentioned are multi-chapter, and slawbo 4 is shaping up to be pretty long too. hope to see yall there!