Chapter Text
“I figured I would bring it up,” says Ace with a curl to his lips. “Since you never would.”
It’s a warm day. Smoker’s jacket is draped over the back of his chair. Ace sits opposite him, sipping coffee. They’re in some busy town on a bustling spring island, sitting on a pretty terrace shaded by a tall blooming tree. Smoker blows out a cloud of smoke.
“You’d better be joking, kid.”
“Cross my heart.” Ace draws an X over his left pec for emphasis. “We should do it. Come on, why not?”
“I can think of a few reasons.”
“Try me.”
“What would your captain have to say about you proposing to an ex-marine?”
“Emphasis on the ex.” Ace stretches. “Pops wants his youngest commander to settle down. I think he’d agree I could do worse than a justice-crazy vigilante. He likes you, y’know. He likes everybody.”
“Hmph. I don’t need him to like me.”
“But you’d marry me anyway? Old man, how romantic.” He flutters his eyelashes at Smoker, hands propped under his chin. “We could elope. Run away together and never be seen again.”
“Knock it off.” Ace laughs and drinks his coffee. “What about the rest of your family?”
“Luffy loves you, he’d be thrilled. Sabo doesn’t exactly like you, but he’d accept it was my decision. Gramps, well...my shipmates would come around if it meant I was happy. But what does any of it matter? You don’t care about what any of them think about how we are now.”
That much was true. “It’s not exactly conventional.”
“Who gives a shit about that? I know you don’t.”
“Or practical.”
“Nothing would change. I’d still be on Pops’ crew and you’d have your own. We’d find each other. It would just mean...” he grows quiet for a moment. “It would just be you and me. Like I said, nothing would have to change.”
A cool breeze kicks up, rustling the flowers in the tree overhead. The waitress comes over and refills their cups. Smoker watches the crowd move on the street just below them.
“Never thought you’d want to chain yourself down.”
“Is that how you see it?” Ace says quietly.
“It’s how I figured you would see it.”
Ace looks at him. “Is that why...”
Smoker won’t look at his face. He draws deep on his cigars and breathes out. “Might be.”
“If I wanted to be with someone else, other people, I would be,” Ace tells him.
“I know.”
“And if I thought you would try to...if I thought this would be bad for me I wouldn’t ask. I’m not that way.”
“I know that.”
“Well?”
“That’s not all it is. Not all it’s about.”
“Commitment?”
“Devotion,” Smoker mutters.
Ace pauses. “Would you say I’m not?”
“You’d still be on Newgate’s crew.”
“You told me,” Ace says, without heat, “two years ago, you promised me I’d never have to choose between you or him and Luffy.”
“I accepted...” they can’t just be talking about this on an open terrace with so many people around. Smoker feels exposed. “That. About you.”
“And you think that means I can’t...be yours.” Damn, how can he talk like that? Smoker takes a drag, occupying himself. “It doesn’t,” the kid continues. “You have me in ways they don’t. They never could.”
What does it mean, that they can’t look at each other when they talk like this? Smoker doesn’t know. He exhales to watch the smoke dissipate in the air; Ace is looking in his cup. They’ve been this way since the beginning. If nothing would really change, Smoker can’t imagine a less ideal picture of husbandry.
Smoker’s brain stalls. Husband.
“I am serious, though,” Ace says. “I’d like to. If you’d have me.”
Still Smoker struggles with his words. He takes his cigars from his mouth and holds them between his fingers, lets his mouth open, but there’s no sound.
“Legally,” Ace fills in for him. “Again, who cares. Economically, who cares.”
Romantically. Smoker’s already admitted it to himself. Ace has told him as much, in his own way. He has never required an answer. Maybe he’s looking for one now.
If there was ever a time. It should be very simple: Yes.
They’ve never, after all this time, talked about love directly. Their words are always a game—or it’s shown. Smoker doesn’t really doubt Ace is serious, and gods, that scares him. Ace has always been an ethereal thing in more ways than one; his element, his fleeting presence. Sitting on this bright terrace, Ace within reach with his idea, the world seems not dreamlike, but hyperreal.
The conclusion they’ve come to necessitates confirming or denying, verbally. The words of it all matter too. That Ace is asking. That Smoker needs to respond. That his answer is yes.
When he looks at Ace, finally, the kid has a soft expression.
“Five years, old man,” he murmurs. “Why not?”