Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 Your soulmate makes a part of you. This is a fact.

 Your soulmate lends you your talents. This is a fact.

 Your soulmate loves you. This is an opinion.

 Ace didn’t believe in that shit. Maybe soulmates were really but it didn’t mean they were soulmates in the sense of the word. It was more like having a person who was supposed to match you but didn’t always do that. A lot of people never find their soulmates - not every talent is such an obvious thing.

 Like Sabo’s. In the whole twelve years of his life, he had never realized what his soulmate’s talents were.

 Ace wondered what about the people who didn’t have talents, who were average. Or whose talents were some useless things, like whistling or rolling your tongue into a trumpet. What about them, what about their soulmates? Did they not deserved the whole idea of perfect love? They had no chance to find their soulmates.

 He and Luffy were really similar in that matter. Or their soulmates were.

 Ace sometimes wondered what Luffy’s soulmate would experience - Luffy’s biggest talents were his good judgment of character and making people brighten up. Ace couldn’t imagine how that would work.

 But his and Luffy’s soulmates had similar talents. At least in some aspects - it’s never perfectly the same, just similar.

 Ace found out his soulmate was a doctor or some shit when Sabo broke his leg when they were eleven. He, whoever he was, gave Ace the weirdest knowledge and statistics about tibia bone injuries. And yes, it was definitely a he, Ace wasn’t lying to himself even as a kid, he was pretty gay.

 Sabo broke his leg in the middle of a forest and suddenly Ace knew which bone was broken, how to stabilize his leg only using branches and leaves and knew how to build a makeshift stretcher in under twenty minutes. It felt unnatural, almost as if someone broke into his mind and left all this information there and then took control of Ace’s body.

 Ace’s soulmate must have been at least six or seven years older or some genius because there was no way some normal teen would be able to know all those things.

 Luffy was eight at that time Sabo broke his leg. They took him to the town’s doctor and the first thing he said was, “His tibia is broken.”

 Understandably, it wasn’t something Luffy would know. Luffy didn’t understand half of the grown-up words and a word such as the tibia, well, it definitely wasn’t in his modest dictionary.

 When asked how he knew, he answered, “I don’t know.”

 Ace’s soulmate was some kind of a doctor. Not the best or brightest one but one who could easily work in ER in some big ass hospital. And a one with a very cold and calculative mind.

 Something must have been broken in the soulmate system - Ace was a hothead, not some analytical asshole. They didn’t match. 

 Marco didn’t have any of his soulmate’s talents for some time. People could just not realize what the talent was but Marco knew it wasn’t the case with him. His soulmate’s talents just came in later.

 He was almost thirty-five and didn’t really care all that much. Love wasn’t just some bond. He kind of hoped he would at least get some hint though.

 He was in the crow’s nest, the biggest one on the Moby Dick that served as the main chart room too. Delayla was checking if everything was in order and if they docked properly. They were supposed to go for drinks with Thatch later and Marco decided he would fetch her before she started fretting about some other thing.

 The thing with Delayla was, although she was the best navigator Marco had ever known, she was also a perfectionist. When she took over the Second Division, which at the time was made of exactly four men, she rearranged the whole space and workplace, along with work etiquette. It was hard for her to let go and leave things unfinished, even after all these years as the Second Division Commander.

 Marco was just waiting for her to stop scolding whoever had drawn the last map. The same map, small pictorial view, was lying on the drawing table, dried up and smudged.

 That was the moment.

 His hand reached for one of the technical pens, adjusted the level of ink in it, took a sheet of graphic paper and started to draw on the drawing table. His wrist moved on its own, drawing an unbroken line that imitated the shape of the shore. He mapped the water levels on the coasts and shadowed the hills on the island. He used the navigation triangle and protractor to mark the angles. He didn’t even know this weird compass-looking thing was a protractor.

 He blinked, putting down the pen.

 “What are you doing?” Delayla asked, alarmed.

 She walked up to him, stopping at the drawing table. She frowned, noticing the second map that wasn’t there twenty minutes before. She reached for it but decided not to move it, probably because of the fresh ink.

 “Huh,” she said. “Maybe you should take my place, I’ve never seen such a perfectly drawn map in my life.”

 “I didn’t do it,” he realized. She raised an eyebrow at that. “I didn’t even know you can adjust ink level in those pens.”

 They stared at each other.

 “Well, don’t look at me,” Delayla sputtered. “Unless you suddenly can sew, you’re not gonna be my soulmate.”

 Marco grimaced at that - Delayla was like a big sister to him.

 “Do you think it can be someone from your division?” he asked, still a bit awed.

 It felt different. As if someone took over his body and made him do all these things. He was having goosebumps just remembering the feeling.

 Delayla shook her head.

 “Not a chance. If I had someone as competent, I could rest in peace,” she said. “None of my guys is this good, especially not while drawing everything in one go. Most of them wouldn’t get such good results even after using tracing paper for sketches and having an additional two or three hours.”

 Marco snorted, his mind still hazy. “So they are some kind of a genius?”

 “Oh, definitely,” Delayla agreed. “Let’s test it out some more. Do you know what weather we’re gonna have in the next five hours?”

 Delayla always knew these things. She wasn’t the best when it came to recognizing clouds but she was extremely sensitive to air pressure and atmospheric changes, she could practically taste the rain or the electricity in the air.

 Marco looked at the window. The information just made its way into his head and he had to blink, overwhelmed. Goosebumps were back.

 “It’s going to rain for an hour, then there will be stronger wind and thunders and then it will be just the wind.”

 Delayla chuckled. “I don’t know who your soulmate is but I hope they will be in my division someday.”

 He told that Pops. Pops wasn’t too impressed.

 Then Marco showed him the map he had drawn and he just stared.

 “What?” Marco asked. “Do you recognize it? The style?”

 Pops licked his lips. “I do,” he admitted. “But I don’t think it’s possible.”

 He raised an eyebrow, his enthusiasm fading out. “Why?”

 “I’m pretty sure that she’s been dead for more than ten years,” he said. “And had another soulmate.”

 Well, Pops didn’t say much more about that. He silenced out for the whole day and never mentioned it again.

 Marco didn’t know what that meant.

 His soulmate’s talent came in handy though, and Ace wasn’t going to complain.

 He and Deuce were both ship doctors. He was a navigator too. No one questioned that, Ace was just so good at pretending he actually knew what he is doing and not uses some random information his soulmate shoves in his mind from time to time. The only one who knew was Deuce and that’s mostly because he was a perceptive asshole.

 He used his soulmate’s talents as often as they were needed.

 He saved Deuce’s arm with emergency surgery after he was shot. He took care of his crew during a flu epidemy. He treated his own bullet graze when Deuce was taking care of others. He treated malnutrition on Wano. He did everything his soulmate allowed him to.

 He bandaged up Jinbe.

 Jinbe’s wounds weren’t serious. Ace wasn’t aiming to kill him and most of the injuries were superficial, except for a couple of broken ribs and a sprained ankle, it was the overall exhaustion that made him unconscious. He made sure Jinbe was alright, gave him some water and an IV and basically waited for the Whitebeard Pirates to show.

 He would never admit it but he was tired. Fighting Jinbe wasn’t the plan. The plan was to either kill Whitebeard or die. Being this tired, Ace would probably have to take option two. He couldn’t just say, “Hey, I’m tired and my soulmate basically says I have three broken ribs, can we reschedule our fight to the death to next Friday?”, and leave the scene. That would have turned out great, Ace bet.

 This, Ace thought when Whitebeard showed up, is how I’m gonna die. No regrets though.

 Seeing Ace for the first time had been a little breath-taking. It was like staring at fireworks. Like watching the sunset. Like watching a beast. This is an experience Marco won’t forget.

 There was no reason to not admit it to himself, Ace was attractive. He was old, not blind. 

 This is why, when Jozu said, “He’s going to be in my division,” Marco’s response was,

 “Hell no.”

 Jozu just gave him a stare, making a face. It looked like a smirk, smug and preceptive.

 “He’s a fighter,” Jozu pointed out. And, Jozu, as a commander of a fighting division had every right to point it out. “Just because you have a crush-”

 “I don’t-“ he protested. He knew it was a lost fight so he simply changed the topic. “Have you seen how precisely he took care of Jinbe’s wounds? He’s coming to the First Division.”

 Jozu just snorted at that, rolling his eyes.

 “Your private little nurse, I presume?”

 Deuce often told him he was a dramatic fool. Maybe he was - Whitebeard hadn’t killed him and his whole dramatic monologue was wasted.

 When he woke up, his ribs were still hurting, his head was pounding in a way he hadn’t felt for the last year, since he ate his devil fruit, and he definitely had a concussion because he basically wanted to throw up with every movement. At least he was alive, though.

 After half an hour, he got up, basically fried that weird-ass dude from the Fourth Divison who spout all that nonsense about being brothers, and Ace left, searching for someplace with medicine and bandages. He sneaked into what probably was infirmaries and into one of the small offices there.

 There was not much he could really do - taking his shirt off, he checked his ribs and there they were, three broken ones with fractures in various places. He took a deep breath, sharp pain alarming him about the places where his chest was injured. Dizziness made his moves a little unbalanced and he still had a headache but he would live. 

 When Marco found him in his own office, he was a bit surprised but also relieved.

 Ace was sitting on the small sofa in the corner, the back of his head leaning on the wall, his eyes closed.

 “Ace?”

 He opened his eyes, his gaze dazed. His head was swaying a bit and Marco was pretty sure he had a concussion.

 “I need to check up on you,” he told him. “I don’t think you’re fully conscious so I’ll be talking to you for some time, try to stay awake.”

 “Are we gonna play doctor?” he asked, his words slurring. “That’s not fair, I’m already half-naked.”

 Marco smiled to himself, shaking his head. “You definitely have a concussion.”

 “Three broken ribs and five fractures,” Ace said, his eyes shutting and his chin falling down onto his chest. “And a concussion.”

 Marco stepped up to him, kneeling beside him. He shook his leg, trying to wake him up again. His hand moved to Ace’s forehead, checking the temperature.

 “What?”

 He looked Marco straight in the eyes, suddenly a shade paler.

 “I’m gonna throw up,” he announced and then he promptly vomited all over Marco’s feet.

 It doesn’t take Ace long to join them. Just a month or two.

 “You’ve been assigned to the First Division,” Marco told him during the welcome party. His face looked weirdly smug.

 Ace grimaced. “As a fighter?”

 “And a medic,” Marco added.

Chapter Text

 The first time he had walked into the infirmaries, ready to take on his duty official after joining, Deuce was already there.

 “Why the hell aren’t you in the chart room?” he asked without greeting beforehand. Ace honestly couldn’t remember why he made Deuce his first mate - he never took his bullshit or his drama seriously and he swore too much.

 “Fuck off,” he told him. When Deuce just crossed his arm, giving him a look, Ace added quietly, “I was assigned here.”

 Deuce stared at him for a moment before sighing and rubbing his tired face with his hand. Without a word, he started walking in the direction of Marco’s office. Ace grabbed his elbow before he moved too far.

 “What are you doing?” he asked.

 Deuce glared at him. “We’re going to talk to Marco about your change of divisions.”

 He tried to move again but Ace’s hold didn’t waver. “No.”

 “No?” Deuce repeated. “You don’t understand most of the things your soulmate makes you do. Ace, you’re a navigator.”

 Ace bit his lips, thinking how to word it not to sound dumb and not to embarrass himself.

 “Have you seen his drawings?” he asked in the end.

 Deuce stopped struggling in his hold and looked at him, taken aback.

 “I’ve seen them. They are perfect, he’s way above my level, there is just no way I’m going to tell him I’m a navigator,” he added, reasoning. “I’ll be useless. I hate being useless.”

 Ace had spent a lot of time in the main chart room, especially at night when the Second Division moved to the smaller crow’s nest for their night watch. He’d seen all those maps Marco had drawn, every single one of them more perfect than the last one. He was the main navigator and maps-drawer and Ace could only feel intimidated by how faultless the maps were. Not to mention how huge the equipment in the chart room was - he had never seen so many different technical pens. It was like heaven on earth, Ace just couldn’t access that. If they decided he would be most useful as a medic, then so be it.

 “You love being a navigator,” Deuce noticed, frowning. “You love drawing maps and have this really weird sense for the weather, not to mention-“

 “Deuce,” he interrupted. “It’s an order.”

 Deuce just snorted, rolling his eyes and swapping off Ace’s hand. “Oh, fuck you.”

 He let go of the topic though.

 Ace wasn’t what Marco expected. He was better.

 He wouldn’t say the nurses were incompetent - they were just different. Most of them were trained into aiding sick, dealing with cases of sea flu, dizzy spells, vitamin deficiency, pneumonia, allergies, and other ordinary stuff. There was actually a couple of them who couldn’t take the sight of blood. Nancy, the head nurse for the last ten years, worked in ER before she joined them, and there were some that were actually trained as surgeons or anesthesiologists or oncologists or in different departments but a majority of them had basic medical training and experience developed with the years on the Moby Dick.

 Ace was special in that way. He was a genius, there was no saying otherwise - he was too young to know half of the stuff and to possess the calmness he had whenever dealing with patients. Deuce was good too, but he was a med school drop out who loved medicine but hated textbooks, he was more about experience and logic than pure knowledge. And Ace had plenty of knowledge.

 And he was cute. So freaking cute.

 Nurses took a liking to him pretty fast, he was just the kind of person who could light up the whole room with his smile. He joked with them, he talked, he told stories, he complimented them, he helped them whenever they needed help without being asked and most of the nurses were smitten on the spot. Hell, Marco was smitten on the spot too. It was good to have two new men, Deuce followed Ace like a lost puppy after all, who regarded nurses with deserved respect.

 Marco was always bothered by the ration of men to women on their ship. Women made less than fifteen percent of their crew and most of them worked in the infirmaries. There was a lot of perverted and inappropriate comments towards them and that was the main reason Marco rarely allowed men into his division. Nurses deserved a break and pure-hearted Ace and a bit dry-humored Deuce were perfect for that.

 The way Ace was close with pretty much every nurse didn’t bother him. Most of the time.

 Nurses didn’t dine with them, mostly staying in the backroom in the infirmaries. Partially because there always had to be someone on duty, mostly because going to the mess hall still in the nurse uniform was like going into a room full of vulgar guys who could keep their mouths shut. Nowadays, at every meal, there were about five of them, swarmed up around Ace and Deuce, and if someone gave them a wrong look, Ace would flare up, smiling sweetly and daring them to say a word.

 It was very hot.

 Today, Ace was sandwiched between twin sisters that had most shifts with him. They were so close to him Marco was sure their thighs were touching and they talked with him in small, intimate whispers that made Marco a little uncomfortable.

 “Aren’t they becoming a bit too close?”

 The whole table full of different commanders turned to him, silencing. Marco frowned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

 “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

 Thatch, sitting the closest to him, snorted, looking away. Jozu coughed into his hand and Izou sighed in the same way he always did when one of his siblings did something stupid. Deuce gave them a glance from around Ace’s table but turned back, rolling his eyes.

 “I’m just worried,” he tried. “What if they become attached to him and then-“

 “-you take him away from them?” Jozu interrupted, teasing tone in his voice.

 Marco glared at him. He was too old for teasing. Thatch hadn’t stopped laughing yet. 

 “I may be attracted to him-“

 “May?” Jozu repeated.

 “-but who wouldn’t be?” he continued, still glaring.

 Izou looked at Ace less subtly than he should and nodded to himself, “Fair enough.”

 Haruta, who was holding his laughter the whole time, cleared his throat and still amused, said, “I think you really don’t have to worry about Ace and girls.”

 And, okay, maybe he was still pissed off at them but he was curious too. “And why not?”

 “Marco,” Izou started slowly, licking his lips. “Ace is the biggest gay to ever gay on this ship. And it’s me saying that.”

 Thatch, who almost calmed down by that point, burst out with laughter again.

 Of course, that conversation didn’t reassure him in the slightest. He actually started worrying about the nurses - if Ace was an oblivious fool like most guys on Moby Dick and some of the nurses really got attached, well, that would be a mess.

 “Hey, Nancy,” he began, getting Nancy’s attention.

 They were at the main desk in the infirmaries, sorting paperwork. Ace was surrounded by nurses from their shift, telling a joke at which Deuce, standing a couple of beds further, was rolling his eyes.

 “Don’t you think they are a bit too close with Ace? They do know that Ace is, well-“

 “Gay?” Nancy cut in, raising an eyebrow. She hadn’t looked so amused in years. “Yesterday, Yumi over there,” she gestured at one of their senior nurses, currently attached to Ace’s side, “told me she always wanted a gay baby brother.”

 Marco just blinked at that, staring at her and expecting her to be kidding.

 “I do think her concept of being gay is a bit off the racks but I also know from other nurses that although Ace doesn’t have the stereotypical fashion sense, example given here,” she nodded at Ace again, probably meaning his obnoxiously orange shirt with beige prints, “he does have pretty vast knowledge of nail polish and is fluent in the language of flowers.”

 Marco raised an eyebrow, grimacing. He didn't know what to say to that so he just said, “That’s something, I guess?”

 “You can buy him flowers,” Nancy added, smirking. “If you want to impress him, that is.”

 “And why would I?”

 She shrugged. “I don’t know, why wouldn’t you?”

 By the time Ace had been assigned to the First Division for two months, Marco was sure everyone already knew about his little crush on Ace. If someone knew him well enough, it wasn't hard to notice - he's always had a thing for freckles. Ace and his flirty comments weren't helping the case either.

 The problem was, at this point, it wasn't just attraction anymore. The infirmaries had their busy days but most of the time, it wasn't much - mild cases of flu, broken bone or two, and Pops's health. It was pretty natural that he got to know Ace better.

 This is why Marco got suspicious as soon as Jozu snorted passing him one morning. He just knew something was off.

 Then he came to the infirmaries and he knew exactly what was off.

 Ace. In a nurse uniform. His poor heart was too old for that.

 It wasn’t, thank gods, a dress. It was a tunic-long shirt, scrubs with the same style and zip on the chest as the rest of the nurses wore. And the shorts. Not cargo pants, shorts, not as skimpy as most of the nurse’s uniform but still way too short. All in the bright cotton candy pink.

 He must have frozen in the doors because someone snickered. He licked his lips.

 “Why are you-“ he tried to say. The only words that wanted to come out of his mouth were more along the line of why are you looking like a wet dream but it wasn’t exactly appropriate.

 Ace just looked down at his clothes and shrugged. “Uniform is a uniform, this one has Pops’s mark at the back.”

 Marco vaguely heard Deuce saying, “For the record, I’m not wearing pink,” but he completely ignored him, still staring.

 He cleared his throat, his eyes staying wide.

 “I’m going to go to my office now,” he announced. “Do not disturb me.”

 One of the nurses started to choke on her own laughter but Ace just smiled sweetly at him. His eyes though were the eyes of a devil.

 “Want me to keep you company?”

 It took Marco some time to get used to the uniform.  It did help that Ace decided on wearing knee-long pants, because, quoting too many people ogled his ass. At least the male part of their crew stopped sexualizing the nurse uniform so much.

 So Marco wasn’t moved when he saw Ace taking care of Jimmy, a guy from the Seventh Division that got into a bad fight and broke his arm and was pretty much on the verge of fainting from the pain. 

 “I wanted a pretty nurse,” was the first thing Jimmy told Ace when the painkillers kicked in.

 Ace just rolled his eyes at him. He’d been working in the infirmaries for two months but he was still almost as done as most of the nurses.

 “Ain’t I the prettiest?” he questioned, distracting Jimmy from the examination of his bruised shoulder. He looked at Marco with that dangerous spark, his stare never even budging. He smirked. “Tell him, Marco, I’m the prettiest.”

 “You ain’t shit, mate,” Jimmy remarked.

 They both sighed and their eyes met again. Ace gave him another smile, this time much more innocent one.

 “Honestly, a broken arm and the only thing he is thinking about is drooling on some boobs,” Ace mumbled to himself, turning his gaze away.

 “Aren’t they all?” Marco replied, his eyes observing the soft blush on his cheeks. “Let me reset the bone, go get the plaster ready.”

 Ace looked up at him again, fond look on his face.

 “Just remember, both his ulna and radius are broken,” he said, taking a step away from the cot. “Be gentle.”

 Marco watched him go, turning into one of the storage rooms and swiping one of the nurses on the way. He hadn’t noticed that the ulna was broken.

 “Please, Commander, you can be smitten later, I’m waiting,” Jimmy spoke up.

 Marco sighed.

 “In pain, that’s what you are,” he told him before getting his hands on his forearm.

 “Give me your knife,” Deuce ordered him as soon as they entered their room.

 They’d just finished their shift and Ace was about to take off his scrub and get a shower.

 “No?” he replied, unsure. He frowned. “Why would I?”

 “I already moved your bed three times because you keep on carving maps into the boards,” Deuce explained, sounding tired. He did sound tired a lot when talking to Ace. “Just get some paper, you have a shit tone of that under your bed anyway.”

 “It’s filled out,” Ace told him. “I ran out of paper after the last island, forgot to buy some.”

 “You can always just ask the navigators to take you in,” he pointed out. Ace gave him an unimpressed look. “Or steal the paper from them.”

 “Now that’s a better idea,” Ace said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea though. Next island is a winter one and they always run short on most supplies so we won’t be able to restock.”

 Deuce froze in the middle of taking off his own shirt. He frowned, wrinkling his nose and gave Ace a look.

 “How the fuck do you know it’s a winter island?”

 “The wind is different,” he said as if that explained everything.

 “You’re a fucking dumbass,” Deuce declared. “Genius navigator dumbass.”

 The next day, Ace came to the infirmaries and Deuce was already there.

 As soon as Ace was in his earshot, he announced, “I stole the paper for you, it’s in our room under your bed.”

 Ace gave him a bright smile and hugged him. Deuce just rolled his eyes.

 “Do you think that Ace and Deuce...”

 Marco was just sitting around in the kitchen’s backroom, waiting for Thatch to finish the stock list. There was silence in the room before he spoke up but somehow it felt more awkward after he opened his mouth.

 Thatch looked up from the sheet of paper he was scribbling on and gave him a dumb look.

 “Dude, what the hell,” he said. “Use your words, what about them?”

 Marco fidgeted, leaning on the back of the chair with his elbows.

 “If Ace is gay and he’s so close with Deuce, does that mean...”

 “No way,” Thatch sputtered.

 And then, after a long period of silence, he continued, “Now that I think about it, maybe there’s something to it.” He frowned, grimacing. “They do seem pretty close, you know, share a room and are attached at the hip. I mean, we’re best friends too and we don’t spend our whole free time together.”

 Marco bit his lip, saying nothing. It still seemed so wrong to him.

 Thatch spoke up again, “What brought the thing on?”

 “I saw them hugging today...” he trailed off.

 “That’s pretty normal when your masculinity isn’t fragile like a soap bubble,” he noticed. “And Ace’s masculinity is just fine, he let Izou put him in a dress last week.”

 And Marco’s tongue may have got stuck in his mouth for a moment because Thatch actually had to nudge him back into reality.

 “Brother, wake up from your fantasy, please,” he practically begged. “What about the hugging?”

 Marco sighed again, groaning. Thatch was probably rolling his eyes at him again but it was a serious problem.

 “You haven’t seen that, he practically wrapped himself around Deuce, legs around hips and all,” he explained, irritated. “It looked exactly like how I imagined shower sex with him.”

 Thatch blinked, taking a deep breath. He opened his mouth a couple of times and resigned, taking another deep breath. 

 “First, too much information,” he noted. “Second, you will never know unless you ask. Now, let me write that damned stock list.”

Chapter Text

 Marco didn't ask, mostly because it was a day off shift for Ace and Deuce and they didn't show up for breakfast. When they didn't show up for lunch, Marco went to their room. It was, of course, a stupid decision.

 Ace and Deuce's room was this cursed storage room Ace was put in the first time he had woken up on the Moby Dick. Ace adopted it as his own pretty fast during the whole killing Pops phase. Deuce moved in as soon as it was obvious Ace was going to stay with them. Marco had been there exactly three times and only once after Deuce moved in.

 He knocked on the door but no one answered. He did hear the movement though.

 To be honest, he didn't know what he had expected to see. Definitely not Deuce being cuddled by sleeping Ace.

 There was no other way to name it - it was cuddling. Ace was once again practically wrapped around Deuce, nuzzling into his side, his hair was a mess and he wasn't wearing a shirt. Deuce's arm was loosely thrown around his shoulders and he looked almost bored, holding a book in his other hand.

 When Marco didn't say anything, Deuce gave him a look, putting the book down.

 "He was really tired," he explained, not really explaining anything. "Are we needed in the infirmaries?"

 Marco had to blink, still quite wide-eyed.

 "No," he sputtered. Then, not wanting to look like an idiot, added, lying, "If Ace is tired, we'll get by without you."

 Deuce just quirked an eyebrow at that, giving him a look that reminded him of Thatch. They were both very no-bullshit people.

 "You sure?" he asked. "I can still go, when he falls asleep, pretty much nothing but an earthquake can wake him up."

 Marco wanted to sigh.

 The next day, Ace fainted after lunch.

 It was very sudden and very unexpected. He did still look tired but Deuce didn't say anything about it so Marco assumed it was alright. Honestly, lots of the nurses looked dead tired most of the time, all thanks to irregular shifts and night watches.

 Again, Marco wasn't exactly expecting it. One moment Ace was segregating patients' files and the next Marco heard a loud thud and Ace was on the floor.

 "Ace?" he spoke up, moving from behind his desk in seconds. He kneeled down, his hands wandering to his face. "Ace, hey, Ace, wake up!"

 He shook him a couple of times, feeling his heartbeat rising up.

 "Someone, get a doctor!"

 Deuce, who walked up to them with the utmost calmness, pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath.

 "Marco, I can't fucking believe I have to remind you but you're the head doctor here," he noticed.

 And okay, he may have panicked and said, "Ace just fainted," but, to be honest, he had every reason to panic. Logias weren't supposed to get sick, dizzy or faint, not without the usage of haki or other devil fruits.

 "Yes, I can see that," Deuce remarked. "Wouldn't be worried about it, though."

 With calmness and practice of a person who probably had done that a lot, he bend down and lifted Ace from the floor, swinging his upper body over his shoulder. He looked at Marco and sighed again.

 "You're a mess," Deuce grumbled to himself. "Where can I lay him down?"

 And, because Marco's brain apparently decided to malfunction, he said, "My office."

 His office didn't even have a bed, just that tiny sofa in the corner and infirmaries were full of empty beds. Deuce shook his head at him again but took Ace there and laid him down on the couch, putting him in a semi-comfortable position. Ace looked almost peaceful, as if he was asleep.

 "What's going on? Why are you so calm?"

 "You know, I actually had medical training," Deuce pointed out. "So did you, I remind you again."

 Marco ignored that, shifting his weight from one leg to the other and still observing Ace.

 "It's just a sleep attack," Deuce explained. "He's still breathing normally, which, by the way, is the first thing you should have checked instead of panicking."

 Marco ignored that because he did check his breathing first, he was panicked but not this panicked. "Sleep attack?"

 Deuce just shrugged, not looking him in the eyes. "Narcolepsy.''

 "Not possible," Marco said. "He would have developed symptoms before having actual sleep attacks."

 Deuce just sent him a meaningful and very unimpressed look.

 Marco frowned. "He did? When?"

 "From what I know, when he was sixteen or so," he said, giving Ace a fond look. Suddenly, his face seemed very soft. "He ran out of meds three days ago."

 If Marco spent the next three hours in his office, no one said anything about it. He dared them to say something about it.

 After calming down and getting over the embarrassment of acting like his panicky fourteen-year-old self that fainted at the sight of blood, Marco decided he was going to forget it happened. He was so glad Ace didn't see it.

 Ace was the cutest thing ever when asleep. He was cute in general, no surprise there, but he moved a lot in his sleep, sprouting a major bed head, his cheeks were colored with red and he wam murmuring to himself.

 Marco sighed, leaning his head on his fist and observed him waking up.

 "Hey, sleepyhead," he began as soon as Ace's eyes were fully open. "Had a good nap?"

 He basically purred like a cat and said, "Would've been better if you were next to me," giving Marco a smug smile.

 "I know about the narcolepsy."

 Ace brushed his hair with his hand, making it into an even bigger mess and sat up, avoiding Marco's gaze. "Do you?"

 "Were you self-medicating?" Marco licked his lips when he didn't get an answer. "You really shouldn't, even actual doctors shouldn't."

 "I'm not going to be taking antidepressants," Ace protested at once, giving him a stern look. "I have my meds, I take stimulants only. I'm not taking freaking antidepressants, I'm not depressed."

 Marco was a bit taken aback but it made sense in a way. Antidepressants were the most common when it came to narcolepsy treatments, mostly because they were more available and affordable. They definitely had antidepressants on the Moby Dick, he wasn't so sure about the stimulants Ace had in mind.

 "Antidepressants aren't only for-"

 "Depressed people, I know," Ace cut in, biting his lip. His whole body was still tense, defensive. "They help with my sleep paralysis but they make me drowsy and I can't fully function. Same goes for sodium oxybate, it's the last resort and since I'm actually in a safe environment for once, I'm not taking it."

 Well, Marco forgot about sodium oxybate for a moment, mostly because he knew it worked weirdly on devil fruit users.

 "You're off duty then," he decided. "Until we reach the next island and can either buy your meds or buy ingredients for your meds."

 "Fine," Ace said, standing up, huffing and puffing. It was adorable. "I'll give you a list tomorrow."

 To be honest, Marco hated drawing. He hated most things that were associated with the Second Division.

 His soulmate's talents were useful in the cruelest way - after Delayla died, no one wanted to take her place, no one was good enough, either. Maybe he was good at it - or rather his soulmate was - but it wasn't supposed to be him drawing the maps, checking distance or looking out for bad weather. It was supposed to be Delayla.

 Marco took her position only because he had to. He kind of wished they would finally find the next Second Division Commander.

 Ace wasn't allowed to take care of patients, mostly because Marco didn't want him walking around while he could get a sleep attack any moment, partially because he could have one while doing something important.

 He did fill patients' files though. All the ones he was avoiding for the last couple of months. Marco observed him for a moment, having left his office with the intention of checking up on the Second Division and drawing the map of the island they'd just docked at. Ace was concentrated on paperwork at the main desk in the infirmaries, alone for once.

 "Hey, maybe you could keep me company?"

 Ace looked up at, his gaze hazed. He looked sleepy, still off his meds. He was supposed to take a need dose the next morning.

 "Huh?"

 Marco smiled at him, fond. "In the crow's nest. It's always better if someone talks with me and most of the Second Division is scared of me."

 Ace shook his head, amused.

 "I wonder why," he said. "Will have to take a raincheck on the offer, though. My crew is waiting up in the mess hall."

 "Commander Marco," Sammy, one of the newest guys from the Second Division, began as soon as he saw him coming through the doors.

 Marco started to feel tired at the very same moment. "What did you do?"

 "I, well, we finished the stock check," he explained, fidgeting. "We're missing a lot of paper and some tools."

 "Hey, I was wondering, maybe on the next island, we could go somewhere together and-"

 "You sound sixteen again," Thatch interrupted him before he could stutter some more words out. "Sixteen-year-old blushing virgin Marco who would get laughed at by Delayla as soon as he tried to talk to some ladies."

 Marco turned to him, glaring. "Not helping."

 They were both in the kitchen, again in the backroom. Thatch was trying to write down some recipes, the countertop covered in notes. Marco had been walking in circles around the small kitchen island there, trying to put together a coherent sentence he could ask Ace out with.

 "Well, you're not helping either," Thatch said, fed up a bit. Or a lot. It was starting to be less and less amusing and more and more tragic. "This kitchen is small as it is."

 "You don't mind when Izou is here," he pointed out, giving him a look and folding his arms over his chest.

 "Izou is my boyfriend," he noticed. "He could sit on my lap the whole day and I wouldn't mind."

 Marco just shook his head at him. Best friends his ass.

 Then, Thatch gave him a super sweet smile. "I bet you wouldn't mind Ace sitting on your lap the whole day either."

 Marco sighed, rubbing his forehead. Maybe Thatch was right, didn't mean he would admit it.

 Thatch just shook his head at him, putting down the pen again and leaning back into the chair. He gave Marco a fond look, his lips quirking. He seemed more serious all of sudden.

 "Listen, Marco, I know you always were a stickler for planning and stuff but this honestly doesn't have to be planned," he reasoned. "If Ace minds that he reduces you to a blushing sixteen-year-old, you are not meant to be."

 Marco fidgeted, licking his lips.

 "Yeah, you're probably right."

 "Of course I am," he agreed, rolling his eyes. "Now, get out of my kitchen."

 "Fine, be a fucking girl about it," was the first thing Marco had heard when he came closer to Deuce and Ace's room. Deuce was standing outside, pissed off, half looking through the crack between the door and the frame. "I'm not gonna cover for you when someone finds you like that."

 "Being a girl is not an insult," Ace shouted back at him from the inside.

 "Figure of speech," Deuce spat out, slamming the doors behind himself.

 He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He closed his eyes for a long moment and Marco was reminded of Thatch once again. Except, Thatch didn't swear so much.

 "Commander," he said, noticing Marco. "What are you doing here?"

 "I need to talk with Ace," he replied, trying to sound confident. He stepped up in the direction of the entrance to their room.

 Deuce moved into his way just as quickly, holding up his arms.

 "Hold your horses," he began. "It's not the best time."

 "And why exactly?"

 "He's not feeling best," Deuce explained without actually explaining anything.

 "All the more reason for me to check on him," he pointed out, moving in the direction of the door.

 "Okay, fine," he said, pushing one of his hands against Marco's chest and stopping him. Marco nodded for him to continue. Deuce looked almost sick when he sputtered, "He's naked."

 Marco blinked at him, wide-eyed. "Naked?"

 "Naked," he repeated, nodding eagerly. "Like a newborn."

 He folded his arms, tilting his chin up. "I don't mind."

 Deuce looked as if he wanted to scream, with raised eyebrows, licking his lips and crossing his arms too. "I do."

 Deuce looked him in the eyes, clenching his jaw.

 "I'm pretty sure you can guess why," he spat out.

 Suddenly, Marco's confidence came to screeching halt and he visibly deflated.

 "Oh," he said, backing off. "Nevermind then."

 "You fucking owe me, Ace. You owe me big time."

Ace just blinked at him from the floor, surrounded by maps and drawing tools. "Huh?"

 "I segregated enough files for the next ten years," Ace announced, banging his head into the desk.

 Marco just smiled at him, still very fond. "Infirmaries can get boring like that," he agreed.

 It was a bit awkward, at least Marco felt like that. Ace was still the cutest thing but it was just messing up with Marco's head. He tried to ignore it.

 And then Ace said shit like, "We can still play doctor, you know," giving him the naughtiest of smiles. "Have some fun in your office."

 He had to take a deep breath and calm himself down. He licked his lips, looking anywhere but at Ace.

 "You really should stop that," he said. "Deuce must hate it."

 Ace froze. "Deuce?" he repeated. "Wait, what exactly is the it you're talking about?"

 He gestured with his hand, making a circle between the two of them. When Ace stared at him blankly, he explained, "You flirting with other guys."

 "I think we're having two completely different conversations because I don't understand a thing you've said," he said, furrowing his eyebrows. His nose wrinkled.

 He looked so adorable when confused.

 "You and Deuce, you know-"

 He made a vague motion with his hand, licking his lips and standing there awkwardly. Ace's frown deepened for a moment but then his eyes widened and he stood there as awkwardly as Marco.

 "Oh," he said. Then, he narrowed his eyes again. "Wait, what?"

 He opened his mouth like a gaping fish and stared at Marco for a long moment. Then, the next thing he knew, and Ace was out of his office.

 "DEUCE, what did you do?"

 "What's happening?"

 "I have it under control," Ace replied to him at once.

 At the same time, Thatch blurted out, "I put my hand into the garbage disposal."

 The situation was obvious - Thatch was hovering over the countertop, leaning on one of his hands while the other was still in. He was pale again and as in most of the stressful situations, he was laughing a lot. For a moment there, Marco had hoped that he just stuck his hand in the sink for once.

 Marco furrowed his eyebrows. "Again?"

 "Come on, it doesn't happen that often," he protested. For someone who worked mostly with his hands, he'd always been careless.

 "Can you feel your fingers? How long have you been stuck like that?"

 "Calm down, Marco, Ace's already asked me all those questions," he said, nodding into the direction of Ace.

 Ace, who was currently trashing through the standard medical bag nurses were issued with, didn't stop on taking out bandages, speaking up, "It's been ten minutes, he can feel the tips of his fingers but his knuckles are getting stiff."

 "Someone should-"

 "Dismantle the garbage disposal?" he interrupted, glancing up at Marco with an easy smile. "It's turned off. I've already sent for someone from Vista's division to take it down."

 He just stared at him, observing the way he prepare the new set of bandages that would, later on, cover Thatch's fingers. A fresh pair of gloves and a packed dressing was lying there, waiting.

 "Marco, you can be smitten when my fingers are outta that death trap," Thatch crooked out, groaning.

 Ace shook his head at him, raising an eyebrow. "You should go for some sedatives, I don't have them in my bag and we don't want Thatch to panic once he sees all that blood," he reasoned.

 "Now that just made me feel better," Thatch chuckled weakly.

 He got the syringe with an appropriate amount of sedative in it, with a fresh needle and his own pair of packed gloves and went back. One of Vista's guys was already there, lying down under the sink.

 "Hey, about yesterday," he began, rolling Thatch's sleeve up.

 Ace glanced up at him, his hands still preparing the equipment to measure Thatch's blood pressure and pulse. "About you wanting to see me naked?"

 "Please, don't say such stuff when Marco is holding a needle so close to my neck," Thatch sputtered.

 Marco stabbed his arm with the needle.

 "So you and Deuce..."

 "We're not together," Ace told him at once, putting the cuff over Thatch's elbow. "I did kiss him a couple of times and sent him into a gay panic but I was so drunk that I'm sure you can forgive me."

 "That's great," Marco grinned. Ace rolled his eyes at him but it was fonder than anything else. "Yeah, great."

 "It's good to go, guys," Vista's guy told them from under the garbage disposal, coughing awkwardly. "And I haven't found any fingers down the sink."

 Ace met his eyes, his gaze focusing. The cuff was gone and since he didn't say anything, everything must have been alright.

 "I put his hand between two dressing, you start on healing them with your powers?"

 "Yeah," he agreed. "Yeah."

 Ace turned away, gloves on, opening a fresh dressing and grabbing Thatch's wrist.

 "Okay, Thatch, take out your hand, try not to move your fingers."

 He did just that, groaning. In a second, Ace sandwiched his hand between two dressings, soaking most of the blood. Marco took Thatch's hand, blue fire covering it just as fast.

 "Hurts like a bitch," Thatch stated.

 "Well, next time don't put your hands into the garbage disposal," Ace told him, unpacking the bandages he would put around his fingers as soon as they were cleaned up and most of the blood was gone. "Izou would miss them."

 "The light in the crow's nest is on," Thatch noticed. "Is your shift in the main crow's nest?"

 They just got out of the infirmaries after changing the bandages for the night and were about to go to their cabins.

 Marco frowned.

 "They shouldn't be," he said. "I need to check that."

 They climbed up but as soon as they entered the emptiness hit them. The light was still on but there was no one in sight. They looked around but everything seemed intact.

 "Is this the map of the last island?" Thatch asked, nodding at the drawing table. "I thought you had already drawn that when we docked."

 "I did," he said, furrowing his eyebrows. He was sure he had already put it on the rack under the drawing table, waiting for it to dry off. He reached down, taking it out of the clips and lying down on the drawing table. "And it looks exactly the same."

 It really did. The shading was the same, the shapes were the same, the scaling was the same, hell, even the small orientation points of the forest were the same. The new version was still wet but it was definitely identical.

 "Dude," Thatch sputtered, breathless. "You know what that means?"

 Marco let out a deep breath, speechless. "I can finally stop being the Second Division Commander."

 "No, you moron," Thatch rolled his eyes. "I mean, that too. But since your drawings are really your soulmate's and this drawing is exactly the same and you didn't draw it..."

 "My soulmate did," Marco realized. "My soulmate is on the ship."

 Ace slammed the doors behind himself. Deuce looked up from his book.

 "I almost got caught."

 "Told you so," Deuce said. "I'm not covering for you."