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Ace wakes to a world soft and white with snow. It flurries in through the open cracks of the tree house, not cold enough to bite, but enough to make him want to shiver, just a bit.
He’s warm, though, with all the blankets piled atop and –
A knee nudging into his side, an armed wrapped around his waist, and a head against his shoulder -
Two leeches for brothers, holding on to him underneath the covers and trying to sap his warmth away. Ace lets out a breath of fond exasperation, one that causes Luffy’s hair to fly into his mouth and Sabo’s arm to clutch tight against his chest. Leeches, the both of them.
Ace blinks his eyes back up to the window, where the flurries keep coming in and melting when they hit the snow of the treehouse floor. They knew it was going to snow last night but – the world outside is entirely white, whiter than it usually gets in Goa.
Had they slept through a blizzard?
It wasn’t impossible…Dadan said it was only going to flurry, but they should have known she was going to be wrong.
Still, Ace’s limbs were falling asleep, and he wanted to avoid another kick to the side. He carefully, so carefully lifts Sabo’s arm up and to the side, uncurling his fingers from his shirt with a precision learned from many mornings like this. Luffy he nudges out of the way just as fondly, just as softly, and doesn’t fight the smile that crosses his face when they fall into each other’s arms in the warm space Ace left behind.
(It warms him, more than the huddle did, that Luffy and Sabo’s faces both have a grimace when they realize Ace is gone before they smooth out in each other’s arms. He’s always learned love through selfishness, and seeing evidence that his brother’s miss him, when no danger is afoot, is… well, his heart constricts, that’s all, and the smile is just fond, and not sappy. That’s all.)
Once his brothers are settled, he slips on his boots, saved for winter only, and creeps towards the open window, pulling back the curtains in one smooth motion.
He has to blink past the brightness and the flurries kissing his cheeks, but once he can finally see again, his jaw drops.
Dawn Island is covered in snow. Piles of it, rising above the ground and creeping up trees, weighing down branches and smothering the world in a hushed, beautiful silence. Ace has never seen so much snow in his life – even though Dawn island experiences odd amounts of snow for a jungle island.
Even now, flurries sill rain down, sticking to slowly cooling cheeks and frozen tree trunks.
Its’ all fresh and fluffy, the snow on the ground untouched by even a crossing animal. Ace feels his breath catch – it’s like a quiet miracle, a quiet wonderland, witnessed by him and him alone.
But Ace made a vow, and Ace is an older brother, and he doesn’t want to experience things alone. So – after a moments glance to the window, and another to his sleeping brothers, he scurries down the ladder with the spare bucket and a grin on his face.
Sabo and Luffy’s screams of terror when he dumps an entire bucket of snow on them are just as satisfying as he thought – and Luffy’s disregard for the cold seconds later as he catches sight of the world outside is just as gratifying as he hoped.
“ACE! ACE IT’S SNOW!” Luffy shouts, grabbing his hand and dragging him to the window. “LOOK! LOOK!”
“I think Ace is well aware of the snow, Lu, ” Sabo drawls from where he’s shaking snow out of the blankets in the corner. “Thanks for the wake up, bastard.”
Ace just sticks his tongue out at him. Sabo flips him off. Ace flips him back off with the hand that isn’t holding Luffy’s. He doesn’t see what Sabo does next, because Luffy, of course, does not care about their little contest and is still focused on the snow.
“It’s snow! I thought it was only supposed to flurry!”
“The Hag was wrong then,” Sabo shrugs, joining them at the window. “Or maybe she just didn’t want to have us in the hut for one extra night.”
“Who cares about what the hag said – it’s snow, and lots of it, ” Ace dismisses, leaning out the window to catch a snowflake on his tongue. Luffy copies him with a rubbery tongue next tto him, and he continues with a laugh. “So you know what that means.”
“What-“ Sabo starts, eyebrows lifting, but he’s cut off by a rubbery arm wrapping around him. Ace blinks. Sabo blinks. They share twin looks of terror, with eyes going wide and mouths opening in shock, because it’s only a second before Luffy screams –
“SNOWBALL FIGHT!”
And jumps out the open window, Ace and Sabo along for the ride, screaming and terror all the way down to snow covered jungle floor.
They hit with an explosion of snow and limbs, the snow piled high enough that the snow doesn’t even reach them, air filled with Luffy’s laughter.
“Shishishi!”
“LUFFY!” Ace yells once the world stops spinning and he can finally aim his fist straight enough to hit Luffy on the head. “WHAT THE HELL!”
“I’m not even wearing my coat,” Sabo moans, joining Ace in the quest to shake some sense into their little brother. “What the hell Luffy!?”
Luffy’s head just bobs back and forth and he falls backwards, splaying his limbs out to lay in the snow. “Fastest way down! And Shanks always said that snow is a great cushion for falling! It’s how we went sledding down the big hill and didn’t crash!”
Ace highly doubts that. But snow is still falling, and his brother did just declare a snowball fight, so he has no time to worry about if Shanks brought his brother sledding with the excuse that snow would save them from crashing into a giant tree. He has a brother to destroy. Two actually.
So while Luffy is laying back, attempting to make a snow angel, Ace gathers all the snow he can in his hands and drops it right on Luffy’s face.
He doesn’t even get a chance to enjoy Luffy’s scream of shock before Sabo is shoving snow in his face and down his t-shirt.
“PAYBACK!” Sabo cries before darting away like the coward he is and it is on.
The peaceful world splits into pieces with the sound of joyful laughter and terrified, delighted screams. Luffy’s snow balls always miss except for when they accidentally hit him, Sabo is a bastard and likes to hide ice in his, and Ace isn’t afraid to bodily shove people into the snow. It devolves into building forts, into a jungle-wide fleeing fight as Ace makes several attempts to launch the biggest snowball ever, and the gators in the river get hit with several snowballs to the face. Sabo dumps no less than three branches of snow onto Ace’s face, and Ace hits at least five snow-balls directly to Sabo’s face. Ace is pretty sure he’s winning.
(Sabo is sure that he’s winning (he’s wrong) but the important thing is that Luffy is losing but still laughing, so it’s all the same inn the end.)
Ace’s fingers are red by the end of it all and his cheeks have long since become numb to the cold. His hair is covered in snow, as is the rest of him. Sabo is no better, and Luffy, still in his sandals, is the worst of them all. He keeps forgetting he’s cold though, so Ace is pretty sure he’s fine.
When their fight finally makes its way to Dadan’s house though, Ace doesn’t complain. The world around the Dadan’s hut is quiet and soft, the paths outside not shoveled and fire rising through the chimney, but it doesn’t stay quiet and soft for long. Ace and Sabo easily throw Luffy and a pile of snow through the back door when they finally trudge their way through it, and Dadan awakes with a shriek.
“BRATS!”
Ah, she sounds pissed. Oh well. Ace and Sabo quickly make their home inn the bear furs in the corner, and Luffy is off looking for a warm snack and warming his toes and hands by the fire. Magra is nice enough to bring them extra furs and hot cocoa, and soon enough they join Luffy by the fur. Dadan grumbles at them for letting the cold in, but brushes all the snow from their clothes with the excuse that they’re soaking everything and she doesn’t want to deal with sick brats, but it’s a sign she cares nonetheless.
The heat is soothing, and the words of the waking bandits soon form a warm cocoon of murmurs around them. The hot cocoa burns Luffy’s lips but he only asks Sabo to cool it down once by blowing on it before guzzling it down. Ace takes the time to savor the rich chocolate, mixed with peppermint because Magra is a genius, letting it warm him down to his toes. Sabo and Luffy nestle into his side again once the chocolate is put away, leeches once again, and Ace’s limbs are too heavy to push them away. So instead he pulls them in close, smile on his face as snow slowly melts from his hair. Dogra tugs another blanket over them, and soon, Ace is swallowed in the warmest bliss.
Sabo and Luffy begin to conspire about making a snow man army after they warm up again – Ace chimes in with the idea of a snowman Dadan, and soon they’re all murmuring and drifting off too ideas of Snow-Gramps and Snow-Dadans and pretty Snow-Makino’s.
But that’s for after. After Ace can feel his fingers again, and after Luffy stops shoving his freezing toes against Ace’s thigh. And after Ace takes a moment to hold his brothers closer to his side, peaceful and happy and warm at last, and after Sabo stops shivering with laughter and the cold.
The world is soft and quiet and peaceful again, in a way that leaves Ace not to enjoy it alone but in a way that reminds him that he’s here with an oath and brothers and a whole bandit clan to enjoy it with.