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There's been a thread looped around his finger for as long as he can remember, so he figures it must've been there forever. It's deep red, snug enough that he always knows it's there, even when he's not looking. And he's gotten very good at not looking, at least while other people are around. It doesn't take more than a few instances of his father or brother's disdain and derisive comments to train him into actively avoiding any acknowledgement of the thread in public.
There’s a thread looped around his finger, neat and secure, for nearly all his life, and he’s the only one who can see it. He brushes the loops of the knot tied near his knuckle as a nervous habit during school or his father and brother’s social or career functions, the gesture small enough to usually go unnoticed. The other end of the thread trails off in the distance, far beyond what he can see or where he can follow.
He’s tried, of course. He’d escaped the garden as a small child in his earliest attempts and earned himself plenty of scoldings and the first of many disgusted comments about imaginative behavior and childish whims. He’s followed the thread plenty of times since, and always found himself at the harbor, or the beach nearby, the end of his thread disappearing out to sea and the horizon.
It’s enough to open his curiosity, his imagination, his sense of adventure. The thread on his finger is leading somewhere, and it’s out there far beyond the limits of his family estate and home island, maybe beyond the East Blue entirely. There’s a world out there beyond medical school and family expectations, and he decides early on he wants to see it all.
He has plans in place, a bag packed and ready to go, by the time he’s seventeen. He’s in a little boat, alone and at sea at eighteen years old, the weight and shape of a deep blue mask settled around his eyes and over his brows, the edges pressed against his cheekbones in a way that’s unfamiliar and extremely noticeable, but he’ll get used to it in time. Anonymity is a weight off his shoulders, a pressure relieved. He’s his own man now, a nameless adventurer, and there’s no way to tie him back to his homeland, or to tie his father or brother to any of the choices or paths he takes going forward.
The thread looped around his finger stretches ever outward, further and further and further still, and he wonders just how many islands he’ll see, how many years of sailing and adventuring and writing he’ll experience, before he finds what lies on the other end.
Sixis takes him by surprise, in all honesty.
The tales of the island’s beauty and hidden treasure drew him in, but he doesn’t expect the whirlpool and currents that lurk off the coast. He’s pleasantly surprised to find himself in one piece on the beach, soaked to the bone and with his mask hanging waterlogged and barely still adhered to his face. He can’t say the same for his boat, broken planks and torn ropes strewn along the beach with him, or for his supplies, likely lying on the seafloor or drifting away with the current that knocked him around so thoroughly.
It takes him a day to realize there’s nothing to eat on Sixis, at least nothing digestible that won’t hurt him in the long run. It’s half a day after that to realize that no board or raft will make it past the currents long enough for him to escape, and he doesn’t have the strength or materials to build something sturdier, something that would survive.
Between the panic, hunger, and heat, it’s another day before he realizes the thread looped around his finger looks different. A little thicker, the color a little bolder, the slack of it a little greater. He can’t begin to guess what it means, but he takes some comfort in being able to look at it to his heart’s content, to reach out and touch the loops and the knot against his knuckle without drawing scornful attention.
The skeleton beside him doesn’t mind, and he haltingly tells it his theories, from the ridiculous and fantastical to the wishful, hopeful.
He’s starting to worry he’ll never learn what’s waiting at the other end of the thread, when a shadow blocks out the blistering sun and reveals a wide white smile and a face full of freckles.
Between starvation and dehydration and his own cruel comments to Ace, between Ace’s kindness and the sharing of a Devil Fruit and the sudden mad influx of hope that they’ll be able to escape Sixis and survive, he rather entirely forgets about the thread looped around his finger.
“It’s a shame we never found any treasure,” Deuce, his name is Deuce, a gift from Ace, says on their last morning on Sixis, checking over their Striker one more time before they push off into the currents and hopefully away from the island forever. Ace hums behind him, standing in the footwell and letting bursts of flame erupt from his heels, checking the propeller’s spin.
“I dunno. I did find you, didn’t I?”
Deuce twists, surprised and embarrassed and a little pleased, and for the first time in the midst of this entire mess he’s glad he’s sunburned to hell since it means Ace can’t see how badly he’s got to be blushing. Ace grins back at him, and Deuce grumbles and mutters to himself before shoving Striker into the water, pushing and pushing until he’s chest deep in the water before hauling himself up onto their craft as Ace’s low banked flames roar to life.
It’s not until they’ve eaten and slept in a real bed and showered that Deuce thinks to look at the thread looped around his finger again, as he dries his hair and examines his sunburn in the mirror, relieved to see that while he now bears a ridiculous mask tan line, the color is finally going down. He presses the mask back to his face, scrubbed twice and hung over a radiator to dry while he showered, and catches sight of the thread, gleaming bright and red and trailing back behind him, under the door separating the bathroom from the dingy little inn room he’s sharing with Ace.
It’s shining more than it once did, and Deuce hooks a finger under the slack of it to give a gentle tug, surprised by the tension on the other end, followed by a responding tug. Breath catching, he watches the thread for another moment, and stumbles forward a step when it tugs again. He barely remembers to check that his mask is on properly, doesn’t bother with finding his coat or bag set aside somewhere in the bathroom, and instead opens the door slowly, following the red thread once more, dressed only in his trousers and steps nearly silent on bare feet.
Ace lounges on the bed in front of him, one foot kicked up and crossed over a bent knee, hair ruffled and still damp from his own shower, shirt hanging open and looking entirely comfortable. His hand raised up over him, a bold red knot of thread tied around his knuckle, the other end running down over the bed, the length shortening with another step forward from Deuce.
The thread isn’t pulling him in, not really, but he can’t help but move closer, and Ace looks up to smile at him, the pad of his thumb brushing over the thread looped around his finger. Deuce isn’t sure it’s necessarily that gentle brush that makes him shiver, it could just be the lingering moisture in his hair or the odd drop of water clinging to his skin, but…it doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility either.
“I was wondering when you’d notice,” Ace says, thumb brushing soft again, and Deuce sits down on the edge of the bed and watches the length of the thread shorten even further, a mere foot of slack red coiled between them.
Ace’s hand drops down to the bed, settling just beside where Deuce’s own hand rests, the other end of the thread looped around his finger in sight and close enough to touch.
Ace’s fingers twitch, and Deuce reaches out, a gentle brush before their fingers link and hold.
Ace smiles, and the thread looped around his finger seems to warm, and it feels like coming home as Deuce leans into him.