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Flames were a normal part of Marco’s life at this point. His blue flames seemed like salvation to many after hard battles and he was always happy to use them for his family. Red flames, fires that actually burned and kept them warm and cooked delicious meals, those were a different kind of comfort, something that spoke to Marco’s very soul, making him yearn for something.
It took years before he figured out what.
Red, red, red greeted him the first time he watched Ace battle for their crew. His heart sang out as flickers of fire got close enough to feel and he mentally thanked Pops for sticking with Ace’s prickly butt.
This. This is what Marco had been waiting on. The other half of his soul was there, close enough to touch, to burn, and he hadn’t known until the man actually joined them.
Ace needed to know. Tonight, after they celebrated his momentous victory.
“Marco, why did you pull me away?! Thatch was just going to chug the rest of that old barrel of disgusting mead he found in the back of the pantry.”
“I needed to show you something and I didn’t want to do it in front of everyone.” Ace tilted his head to the side before nodding as he leaned against the upperdeck’s railing, his hat rustling in the late night breeze.
Marco lit his hand up, the flames casting a lovely blue shade across Ace’s dark eyes, which were suddenly far more interested. Carefully reaching out, Ace ran his fingers through the fire, jolting when his own flames started up too. Stepping closer so he was less than arm’s length away, they both watched as their flames intertwined, almost dancing around each other in greeting.
“I haven’t really seen you with your fire before this afternoon, let alone fighting with it, and that made me realize you, and by extension it, give me the comfort I’ve always felt from normal open flames. Like a piece of me resides in you for safekeeping,” Marco started, not tearing his eyes away from the flames until the end of his sentence. Ace was looking back at him, slightly stunned.
“I have— Whoa, knew you were looking at me a lot tonight, but I wasn’t expecting this. Me?”
“You don’t have to do anything about it. I definitely don’t want to force you into something since we’re friends already, but I wanted you to know— wanted to test it out in case I was wrong. I can just leave it at that. . . .” Marco started to pull his hand back, glad to have at least told him, to have found his person, but Ace shot forward first, clasping their hands together and making the fires shoot up into the night sky.
“No, no. I want to try with you! I’ve dreamed of the color of your flames before. Just, you’re sure it's me?” The note of worry in his tone didn’t escape Marco and he squeezed Ace’s hand.
“Definitely. My fire has never felt as right as it does right now.”
Ace breathed out heavily, a wave of tension leaving his body. “Okay, yes. Good. Is this— uh, does this mean we could go on a date? On the next island maybe?”
“I was just going to ask that,” Marco said chuckling, happiness absolutely bubbling out of him. “We can go out for a picnic so we don’t have to worry about getting interrupted. Though maybe we should tamp out these flames for now so we can rejoin the party.” He punctuated the statement by shaking their still alight hands.
Ace whined as they extinguished their fire, but kept a hold of Marco as they made their way back to the party.
Oh, there was so much joy in finding his other half.