Chapter Text
Ace sneezed.
To his left, the pair hip to hip, Smoker regarded the cup pressed into his hands with suspicion. “This isn’t coffee.”
Outside, the previous night’s downpour had slowed to a hazy trickle, leaving the Rachel to sail on peacefully through the early morning fog.
“No.” Marco passed a second one to Ace, who upon accepting, once he recognized the hot liquid within, immediately scouted the tray the phoenix had set by their feet, hunting for honey to add in. For Ace’s efforts, his hand was slapped away and he scowled as he retreated.
“It’s herbal tea for two still very injured morons,” Marco pressed, “Who decided it was a great idea to go out in the rain and buff the deck with Ace’s back.”
“Nah.” Ace shook his head, innocence defined. “We couldn’t have. Too busy behaving.”
Marco fixed Ace with a look that drove him into his mug. “Curiel spotted you fools out on deck and after,” Ace very pointedly shifted his gaze away to the ceiling, “—everyone within three doors heard your rounds two and three.” —and then to the floor, sweating.
It was Smoker’s turn to sneeze and he grumbled as Marco delivered a tissue box into his waiting hands. “Fine. I admit it.” He blew his nose and pitched the wad into the nearest bin. “Not my finest hour.”
“Bud, not your finest month.”
Ace snickered between slurps, “I think he’s doing okay. Got me, after all.”
Marco bit his tongue. That much he couldn’t deny. That much had his gratitude. Smoker tested it all the same though when, taking a sip of the tea, he wrinkled his nose and promptly unleashed a complaint about the taste. When Marco rolled his eyes and fired back, Ace whined.
“Ladies, I'm begging you,” he drawled, “I need you to take that eleven and dial it back to like, a five or six. Some of us are sick.”
Smoker elbowed him gently enough to keep from completely ejecting Ace off the bed. “Don’t you have somewhere else you should be roosting, Marco?” For his attitude, Smoker received a cap full of thick dark liquid that he remembered far, far too easily as the bargain bin cough medicine naval medical teams were often supplied with as a catch-all for minor ailments. It only ever came in one flavor: suffering.
“Deuce has better things to do. Like sleep. Eat breakfast. Breathe. Anything that’s not minding you two this late in the game. So you get me instead, eh?” When presented with the same, Ace gagged on sight. “Oh c’mon, the tea was to help wash that down. Did you already—” Marco’s question answered itself as Ace flipped his very dry mug upside down. “Ace.”
Smoker traded with him and took his shot dry and without complaint, scowling all the way as he returned his cap and Ace’s empty mug to Marco. Next to him, Ace procrastinated, fighting the tide as he tried desperately to ignore the literal task at hand.
Nudging Ace gently, Smoker whispered, “Down it now and I’ll knock back anything else he leaves later for you.”
Eyes wide with the realization that he may have gained not only a long-term lover, but a patsy to take any disgusting medication, Ace downed the shot with a ferocity that both of the other men swore the syrup never even touched his esophagus on its way to his stomach, let alone his tongue.
Marco smiled a threatful sort down at Smoker. It may have been a bluff to get Ace to cooperate, but Marco wouldn’t risk the offer going unchecked, “Do it, and I’m throwing you into the sea. I don’t care how much he likes you. And,” he directed to Ace, “The point is, if I catch you pulling another stunt like that, your man sleeps in my room til you’re better.”
“Noooo—” As Ace melted across Smoker’s lap in a tiff, the man snatched up his old mug, barely saving the last of its contents from spilling. “Marco, no, lemme come too.”
“Ace, I'm threatening him with a punishment, not a sleepover.”
Undeterred, Ace’s bellyaching dragged on. Annoying as it was, it heartened both to see him in spirits that weren’t as damn dour as the day previous. In all likelihood, his upswing was a holdover from his long night out (and in), but any reprieve was better than none.
“Marco...”
Smoker took a sip when Ace made no effort to sit back up. “Kid, don't act like it'd be a pleasure cruise for me.”
Ace stuck out his tongue. “It could be.”
“Gross.”
Making hands for the mug again, he grinned when Smoker relented. “It’d be hot, though.”
“Ace,” Marco set his hands on the foot of the bed and leaned in. “A frightening amount of my heart belongs to you, but stop trying to get me to sleep with your marine.” It had become Smoker’s least favorite running joke, winning out over other crew favorites, like announcing his presence topside with a round-robin chorus of ‘Twink Hunter on deck!’
“Everyone wants to sleep with Marco,” Ace chimed, granting exposition that Smoker neither wanted, nor asked for—his voice muffled in the mug. His brows tugged together when he realized it too was empty.
Marco sighed, long-suffering. His tired eyes looked to Smoker for sympathy. “Shanks keeps trying to recruit me into his crew.”
“Greater New World Polycule.” Ace surrendered the last mug and his stomach growled. “Everybody knows.” Contrary, far fewer than Ace anticipated knew—the Navy especially, and Smoker found himself wishing he didn't have ears. “Also you don't gotta rub it in any more.” Shuffling back up to sit, Ace let himself recline into Smoker’s good arm as he patted it. “Big guy just slammed his career into the dumpster.” Marco and Smoker exchanged dubious looks as Ace prattled, “You can't call him a marine any more—they don't allow…” He paused as Marco struggled with a tight-slipped expression, as confusion bloomed across his own. “…why are you laughing?”
It was Smoker’s turn to side-eye the ceiling.
Marco didn’t pry, per say, but he left Smoker a loaded, “You gonna tell him?”
“Woah, woah—what’s going on?” Ace cycled between the two men as his playful obstinance toppled like a house of cards in a breeze. Somewhere, he’d missed a few details.
With nothing for Smoker to bury himself in—no breakfast, not a morning paper–nothing, it left the gravity of his choices digging in a little harder. “M'still a marine.” There were still no regrets—not about taking the offer and certainly not about holding off on telling Ace. The kid had enough to worry about with his own health. That said, it still didn't feel good.
“Are you gonna explain what that means, or…?”
Marco picked a far wall to lean against, arms crossed as he deferred to Smoker. It wasn't his tale to tell. So Smoker brought it all out: his early days on the ship, the arrival of the Liberal Hind with Drake and Lind, the paperwork, the snail, and a call to a stranger who assured him all would be well.
“It's some kind of special ops group. It was news to me when Drake showed up, but you get the freedom to do whatever you want basically. In a worst case scenario, they have a resignation on file from you that they publicize, then cut you loose to drift—no back-up, nothing. Regardless, in the same breath, so long as you’re checking in regularly, you're not only getting a paycheck, but a fat load of intel. And any orders you get—well, you’re free to ignore whatever you want.”
Fear struck Ace first. Smoker had saved him, but knew first-hand how deep the man’s commitment to justice ran outside of his bedmate outlier. “…what's that mean for everyone here?”
“For the most part, nothing. When they say freedom, they mean it. You can go anywhere, become anything. Drake’s one of them.”
“He’s a pirate though.”
“Technically, yeah.”
While convinced enough to let Smoker’s gambit play out, Marco added in what he could to make the transition easier for Ace. “Drake and half his boys did double unit donations for us the day they parked and dropped off a stack of supplies to boot.”
Ace fell silent, mulling it all over. “That sounds too good to be true. If you're being led on, then—”
Smoker interrupted, “And I agree. But I talked it over with your old man—”
A fresh streak of irritation cut through Ace, kindled by an instance of yet another person speaking to Newgate before he could even see the man. When he began to spark, Marco licked his fingers and smothered the largest that popped off and diffused with, “Pops wanted to speak to him. Sent off his nurses, shut the doors, and it pissed us all right off. Wasn’t supposed to be seeing anyone at that point, but you know Pops...”
Allowing it, Ace waited for them to redeem themselves. He’d been awake and lucid long enough to understand Marco and Smoker’s mutual annoyance with one another, but seeing them catch one another’s back so quickly…he wasn’t sure if he felt more relieved or alienated. For the time being, both men stood on thin fucking ice.
Smoker quieted down as he drew on the memory, “He basically told me to follow my gut. It was…” Strange. Humbling. Days later and Smoker still didn’t have words to properly describe the exchange. “—something. But I rang up the guy who runs the group. I’m still not sure what they think they’re getting out of me, but I think it’s legit.” Stranger still, the man supported Smoker’s actions at Marineford. “Apparently they wanted to scout me before this, but then…”
The group held and released a collective breath. Teech happened. The Summit War happened.
“He sounds like a weirdo, a wildcard—but that’s the kind they drag in apparently.” And nothing cemented a status like that quite like upending the execution of the century. “He’s kept me up to date on Marine ships in the area though. We’ve course-corrected out of trouble a couple of times thanks to that info, so I’m gonna stick with it and learn more. See what else we can get out of it.”
We. That was a strange term to hear out of Smoker. ‘We’ had been his people, his colleagues, all sworn together by their ideals of justice. In less than thirty days, it had shifted.
“That’s not the only thing he’s been up to.” Marco cracked the door and bent to pick something up from the floor of the hall. Eyes narrowed, Ace withheld his judgment without the proof to put it to. “We got mail today with the morning paper—”
What Ace got was a pair of sturdy black boots, tied together by their laces. They hit the bed with a bounce and any anger or apprehension Ace clung to waned. “Taisa—” Ace stumbled as he picked them up, turning them over in his hands. It was that little lost face he wore when he felt unworthy of anything. It pissed Smoker off. “…I have shoes though.”
“No you don’t.” Not anymore, anyway. The moment Deuce and Marco had allowed Smoker into Ace’s room, he’d spirited the prison slip-ons away while Ace slept and pitched them into the sea with unspeakable prejudice. “The shit they gave you was trash, but they’re gone now.”
With Ace’s favorite pair confiscated during his imprisonment and anything else lost with the sinking of the Moby Dick, something had to be done. The first time Smoker called his new superior officer, the man asked him if he needed anything. In that moment, wanting for nothing, Smoker instead chose to try and piece Ace’s fractured life together again, one tiny piece at a time.
“You needed a new pair, so I got you a new pair. That’s it.”
Marco preened, “Not the whole story.” Smoker nearly cut him off, but was shut up by the quiet and curious expression Ace begged the phoenix with. “I want to say it was the same day the Drake pirates dropped by—” Marco recounted, “We found him in a group of about twelve-plus other folks, all barefoot, circled around a stack of shoes about knee high.”
“Not that high.”
Marco effortlessly brushed off Smoker’s grumbling insistence. “Turns out no one knew your shoe size, so he got a bunch of folks together who you were close with, to try and compare theirs to the memory of yours, hoping they could narrow it down through that. It was cute. Though how he got these shipped here, he’s going to have to explain to me, eh?” It was the warning smirk again. Smoker had…possibly…maybe against instructions of the crew, given his new boss the coordinates to send the package to. “Maybe he found a little birdie to bring him a pair?”
Defensive, it was Smoker’s turn to slump and take a jab. “You wanna talk birds? Here’s a bird fact for you. I know you've got an all-in-one called a cloaca. So take all you decided to share just now and shove it up there.” Except any amount of venom Smoker tried to pump out was summarily ignored.
Marco regarded him with a calm and knowing smugness, and Ace just… His look wasn't that of awe and it wasn't the fold of forgiveness, but it was near enough that it made Smoker’s stomach twist.
Any worry that tried to nest in Marco’s heart about the Marine had dispelled in the moment on deck he’d found Smoker barking at his brothers as they tried to puzzle out the mystery of Ace’s shoe size. No sane man—let alone a marine trying to pull some shitty underhanded double-cross fretted about the missing shoes of a pirate.
Marco’s smile was a genuine one. “Your boy’s gonna fit in just fine here.” The issue of puzzling out Smoker’s mysterious benefactor hung heavy over their heads, but in the meantime, while far less than ideal, things looked up at least.
“I wish you'd stop saying that.”
Smoker’s frustration, worn clear on his sleeve, or lack thereof, served a point beyond an emotional vent. It gave Marco something to aim at—a place to pit his own frustrations to try and regain any shred of normalcy. The fact that Smoker endured everything hurled at him with his own ugly grace gave the phoenix cause to trust in Smoker’s decisions as well.
“Taisa,” rewarmed, Ace laughed, “You're so hostile.”
“M'not hostile.” Meanwhile, Smoker wasn’t sure he was strong enough for the horsepiss he’d signed on for in literal blood.
Without so much as a preamble knock, the door swung open. Led by the advent of a second tray, Curiel—his hat slightly askew on his head without his shooting earmuffs to pin it in place—shoehorned himself into both the increasingly cramped room and the conversation. “—why are you so hostile? Also, brought the naughty kids breakfast.”
Ace cheered, though immediately set to lamenting as his throat protested. The pitiable display earned the tray of food delivered straight to his lap, fitted with double portions of toast, fruit, and yogurt.
“Morning, narc.” Though Curiel was arguably one the last people Smoker wanted to see, while the rat had sent Marco down on them, he’d also brought food and had managed to stare down the dick of Gecko Moria at Marineford and lived to tell the tale. Two out of three points wasn’t a winner, but it wasn’t awful either. “And I'm not.”
Curiel turned to Marco, more than glad to join in on a fresh round of riffing on the new guy. The benign humiliation was practically a rite of passage. “Is he for real? Is our new guy really a paragon of truth?”
Marco shook his head, laying faked disappointment on thick. “Nope, he’s hostile.”
“I'm not.” Smoker rumbled with frustration loud enough to spook Ace into choking on his toast.
Mock distress from the narc, “Did you see that? That’s spousal abuse.”
For fuckssake. “We're not married!”
Ace wheezed, grimacing as the chunk of bread finally went down. For him, catting with Smoker had been merely one-on-one only. Three-on-one though…he could learn to enjoy that. “We could be.”
Marco shook his head, a hand settling on a hip. “He won't even let you wear his shirts.” Having never borne witness to the dynamic between the couple outside of Smoker brooding angrily within a half-conscious Ace's orbit, the slowly unfurling reveal was an interesting one.
Curiel stared at Smoker, aghast. “You don’t let Ace wear your shirts?”
“I don't wear shirts!”
It took some wriggling to get his arms raised without triggering too much pain, but once accomplished, Ace folded his hands behind his head with a triumphant grin. “And I'll thank you for the view every day.” he cleared his throat, batting his eyes, “Thank you, by the way.”
One day, Smoker was certain he’d eat his own fists out of sheer frustration. Until then, he grabbed up his intended plates to save them from the human garbage disposal at his side and snapped a slice of apple between his teeth. It wasn’t a cigar, but the crunch was satisfying at least.
Marco dropped a satisfied, “You chose him”, in Smoker’s lap.
Cramming in another slice of apple, Smoker conceded with a sigh—not aggravated or weighty, but tired from the length of the exchange. “I did.” He wanted to throw himself down for more sleep, but at this point, it was unlikely to happen.
The whole conversation felt uncanny as hell. Just over two weeks ago, he’d been on a ship bound to Marineford, readying to counter any threat that presented itself. Now he rubbed figurative elbows with a ship full of some of the most infamous bastards on the sea. More than once he’d had to catch himself from reacting on reflex and blurting out that they were under arrest.
Marco poured a fresh round of tea for both patients, though for a laugh, continued as if neither were in the room. “He remembered you by name too, Cure.”
“He did? What a damn sweetheart.” All grin through Smoker’s heated glowering, Curiel tapped himself out on Marco’s shoulder. “Still, I got places to be. I’m out,” and waved to the pair on the bed, “Y’all have fun—just less than last night, okay?”
As Curiel dipped, Smoker and Marco both turned to catch Ace asleep, face down in his small bowl of yogurt.
Ace blew his nose hard into the tissue and shuddered as it forced a glob of yogurt out. “Uugh.” The temptation to eat it surfaced only briefly, only to be tempered and squashed when he noticed a clump of mucus mixed in.
Smoker, who’d caught Ace’s half-second of hesitation, looked to Marco not just for guidance, but to spare himself in case Ace decided to actually double back. “Have you ever figured out why he does that?”
“Sleeping when he eats? No. Though when the Heart kid comes back for your appointment, I can always get Ace a second opinion.”
“No way.” Ace couldn’t let his pillows osmose him into oblivion, but that didn’t mean he’d stop wishing for it. “I don’t wanna be poked any more.” When he downed a whole (but thankfully peeled) banana in a single swallow, Smoker realized in hindsight of Ace’s more recreational skills, he shouldn’t have been surprised by the disappearing act.
Marco chuckled, “I’ll hail the Tang later and make sure it’s on the table to investigate. Before that though, I still got the last of the mail surprises still in the hall for you.”
It was Smoker’s turn to perk. He hadn’t asked for anything outside of Ace’s new boots. It couldn’t have been for him… But with breakfast annihilated, as Marco moved to collect the mystery, Smoker stacked the empty dishes up and piled them onto Marco’s original tray, then carefully slotted the two together. He quickly found out just how lucky they all were that he’d made space, because Marco returned with sacks, plural.
“That’s, uh…” Ace cocked his head as he sized up the load. Four—it was four massive canvas bags, stuffed to brimming. “That’s a lot of mail.”
“Mmhm. And most are for you.” They set down lightly at least.
Ace didn’t seem to compute the reality of the situation and his chin nearly retracted into his neck. “All of that. For me?”
Marco wiggled a hand and gestured to Smoker, “Well, a few are for Big Boy, here.”
Smoker provided his own encore of Ace’s turtle impression. “That can’t be right.”
“Is though.” Marco insisted. He loosened the drawstrings on one and pulled out a short stack of envelopes. “Have a taste. Every single one is from guys of ours that got separated in the retreat or someone from an allied crew. Everybody on the sea is clamoring for news. Official papers say you’re dead, but all these folks—” he gestured to the bloated bags spread across the bed. “—they either don’t believe it or they’re begging for proof otherwise.”
A tremor shook Ace’s hand as he accepted the letters. The quiet and withdrawn expression of unworthiness crawled back out as he flipped through them. True to Marco’s word, while addressed to their ship, his name was the only one listed as their recipient. Smoker leaned in—not to read, but to offer a grounding pressure. Feeling the man’s bicep press against his shoulder, Ace leaned into him.
“What do I do with these?”
Marco shrugged, unable to offer much else. “Anything you want. Me and some of the other commanders are penning responses back specifically to crew captains to give them a sitrep, but what happens with these is your call. They’re just worried about you.” Marco knew. He’d helped helm the early morning effort to vett every single one. He couldn’t rightly call himself the other’s brother if he let something inflammatory slip into Ace’s hands. Graciously, not a single cruel word had been aimed Ace's way.
Marco scooped the tray stack up, his smile kind and sympathetic, “I’ve gotta drop these off in the kitchen, then go run some more check-ups. Can I get some good behavior out of you two in the meantime?”
Ace nodded mutely, frozen over the massive undertaking before him.
The moment the door clicked shut behind Marco, both Ace and Smoker deflated, exhausted. Smoker sniffled and blew his nose. Ace swallowed and winced through the sting that followed.
“Thanks for the boots.” They weren’t identical to his old pair, but they were close enough that it stirred in his chest to think that Smoker had gone to such lengths to replace them. “I’m still mad about Pops though.” He laid the handful of letters down in his lap.
Smoker itched for a cigar. He should have asked for those too, but in the call with Carrasco, he’d forgotten completely. “Figured you would be. Not asking you not to be. I’d be mad at me.”
With a flat little snort, Ace’s attention returned to his gift and began untying the knot binding the pair of laces. “I just want everyone to stop treating me with kid gloves. For going behind my back. For leaving me out of the loop. It’s really pissing me off.”
“You’re not going to get me to apologize for doing what felt right.”
Too drained to play petulant, Ace just held onto his boots, staring at the bags of letters. “…what even gives you the right to decide this shit for me?” he asked, voice soft.
“Not to aggravate new wounds, but you seemed pretty content on that scaffold to let others pick.”
It was true. “I…It’s complicated, okay? I don't want to talk about it, just…it's different now. I wanna live.” he murmured. It hurt like hell for every inch further he clawed from that wreckage, but he wanted it more than anything else. No matter what he was worth, he couldn't help anyone he loved or pay them back for their blood spilled in his name if he was dead. “No more kid gloves, okay?”
“Deal.”
The mail bags taunted him though. Regardless of what he wanted, guilt still tore him raw inside.“I don't know if I can read these right now…”
“Then don’t.”
A silent shake of laughter moved Ace. “Fair.” He smiled faintly. “Thanks for last night too. You know. By the way.”
“You looked like you needed something. I tried.” Smoker freed his arm from its place trapped between them and offered Ace a space closer.
Ace slumped into him and curled, huddled to Smoker’s chest and side. “In your defense, it was a good try. I mean, I had fun.” Despite the soreness of his throat and the sluggishness plaguing Ace’s body, everything else felt criminally nice: the solid warmth of Smoker’s frame, the wrap of the cool sheets atop them, the diffused light of a foggy morning filtered in through the window… He kicked one of the bags off the bed. “Not to sound ungrateful,” He would and knew it, but needed the answer. “—but why are you still here?”
Smoker mussed Ace’s hair gently. Even from their brief outing into the storm, some of the salty crunch he remembered from their earliest trysts had returned to it. “Couldn’t stay where I was. You could call it a difference of values.”
“Oh.” Ace’s tone faltered. His shoulders bowed inward. “Does that mean you’re going to leave?”
“Nope.” Smoker locked the issue down. “Where you go, I go. So if you’re here, I guess I buckle the fuck down and figure out how to cope.”
Well then. Huh.
Ace lay there silently, rotating his thoughts like rotisserie chickens. “So that means…” If Smoker listened, he could almost hear the metal creak and the sizzle of fowl. Ace pushed himself up, unsure how playfully he could breach the subject. “—you really are a pirate now.”
Smoker yanked him back down. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
The concept set Ace’s mind ablaze. Former Commodore Smoker—traitor to the cause, wanted man, pirate. Well, all were technically true. Sort of. The secret agent part put a little damper on the fantasy, but not enough to kill the spark catching inside him.
“Hey.”
Smoker grunted and eyed the other.
“Is it true they’ve been putting you through the paces? Like, I heard people are calling you our new chore boy.”
All technically and regrettably true. Smoker rolled his eyes and fixed his gaze to the wall as he sighed. “Something like that.” Much like the Navy, all new bodies started at the bottom. Apparently moving in with the title of ‘pirate prince’s main squeeze’ didn’t exempt you from work.
“Oh my god.” Ace muttered, trembling with budding laughter. “This is amazing.”
Smoker bit his tongue and tugged hard enough at Ace’s hair til the younger man resubmitted to silence. Not that he gave much regard toward Marco’s order, but Smoker would have enjoyed a rest. The comfortable ambiance of distant gulls, the creak of the boat as it rocked, and Ace breathing softly lasted about two minutes.
“…hey.”
The truth didn’t piss him off any less, but Smoker understood the restlessness. After all, he’d tried to scrap with Gin multiple times in his first few days, for no reason outside of needing an outlet for his frustration.
“Okay, sit up,” he slapped Ace on the thigh and knocked the rest of the bags off the bed, corralling them in a corner. After wrangling into his pants, sitting on the bed, he tugged on one of his boots, then the other, and jerked the laces tight before tying them off. When Ace stared at him, owlish, Smoker groaned. “C’mon. You’re just vibrating, aren’t you? Get up. We’ll take a walk.”
“We’re supposed to be resting.” Not that Ace wanted to, but he also enjoyed acting contrary just to make Smoker snit more. “Or…” he dug deep for ammunition, “Maybe you’re looking for an excuse to go bunk with Marco.”
Smoker suffered through a subtle full-body cringe. “You’d really like to think that, wouldn’t you?”
“A man can dream. The world gov’ didn’t outlaw dreaming while I was being patched up, right?” With Ace’s trying grin, Smoker learned that no matter how strongly you loved someone, some days you genuinely wanted to chuck them full force onto the bed and bounce them through the ceiling. Ace did as told though and shimmied into his shorts. The solidarity in troublemaking made him feel less alone. Two pairs of heavy soles hit the ground and the wood underfoot creaked.
“So where to?”
“Gonna show you my new office.”
Ace’s eyebrows shot up. “Okay, that’s cool. I think I can forgive you a little more than before.”
“Shut up.”