Work Text:
Smoker adores police work with the mania of a holy fool. He considers this a core tenant of his personality, a vibrant marker of his ethos that wordlessly conveys itself to anyone who even glances at him. Something like, “yeah, that guy’s a cop.”
But occasionally, well. He feels the downsides of the profession: A restless desk-bound jitter in his brain that refused to give him peace, vibrating alongside a choir of infuriating coworkers and a goddamn incompetent police chief and the fucking. Forms. Papers. Pens.
So now, barging up the creaky apartment staircase, he’s not thinking about the precinct. Or the new arms smuggling case. Or the bastard he shares a desk with. He’s got exactly one thing in mind, and he plans to have it in mind—on tongue, in hand, over him, under him—until the sun crawls back up to the east shore.
He almost drops his keys trying to pull them out of his pocket.
Portgas wasn't on shift until the end of the week, conserving precious energy for the rigorous task of sitting around and playing Uno with the other firefighters while the real men kept the city safe from hooligans. Which meant he wasn’t doing anything particularly important at the moment.
“Hey! How was—” is as far as Ace gets before he's getting his head pulled back by the hair over the top of the couch he's sitting on. “mm!” Easy kissing access.
Smoker lets go of him long enough to round the side of the couch and start unwinding the suffocating tie around his own neck.
He hates his uniform most of the time, hates dress shoes and dress pants and dress shirts and ties, but he doesn't hate the way Ace's eyes darken on the rare occasion Smoker comes home in full ensemble.
He drops to his knees He kneels down between the other man's thighs, making intense eye-contact with the belt buckle standing in his way. As pathetic as it sounded, he'd spent the last few hours thinking about the weight of Portgas’ dick on his tongue.
“Wow, okay,” Ace breathes out, tone pleased in a way that might have gone on Smoker’s nerves in any other situation.
“Did the devil tell you to wear a shirt today?” Smoker grunts at him. Stupid black and white Crimin polo.
“You know there’s more to me than just my smokin’ hot bod?” Ace says in faux offense. Smoker can feel the way Ace’s diaphragm subtly jumps in accordance with the laugh he’s suppressing, and Smoker finds it frustratingly endearing.
Smoker pulls at the hem of the black shirt. “Off.” Why were Ace’s hands in the way?
“Yes, of course, to everything always, but you should probably know—”
It's that exact moment the front door swings open with enough force to introduce hairline fractures into the flat’s flimsy drywall.
“Boy!” The booming voice is familiar enough to freeze the blood pumping through Smoker’s veins. “Come greet your family!”
So what Smoker gets is not an evening of coital bliss but instead a healthy serving of intense and lingering embarrassment. Worse, he’s now sitting across from where Garp and Luffy are inhaling a plate of meatball spaghetti covered in grocery-store rosé sauce and cheese, something Ace had clearly put together at some earlier hour. It wasn’t anything particularly spectacular, but it amounted to the collective culinary ability of the household. It was still better than what Smoker used to eat, exclusively cafeteria food and instant coffee. Recalling the boxes of summer sausage and protein powder, it was better than what Ace used to eat, too. How domestic.
Ace is sitting beside his rabid little monster of a brother and they’re doing that strange thing where they share a conversation through pointed glances. Whatever they’re doing is seemingly insufficient because eventually the kid leans closer towards his older brother.
“Why was Smokey helping you put your pants on?” And Luffy—bless his heart, Ace sighs—thinks he's whispering.
Garp laughs heartily and makes a joke about the virility of the city’s finest, the good old red-blooded men in blue, and Smoker’s hand starts itching towards the spare cigar in his shirt pocket that he can’t even light because they’re sitting at the dinner table and, contrary to what Ace thinks, Smoker has some manners. Were the lights in this house always so bright?
Anything work-related is apparently an instant trigger for Garp to start lecturing his youngest grandson about integrity and “justice” and his upcoming career as a man in uniform. Luffy’s head tilts in annoyance. And dear God, Smoker does not want to sit through another one of these arguments.
It all inevitably puts Smoker in the uncomfortable position of having to recount work anecdotes to a teenager who clearly doesn't give a fuck. The mood sours further when Garp brings up Ace’s teenage years as a juvie regular.
It’s hell, but he can’t get out of it any faster because the paperwork excuse won’t work on Garp and he can’t tell Ace’s immediate relations to fuck off out of his house.
Ace pulls through, tells Garp that he has his CPR renewal class bright and early (he doesn’t) with Marco (who’s on loan to the fire department a city over) with a smile that pulls out just a little too far. It’s the tension in his lover’s jaw that makes Smoker wonder, not for the first time, if this cordiality with Garp exists purely for Luffy’s sake.
It’s a while later, dusk blanketing the city, that Smoker finally feels brave enough to leave the solitude of their shared bedroom. He finds Ace hand-washing the vintage plate set they used tonight. Good. Smoker caught him loading the silver-plated porcelain in the washer, once. Once.
Smoker breaks the silence first. “What the fuck?” He says. The other man immediately picks up the implication.
“You jumped on me like a cat in heat,” Ace (unfortunately) reminds him. “Couldn’t get a protest in edgewise.”
“No, you fucking absolutely could have fucking said something about those two,” Smoker says through his teeth. “Thought we agreed; minimum twenty four hour notice.” Not that it ever worked for Luffy. He caught the kid breaking in through the fire escape window once, and had to deal with both an unwanted guest and an angry boyfriend because “I can't believe you pulled a gun on him!?!”
“I tried! Gramps called me this morning and you were unreachable. I even tried calling the front desk!”
(The branch secretary’s face lights up when she locks eyes with Smoker, motioning at him to come over. And nope, he was not getting saddled with more bureaucratic work and ass-kissing, not today. He swerves immediately down the closest hallway.)
Well. That might have been partially his fault.
Ace hums and looks wistfully out the casement window. “You know, there was definitely part of me that hoped it would make gramps leave us alone for the evening.” A pause. “...You mad at me, old-timer?” Ace asks, glancing down at the pale arm now wrapped around his torso.
Smoker doesn’t respond to that, just continues to lean against Ace, resting his forehead on the back of the shorter man’s head. “Work was exhausting. Babysitting our—your family is exhausting.”
“Does this mean we’re hitting the hay early?” Ace teases. “Resting those tired old bones?” The dark-haired man looks thoughtful for a moment. “Or we could go back to whatever you had in mind, earlier. Wanna ride me on the couch?” He asks, hopeful tinge to his tone.
The cop behind him snorts. “You sat on your ass all day, brat. I ain’t doing the heavy lifting.”
“Pillow princess,” Ace says to him (well aware of the risk involved).
Smoker snatches the wet plate away from Ace's rubber-glove hand.
“You’ll finish them after we’re done,” Smoker tells him.
And okay, that was fair.