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“Ace?”
“Yeah?” He stops and turns to face you, standing in the middle of your messy bedroom. He’s wearing that expression again, the one that looks to be somewhere between annoyance and indifference, but you know he doesn’t mean to. You realize you don’t have anything to say.
“Nothing…” you sigh softly and smile at him, leaning against the doorframe. “Thanks for coming over to help me pack.”
He shrugs. “S’nothing,” he says simply, but you both know it isn’t. You both wait in silence for a moment, and you admire how the golden evening sunlight shining through your open curtains pours over him, pooling on the floor around his feet. It catches in his hair and lights it up, creating a vibrant halo around his sable hair. In this warm glow, it’s almost as if he were an angel.
Or perhaps, not an angel, but something else. A fairy, or a ghost. Something not all the way there, haunting and sweet. In that perfect golden sun, his skin seemed to glimmer and fade. You could swear you can see right through him to the wall behind him. It never ceased to fascinate you, his beauty.
His steady eyes raise to meet your own, the warmth of his gaze melting you. There’s no guards up between the two of you, no barriers, no fear. You remember with some sadness how different it used to be. How your presence alone seemed to set him on guard.
But it’s not like that anymore, not since years and years ago. Time wears down even an impenetrable fortress, and so, too, had time softened his feelings for you. His eyes now hold a kindness, a relief, even a joy when he looks at you. There was a tenderness in his expression reserved just for you, as there was in yours for him. A tenderness so caring you almost wish you could call it– no.
You didn’t use that word. Not since that one night.
–
The two of you had been nestled against each other on a pool chair, the cool night breeze making you shiver and curl into him. You were illuminated only by the dancing turquoise lights reflecting from the surface of the outdoor pool.
The party was over, but the two of you had stayed, too comfortable and happy in one another’s arms to want to leave just yet. Crickets and cicadas were humming quietly in the background, providing gentle white noise that filled the need for conversation.
The lull of the gentle waves in the pool, the soft buzzing of insects, the far-off sounds of busy streets and cars on the highway all blended together into one quiet song. You could hear Ace’s slow breathing and feel his chest rise and fall under your head. You had wondered if he could hear yours, and if he could tell how deeply you were lost in thought.
Your hair had been wet, still, from swimming, and it clung to your face and neck and bare back and to Ace’s white shirt, now sporting a large wet patch where your head rested. His arm was draped over you, his wide hand resting comfortably against your waist.
You had lifted your head to look at him. The aquamarine pattern from the pool’s surface had rippled softly over his deep brown skin in the dark, barely casting enough light to make out his features. He had met your gaze, a lazy smile resting on his lips, and quirked an eyebrow slightly as if questioning your movement.
And in that moment, you knew. It was so crystal clear, not something that required thought, or questioning, or even to be said aloud, it was just true.
But you said it anyways.
You needed to say it more than it needed to be said. You wanted him to hear it. You needed him to know, and already you were sure he had known, but you desperately needed to be sure. Surely, he already knew how you felt. Surely this ease, this comfort the two of you had, the way you fit together and acted with each other as easily as breathing, surely none of it had gone unnoticed.
Surely he would smile, and that would tell you all you needed to know.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t say anything.
And in that brief moment, you felt him shut off slightly towards you. It would have been imperceptible to anyone else. There was no change in his expression, or in his body language, but you could tell in his eyes and the way they looked just a little sadder, a little further, that something had shifted.
You hadn’t said anything else after that. You had closed your eyes and let your head rest against him again, and he had tightened his arm around you, just slightly.
–
You pull yourself from your memories and clear your throat quietly.
Ace, who had crouched down to pick a pile of papers up from the floor by your desk, glances up. “Yeah?”
You walk over and crouch next to him. “These ones,” you say, pointing at a stack of yellow papers, “and all the other yellow ones need to get thrown out. But these,” you gently tap the lined page of scribbled notes in his hand, “I promised to give to my sister. So keep those.”
“What does she want with pages and pages of...” he squints at the paper, trying to make out your handwriting. You snatch it away, smiling.
“Old poetry,” you grin. “For my and her eyes only, thank you!”
He rolls his eyes and puts his hands up in mock surrender. “All right, all right,” he sighs in exaggerated annoyance, but you see a smile flit over his lips. “I won’t read your top secret love poems, or whatever.”
You press your lips together into a thin line, but look away, saying nothing. Ace resumes gathering the papers off the floor. “No response?” he asks, teasing. “Not gonna deny they’re love poems, huh?”
“Nah,” you say quietly, looking at the floor. In your peripheral vision you see him freeze and stiffen, then slowly relax.
“Alright.”
The two of you work in silence. You fold clothes from the bottom drawer of your bureau quietly, laying soft shirts in your open suitcase as Ace rifles through the papers.The silence weighs on you more heavily than before, punctuated only by the creasing of paper in Ace’s hands and the gentle swish as you smooth each article of clothing down in your suitcase with your palms before reaching for the next. It isn’t awkward, really, the silence, and yet you’re intimately aware of its weight as it presses down on you and bores into your ears.
The golden light pouring in from the window is still scattered into wide beams, which catch and illuminate specks of dust before they fall across the floor and settle on you and Ace. There’s a fantasy-like quality to the whole scene. It feels unreal, like it could all dissolve in the sunshine only for you to realize it had been a dream all along. But it can’t be. It’s warm, and it lacks the perspectiveless, warped sort of quality that dreams tend to carry. And most of all, Ace was here. You never dream of him. The way you feel for him is too big and too solid to take out of reality. No dream could ever capture it.
You’ve only dreamt of him once, the night you told him you loved him. Dreamt of him turned away, distant in a way he hadn’t been in years. Imagined him telling you the words you feared the most, telling you he could never love you, you aren’t deserving of it, you don’t matter to him at all and much less the way he matters to you. But the next morning you’d picked yourself out of your darkest thoughts, swallowed your fears, gone for a run in the park, and decided it didn’t really matter after all. Whether or not you define your relationship with him as “love,” you’d decided, isn’t important, as long as you could stay by his side.
You let out an inadvertent sigh as you think back. Ace looks at you quizzically.
“You alright?” he asks with a slight worry in his eyes that somehow makes you want to cry.
You nod, trying to think of a response. “Just thinking,” you settle on, and internally wince at the vagueness of your answer.
“About?” he probes gently.
You don’t want to tell him you’re thinking of that night. You don’t want him to know even now you’re still turning words over in your head trying to find one to fit your relationship with the same ease you fit together with Ace. You don’t want to see his gaze grow more distant again, even just for a moment. To feel that fear deep in your chest and have it roll around with your most buried insecurities and self hatred.
You don’t want to be rejected.
But, god, you wish he would say it back.
“Us,” you say, deciding to be honest. You bite the inside of your lip anxiously. His expression is unreadable.
He stands, saying nothing, and you feel tears prick at the corners of your eyes. But he doesn’t leave. He extends a hand down to where you sit knelt on the floor, expectantly. You take it, and he pulls you to your feet. He sits on the edge of your bed, patting next to him.
“C’mon,” he says, an emotion in his tone you don’t recall ever hearing before and aren’t sure how to categorize, “sit with me.”
You settle onto the bed gingerly, resting your head on his shoulder. He wraps his arm around your waist, holding you close to him. You never would have questioned this closeness before, but lately you’ve felt acutely aware of the casual intimacy between you two, the volumes spoken merely by the trust and comfort between your bodies.
The two of you sit there quietly for another moment before he clears his throat tentatively to speak.
“So,” he asks softly. “Us?”
You nod against his shoulder, suddenly afraid that speaking will release the tears you’re biting back. His hand on your waist tightens slightly.
“What about us?” he asks. You raise your head and turn your face to look at him in an attempt to read his expression, but he’s turned his face away. An emotion akin to anger wells up in the pit of your stomach.
“You know what about us,” you say, a tad more harshly than you mean to. He winces. You soften your tone, apologetic. “You do, don’t you? You know.”
He exhales. He turns back to you, an uncharacteristic weariness in his face.
“Yeah,” he admits, “I think I do.”
You draw in a long, unsteady breath. That stings a bit. It really does. Knowing he knows. . “Okay.”
You’d like to be angry, you really would. If you could be angry at him it wouldn’t hurt so much to feel his dismissal, you wouldn’t fear that shuttered look on his face. But you can’t. Not when he looks at you like that, like he’s as tired as you are. Not when his eyes hold such a profound mournfulness you feel you could fall right into them. And especially not when his bottom lip trembles as if he’s about to cry.
You’ve only seen him cry twice.
-
You think of the night and the long days that followed it in fragments, mostly. Each moment felt isolated, disconnected, grief weighing differently, emotions changed, your relationship redefining itself again and again.
You remember you’d stumbled out of your friend’s car, not quite drunk but certainly not sober, just tipsy enough that you wobbled in your heels. Your eighteenth birthday had been three days before– you remember your friends surprising you with a cake earlier that evening. You remember opening the front door, not noticing it was unlocked but noticing Ace’s worn sneakers tossed on the floor inside.
You remember the kitchen lights being off.
The moment had an eerie feel to it. Not in the ethereal sense, but in its liminality, in the way it felt like a diorama or a photograph, some gothic horror-obsessed art student’s final project. Eerie in the way you could tell something was horribly wrong without needing words or expressions. Eerie in its falseness. The way you could feel this intangible presence between the two of you, a sticky, haunting feeling that made you feel sick to your stomach, it made you feel like screaming. The silence was ringing in your ears, punctuated only by Ace’s ragged, shallow breathing.
Gentle moonlight glared too harshly off of empty bottles on the floor. You remember the moonlight so vividly, how cold it had felt. How cruel of the night sky to bathe this room in light when its inhabitants wanted nothing less than to be seen. How cruelly impartial, how indiscriminate. How unfair, the way it caught the lonely boy crying and shaking on the cold floor in its harsh beam.
When you’d knelt next to him the pale light reflected, too, off of the tears that were running down his face, giving his cheeks a ghostly sheen. His eyes were red and swollen, his face resting on his knees as he clutched the brim of his worn hat, tugging it down around his ears. His eyes were fixed on the floorboards, never once lifting to meet yours.
You remember a vice closing around your chest, your breaths coming too shallowly, your heart pounding too hard in your ears. You’d taken his shaking hands. You’d clasped them tightly in your own.
“It’s okay,” you remember whispering into him, and you remember how his racking sobs had gotten so, so much worse, agonized shudders running through his whole body. “It’s okay,” you’d said a second time, though your voice quivered in your uncertainty. You had no idea how to help him. All you knew how to do was be there, so there you stayed, his hands in yours until the shaking finally stopped.
You remember lighting up a cigarette, Ace asleep in your bed, his breath ragged from hours of crying.
Eventually, you’d fallen asleep too, weariness overtaking your worry.
You remember that you didn't ask him what had happened. It had felt too intimate, too personal, too new and raw and real. He had come to you in his moment of need– that was why you couldn’t ask. He'd come to you, he’d felt safe there on your floor, safe drinking your liquor, safe on your shoulder. You couldn't ask because you didn't need to, because he trusted you not to.
You'd driven him home that afternoon, the silence between you two a yawning chasm neither of you dared attempt to cross. Luffy had opened the door, his eyes red and his face drawn with anger. You’d thought for a minute, how differently they grieve. So strong, both of them, but so broken. And again, you couldn’t ask.
You remember it was four in the afternoon, and you were missing work. You’d laid down with Ace in his bed. He didn’t ask you to. His back was turned to you, his eyes closed in what could be mistaken for sleep. You knew this meant acceptance. You’d stayed there, watching the slight rise and fall of his side until his breaths evened out into the familiar rhythm of sleep.
You’d talked to luffy. You didn't ask, but he told you, a grave seriousness to his tone you weren’t used to and honestly hoped you'd never hear again.
Sabo was dead.
It had been a long time before silence felt the same between you
-
There was one other time. You don’t like to remember that one. You can’t, really, even if you try– Ace, opening your door to see you on the floor. Ace, trembling, tears falling from his eyes, begging the 911 operator for help. Then, not Ace. A paramedic. A hospital bed. Ace again, head in his hands– only brief flashes remain.
You wish sometimes he hadn’t come.
-
Ace’s tears are not something you understand. Not something that feels safe. So no, you can’t be angry, as much as you wish you could. Not when it’s because of you that they’re threatening to spill over his dark lashes once more. What wells up instead of anger, racing through your veins to seize your beating heart in an icy grip, is a sort of muted grief. A preemptive mourning.
Why?
“Ace,” you say, and pause, not sure where to go or what to say next. “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
His shoulder draws slightly away from under your head, but you keep going. “What I said that night, I meant it. I meant it then and I mean it now.”
Pulling off of his shoulder to face him better, you see him looking obstinately at the floor.
“Can you at least look at me?” you feel like you’re begging. You hate this, how desperate you must seem yet how deeply you long for that new kind of closeness with him.
He draws in a deep breath, his hands clenched so hard his knuckles are white. He finally turns, shifting so he’s fully facing you on the bed, that awful, guilty exhaustion still lining his face.
“I just…” he trails off, and you notice for the first time that there’s fear there too, etched around his eyes where you normally see laughter.
“It’s all right,” you say, even though it isn’t.
“It isn’t,” he echoes your thoughts. “It isn’t, and it’s my fault, I just don’t know…”
There’s a million ways he could have finished that sentence. Don’t know how to talk about things like this. Don’t know what to say. Or, far worse, don’t know how to let you down easy. Don’t know how to tell you I don’t feel the same.
“I know,” you say, and it comes out as a whisper. You tug at the hem of your shirt, distressed. “And I know you don’t. You don’t have to. I was just hoping– I don’t know what I was hoping. That maybe something had changed. Or that things hadn’t changed. Or that you’d forgotten.”
Ace looks at you for a moment, unreadable. Then, surprising you, he raises his hands to cradle your face. You feel his rough thumbs brush over your cheeks with an impossible softness. “You’re crying,” he says, a horrible, terrible, unforgivable sadness in his voice. “Stop crying, I don’t want you to cry.” His voice cracks. His hands are shaking. “Please don’t cry.”
You open and shut your mouth, startled out of your hurt for this brief moment. “Please,” he begs again, and you realize that he’s crying, too, in earnest now, tears streaming from his eyes and dripping down onto your sheets. The third time, you think, and it’s because of me again. That’s twice now. He shouldn’t suffer like this because of me. I’m not worth it.
But despite this, betraying your thoughts, you find yourself reaching out to him, wrapping him in your arms and holding him as tightly as you can. His arms settle around you and he buries his face in your shoulder, squeezing you tightly.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Please don’t think I don’t- that- I’m so sorry, so sorry, I didn’t want…” He squeezes you tighter.
“I know, ” you say, even though you don’t, not really. Your voice cracks. “I know, I know, it’s okay, it’s all okay.” He doesn’t respond, just sniffs. You rub comforting circles into his back.
“I’m sorry,” Ace chokes out a second time.You raise your arm to hold the side of his head tightly against you. “Shh, shh… shh…” you murmur softly, stroking his hair and fighting to keep your voice steady. “It’s okay, you’re okay, I’m not mad… it’s all okay, it’s all going to be all right…”
Your voice wobbles slightly and you bite your lip, traitorous tears escaping your eyelashes to run down your cheeks. “You’re okay,” you say again, and you’re not sure if it’s to Ace or yourself this time. “You’re…” you swallow and don’t finish your sentence, opting instead to exhale softly and close your eyes.
Ace sniffles loudly and pulls away from you slightly. “I’m sorry,” he says again, his voice slightly steadier. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would never try to hurt you, I-” he breaks off, clenching his tear-streaked jaw and looking away.
“Shh, sh,” you murmur. You reach up to cradle his face gently, much as he had held yours. His freckled cheeks now shine with a thin coating of tears in the evening light, and golden sparks dance in his wet eyes. His hair is disheveled, his lip bleeding slightly from biting it too hard, his face red and blotchy, but you feel somehow as if you’ve never found him as beautiful as you do right now.
You let your eyes drink him in, admiring every detail of his face as if seeing him for the first time. It almost is as if you’re seeing him for the first time, your love kindled anew as he sits before you, washed in that perfect golden light.
You run your thumbs carefully over his cheeks, wiping the tears from under his eyes, and he smiles at you slightly, tentatively. “I love you so much,” you whisper, suddenly not scared of his response.
He’s just a boy, a broken, crying boy who’s afraid of the same things you are. A boy who, perhaps, feels about himself how you do about yourself. A boy who, maybe, like you, deep down thinks he doesn’t deserve to be happy.
His nervous smile grows wider and he beams at you through new tears, his smile like the sun piercing the clouds after it rains.
“I love you too,” he says.