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Burning is not new for Ace.
He's always been the skin for a match to find its wandering flame: goosebump flesh, scarred and scuffed, rough around every corner of his body, dry 'round the contact spots that make you shiver when he touches, calloused skin that always cracked from the burn of a sun no one else sees, the weight of a dying star he was born with. A catch and brush against his flesh is always pregnant with the scorch, pulsing and trembling.
Before he ate his devil fruit, he was little more than spitting of embers crackling for resuscitation, he doesn’t remember those days in light, not unless they revolved ‘round Sabo or Luffy; before those two, it was dark. It was always a low feeling in his stomach, a shift that never quite sat quite right, a hollowness so chronic that it mimicked the heavy of fullness. Ace had always been made for the burn. When the fire first came, he remembered his younger life at Foosa in its scarlet, fighting with Sabo and Luffy over meat, over prey, over the blanket they shared, over the miniscule things. After his brothers, there was an empty hearth that waited for its rightful flames— some days, he’s sure that if he’d eaten the fruit before or without those two, it would have been his doom.
Something about it felt right. Ace was always the hearth of a home for flames— burning was always in his blood, hand–stoked by Prometheus.
Though somehow, "you run cold," is the first thing you tell Ace, something that isn’t new to the man. An observation that everyone's always made, leaking with its tepid surprise. He can tell you're hesitant about making that comment, as if it betrays the notion of careful observation you've been keeping reserved for him.
Ace merely grins, sees himself flicker on the hues of fire on your cheek with the lamps dotted 'round the quiet Moby Dick and agrees, "sure do!"
He realised two days into your sudden stay that you're the pirate from Whitey Bay's crew that Izou was always talking to, had been providing general crew expansion updates for. He recognises your voice, the intonation that betrays your hailing from the east. Izou's doomed Ace, though, talked enough about Ace that you've picked up an awful misconception that Ace was going to kill Whitebeard. It's not his fault— Ace considers himself a new man, a phoenix from the ashes of his multiple failed attempts to kill a dying man, but all you see is a squawking chicken running around headless, which many of his crew would agree on.
Your brows furrow and you don't look fairly impressed. In fact, you are so unamused that it wins over your curiosity and suspicion of Ace, so your next move is to stretch out your foot and continue walking to where you were previously heading before Ace barged into you.
The flare warps, stretches out with the short toss of wind that your body kicks up when it passes him and follows after the shape of you— snaps away from the safety of his chest and then disperses like it'd never been his in the first place. Ace frowns after you, confused at best but isn’t so concerned about you that he keeps thinking about it. You’ll come around, he reckons, you’ve got no other choice really.
You're still around after that, dotted in between crew members that Ace hasn't quite gotten close to, joking around with the sterner division leaders who are always beating him up in guise of 'training', and scolding Whitebeard on behalf of your own captain. Ace doesn't exactly know why you're there, without your crew especially, but it's easy to find you since Whitebeard's crew is namely full of men. He reckons it’s not his place to know, no one else is bothered about your presence so Ace doesn’t bother poking ‘round about it. It’s off–putting, somehow, to go from a captain to a name in the crowd, ‘specially in a crew that’s as large as Whitebeard’s; Ace is used to being the sun that people gravitate towards, from the days of his childhood and his youth, he’s not familiar with being just another planet in the orbit, doesn’t know what to do with his own weight. In a different time of his life, perhaps it’d be easier to know how to act around you, he’d probably have a better gauge at your intentions but Ace has been getting used to being complacent with the small things for now.
He supposes it’s for the best anyways, if he wants to keep on your good side— even if that is sparingly. Since joining the Whitebeards, Ace has become a stranger to suspicion, no one on the crew had ever doubted their captain’s decision to bring Ace on, even at the face of many of his assassination attempts; they seem to blindly trust Whitebeard, that or they found it hilarious that Ace was of the unwavering belief that he truly could kill Whitebeard. That or it was a mixture of both and much to his chagrin, Ace learns it is mostly the latter that made him so trustworthy.
You talk a couple more times after that and Ace knows that you're still testing him, checking to see where his loyalties lie with every passing conversation.
Unfortunately, you don't seem to take to his charm like the Whitebeard pirates have so easily, who saw something endearing about him trying to kill their father— he remembers something about Dadan saying that women are so much better than men at detecting bullshit. That only serves to confuse Ace though, 'cause as far as he's concerned, he's accepted his role as Whitebeard's son.
He makes up his mind to ask you about it after a particularly stern staring contest that gave him indigestion, but you're gone the next day, leaving behind a stain in the sand that’ll dry up soon after you, with no evidence that you were ever there.
"She don't like me much." He stirs the spoon 'round the soup that he's left long enough for it to draw a film over the top. He's only musing to himself, speaking it aloud to see if it makes much sense— Ace thinks that it does, but he ain't too sure why he feels weird about it. Feels like the smoke after a fire is burnt out, heavy and cold where there's space left from the warm, wisps of light monoxide tickling through the wax of early spring leaves.
Haruta frowns at his cooling soup, judging him probably. "Why'd you think that?" The twist of his face only deepens when Ace uses his spoon to bring the clump of film up to his lips, eating it without care.
Ace looks at Haruta like he's stupid, the way the twelfth division leader is already looking at him, "did'ya not see the way she was looking at me?"
Haruta kicks Ace under the table, so hard that it rattles his bowl of soup— luckily, Ace manages to stabilise it in time and when he offers some look of betrayal at the man, Haruta's already looking at him weird. "Don't be mean; that's just her face. She's insecure about it."
That's the only thing that Ace really takes away from the conversation, that and the fact that Haruta is a liar; no woman glares like that unless she fully well means to do so. It was intentional.
Ace doesn't see you again until Marco has the scare of his life as Whitebeard has a bad reaction to some new medicine that he's administered. It's lucky that Marco's devil fruit essentially makes him immortal, otherwise he'd have lost half the years of his own life taking care of Whitebeard's.
The closer of the fleets loiter around their father's ship, even as his stats come back to normal; unfortunately for Ace, Whitey Bay is one of those. That gives you an excuse to linger around odd corners, watching him like he's the reason that Whitebeard had taken his pills with alcohol (like he always does behind Marco's back) and that was— unsurprisingly— a horrible idea.
He's mature enough to ignore it, years with Luffy had nurtured him into the bigger person so he's pretty good at tolerating the weird stuff. That is, of course, until you accost him tucking himself back into his pants after a piss.
He'd like to say he's proficient with his devil fruit now— and not just as an excuse to get out of devil fruit mastery training with Marco— and moments where a sudden jerk or an unexpected scare makes him burst into flames have been scarce and far between, but you get it out of him. Manage to coax out that hypnic jerk, make the fire explode through the pyre laid beneath his chest first before swallowing whole up to his neck and he feels hot, but he knows it's not the fire but the embarrassment.
"What the hell are you doing—!"
"Oh," you blink, pinching off the fried crisps of your bangs, "it's hot."
Ace baulks, he feels like he's talking to Luffy about something that should be common sense. "Of course it's hot! It's fire!" He fumbles with the zipper of his shorts, turning his front away from your view, he remembers Luffy again for some reason— very specifically his stupid face with a finger up his nose— and then a dreadful realisation comes dawning upon him. "Is this the reason why you've been glaring at me?"
You seem almost upset by the accusation, "I haven't been glaring— plus, you're cold."
With his pants no longer at risk of dropping to his ankles, Ace finally spins back around to face you. "What?"
"You're cold, but you're made up of flames." You carefully explain to him— the way that Makino used to talk to him and the brothers when they were younger, "don't you think that there's something wrong with you?"
"I don't want to hear that from a gal who walked in whilst my dick was out!"
"Don't worry, it doesn't look like there was much to see."
He ends up yelling at you— which has been a lot of conclusions to his conversations with Luffy actually so it gives him a strange sense of déjà vu, makes him miss Luffy even more. It really ain't the time to think about it though because he's got you by the shoulders, pushing you out of the men's bathroom when Thatch stops at the corner down the hall, blinks, and then just very carefully takes a step backwards and continues away.
Though he's mortified and his pride is irreversibly damaged and some of the division leaders are clapping him on the back and giving him congratulations and unnecessary advice on keeping women happy, you manage to get somewhat closer. You've got a dry kind of humour, a cut–throat habit of speaking before thinking, a childish kind of thought process that Ace can't help but find endearing sometimes. He thinks it's those moments where he can draw out the similarities of your personality and Luffy's or Sabo's; being around you reminds him of the fire.
And not only because your question gave him some kind of identity crisis (because why is he cold when he's literally fire?), but because you stoke the flames. It's the way you want to test whatever unreliable theory you've formed up in your head about his diametric body temperature and his logia; how easy it becomes for you to sweep your hands over him, part away the flames through your fingers like you're cutting through wisps of his hair to remind yourself it was hot. Then, press your palm against his bicep, curl your fingers around the 'a' of his tattoo and then drag down until you're at 'e', palm prickling with the frostbite as you do.
You're awfully touchy, Ace thinks; he doesn't have a problem with it, but swears there's a lesson that Makino taught him years and years ago through the parting of flames about consent, ‘bout asking for things. But Ace ain't a kid no more and he’s a pirate now, so there are things he understands that aren't as heavy as others, crimes that aren't as bad as some. Your touching ain't so much a problem to him, he’s the victim he reckons, so it’s his say that matters. He likes the touch, likes words more, would prefer that you talk to him rather than scratch at his skin like you're attempting to peel off the goosebumps, but beggars can't be choosers.
You're at his side often. The Whitebeards think you guys are in your honeymoon phase. Ace knows that he's merely a lab rat, even when Vista whistles lowly when you intentionally sit close enough to have your arms pressed against Ace's. Bare skin against his tattooed arm, warm and smooth against his cold and prickly, scritching, tickling. Then, like it doesn't matter, you'll touch with your fingers— feel it all out.
"Have you always been cold? I mean, before the devil fruit too?"
You're not shy about these things.
"Yeah. Always." Luffy and Sabo complained when they had to sleep next to him. For that, Ace often slept in between the two, just so that they were both equally miserable. In July, they’d fight over who slept next to him, to which then he’d take his blanket and smirk as he cuddled into a corner. Sabo and Luffy would whine and complain, but he always woke up to someone’s hair in his mouth and someone’s foot in his armpit.
Regardless, Ace ain't the kind of guy to flush and fumble over some light touching either— hasn't been for a good couple of years— but what you're doing feels light years away from what he's trying to rationalise it to be.
No one's ever been the kind of person to touch like you do— to caress and linger; Luffy was always big on touching, but that's only because he ain't ever learnt any better. He's the kind that smothers, chokes Ace out and leaves him as a heap of grey ash and black smoke. On the other hand, Sabo has never been big on touch, doesn’t need it like he needs the words; he and Ace are similar in that regard. Your touch is the tending kind. Treading carefully, dropping another body onto the pyre, feeding the hollow with blood and flesh, keeping him a weighty full; you don’t touch because you need it or want it like Luffy does, you do it because you can.
You're letting him pick food off of your plate. He doesn't think you even got a tray with the intention to eat but he's not questioning you over it, not when he’s getting an extra fill and your toes are out of your cute wedges, nail scratching against the skin of his calf. You’d hassled him to paint them white for you— you could have asked one of the girls from Whitey Bay’s crew to do it, but he reckons you like making him flush. You know what you do to him, Ace finds that horrifying in a woman, can't help the way he’s attracted to it all the same so he lets you bother him about.
He’s tired out his own crew talking about Luffy, many of them know to avoid Ace when he gets like so, he’s been looking for a new victim recently and you’re the only one that lets him talk as he pleases. Ace likes to think it’s payback so he talks at length about his years at Foosa as you scratch up his calf. You even ask questions, “rubber?” You echo when Ace is halfway through the story of the time Luffy was trying to perfect his new move, “is he– like, surprisingly stiff?”
Ace makes a face, because you’ve picked up a lot of Thatch’s salad and he prefers meat, and because of your question.
“Y’know,” you shrug, fork separating lettuce and chicken, “how you’re fire but you’re cold, like does it run in the family?”
Family, that makes Ace surprisingly embarrassed for some reason, even though he’s always referred to Luffy as his younger brother. “Nah, he’s pretty flexible.”
“So you’re just the weird one.” Ace doesn’t bother trying to change your mind, you’re already nodding like you’ve figured everything out, and because you’re eating the lettuce and leaving behind the chicken for him. He lets you think as you please, and it’s certainly not because your foot is going higher and higher, settles in between his knees and finding the heat between his thighs, curling your toes and laughing around your lettuce as Ace distracts himself with salt seasoned chicken.
The next time you come 'round to the Moby Dick, it only seems natural that Ace feels the fire burn through his flesh, accelerating with a revv and leaving him with the sensation of skidding against carpet. A full body friction burn.
It's an immature thing: when you draw close, it excites the hearth, spitting out specks of broken coal and wisps of flames, threatens to melt all the calcium in him. Then, there's the cold after it, where Ace feels himself ooze back into his own skin, solidify against the cold of his flesh when you're far. The collapse of a star: the rapid energy that swirls into an intoxicating roast, spins itself round 'til it catches smoke, edges frayed and lighting up into bright hues of citrus until it's shot out as flecks of cool greys, goes around, comes around, goes and then comes, goes, then gone.
Haunting him is not the fire. Not the way you brush past him, dig your finger in and scrape your calloused print against the fold of his nape; not the way you don't stop; not the way you continue to walk off, talking to Whitey Bay about your provisions, what you got, what you don't. It's your back when he turns to follow, seeing you getting further away, feeling the warmth of your fingers fade away, fuzzy and carious and thoughtless. It's the cold after that haunts. The thought that comes to him after the frown, the soft, nagging insecurity that leaves him confused.
The day after, Whitey Bay has plans to set sail so Whitebeard makes it an excuse to celebrate, to have a drink.
Pirate parties are always the same kind of chaos.
Ace settles in front of all the food, never strays too far from the feast and lets himself be laughed at when he slumps face–first into his plate. Whenever he glances up to try and find you, you've moved. Weaseled your way into conversations with fleet members of other crews that he assumes you don't get to see often.
You'd started the night out by his side with your usual routine of checking the temperature of his flesh with your hands, assessing him carefully. Appraising his skin without even looking up to glance at him, leaving him with only the view of the top of your head— he wonders if you've got that glare on, the thoughtful one that makes him think you don't like him. He'd fallen asleep wondering that and when he woke up, you were gone. Must've not been too long since you left though, 'cause he can still feel an impression of the burn you left, fingers at the top of his shoulder, curling around to reach his collarbones before you've dragged your hand— fingers, palm, fuck, maybe even the shy of your wrist, all of it, intimate— down the curve of his slumped back.
You ain't come back since.
It's the third time that Ace has fallen asleep mid–chew. It's not as funny as it was the first time but there's still some splattering of laughter, a fuzzy noise over the tankards of beers and glasses of wine. Ace wipes the grease and spit from the corner of his mouth with an arm, yawning loudly to get air to kick start his brain and his bleary eyes wander around the beach of the stray island that they'd docked at.
He's chewing the meat that was already in his mouth when Thatch starts a second round of stir–fried something in front of him, the oil he pours into the fire revs it alive, kicking and roaring to a metre of a man and a monolith of life until he slams a pan over it. The fire splits and breaks apart, when it parts over the edges of burnt steel, Ace sees you.
Mid–laugh, you are, lips curled back thin and your cheeks full, lava spluttering out of the dimples, warmed from the fire in front of you. A laugh that's so evident with the fire splitting through rakes of leaves and branches. Shoulders stuttering up, down; body shaking; drink sloshing out of your glass with the shake; foot stomping a rhythm against the ground that slaps and twangs loud in his skull— the flames smother, spread out even and he feels his flesh warm just beneath the skin. Your hair bulges with the hues of the campfire that crackles, billowing with the sweet lick of a sunrise dawn, melting into all the strands at the low of your chin. Violent and fond: Ace can see how the fire stirs at your feet, encroaching so carefully as not to alarm. He knows how it works, more intimate with the flames than you, so he can almost know how quickly it'll burn through your lens, taking the world down with it until it's a calm, quiet landscape with only the fact that you won't want to acknowledge.
Whatever he feels though— whatever stands in that clear landscape across from him comes and goes, quick because it's a blink of his eyes and then he's falling asleep again, with that image of the bright, supernova you: haunting.
Like always, you're gone before the fire is smothered; in the cold of your absence, Ace shrinks back into his skin and scratches along the paths that your hands took in its careful observations and studying.