Work Text:
What’s Plan A?
Marco x Ace
"What’s plan A?"
"Don’t give in."
"And plan B?"
"Don’t ruin plan A."
"So what did you do?"
Sabo raised an eyebrow at the person who pursed his lips, looking back at him with eyes on the verge of tears. Ace stared at his best friend. He brought a hand up to pinch his own nose tightly, forcing the tears to flow back in, and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling while cursing inwardly.
Damn it.
He really hated himself.
"Do you want to go back, if you're going to torture yourself this much?"
"No."
"Oh, a new record."
Ace sighed.
He threw himself down onto the bed and picked up his phone. There were no messages from the person he was waiting for. Or maybe there were, but he had muted that chat's notifications because he didn't want to see them.
"Twelve days, eight hours, forty-five minutes, and thirty seconds."
"If you're counting that closely, why not just go back to him?"
"I already told you, we broke up for real this time, Sabo."
Even though he did wonder sometimes if it would be better to just go back.
He thought of a hundred possible scenarios every single day he woke up. He wondered with every breath if they would ever get to go back to sleeping in the same room like before, or if that day was the last time they would ever see each other.
Ding.
Thatch: Ace, you're coming, right?
Crap.
"I completely forgot about the family gathering."
"Just decline it."
"What if Pops finds out?" Ace turned to ask his friend. "I don't want Pops to know we broke up."
"He's going to find out someday."
Sabo insisted. He sat with his arms crossed, watching his friend who had commandeered his bed for almost two weeks and had been crashing at his place since the day he broke up with his boyfriend. He didn't even know why they broke up, but why did Ace always have to come sleep in his room every time they fought or called it quits?
Sabo could barely even look Ace's (ex) boyfriend in the face anymore, either.
"Marco might have already told Mr. Newgate. They are father and son, after all."
"I'm Pops' son too."
"But you're the type who rarely talks about things."
Ace pursed his lips. He made up his mind, sitting up to reply to his other older brother's message the moment he opened the chat. He didn't want to leave Thatch hanging. Just leaving him on 'read' for five minutes meant Thatch would be ready to call and complain.
Ace: Is Marco going?
Thatch: What are you talking about? Of course he is!
"I really wish he'd stop being such a dutiful son and just not come home for once."
"Stop taking it out on him, Ace."
The one complaining pouted, before deciding to send a short final message.
Ace: Okay
"So, in conclusion, you're going?"
"I already saw his face today anyway. What's the big deal with just having a family dinner at home for a few hours?"
"You're sure you're not going to cry?"
And Sabo really didn't want to find out the answer to that.
Ace rolled over to face the wall and forced his eyes shut, cutting off the conversation. He heard the sound of his friend dragging his chair back to continue working at his desk, and could only sigh.
Ace picked up his own phone again.
Marco: Can we talk?
That was the last message Marco had sent yesterday, before they accidentally bumped into each other at a restaurant during the day. Ace pursed his lips, knowing full well the other had definitely seen his 'read' receipt. But Marco was still patient, not rushing him for an answer or spamming him with any more texts.
How did it turn out like this?
Even though Ace had never broken up or fought with him for more than a week. But this time, Marco seemed too tired to even come looking for him at Sabo's place. The guy definitely knew where Ace was. Ace didn't have that many friends, and even fewer who would let him stay this long—unless it was his childhood friend.
He shouldn't have said that.
But the guy was acting really suspicious.
Ace argued with himself in his thoughts before rolling onto his back, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling that he had helped Sabo stick up when they were kids.
Ace didn't like sleeping in the dark.
And he missed the soft orange light from the bedside lamp that Marco always left on in the bedroom so Ace could sleep.
"You guys are acting really suspicious."
"Did you break up?"
Ace gave a weak smile when Thatch and Izo were the first two to charge at him while he was clearing the dining table after dinner. He looked down at the dishcloth in his hands, not knowing how to answer.
Was it that obvious they weren't talking?
Of course it was. There was no way Marco would stay away from Ace unless Ace pulled away first.
"Something like that." He finally decided to answer.
"How long has it been?"
Izo continued to ask, standing with his arms crossed, looking at his youngest brother who was clearly trying to avoid the topic. Thatch looked like he was about to stop Izo from asking more, but Ace answered first.
"Almost two weeks."
"Two weeks!"
Thatch accidentally raised his voice, repeating what he'd just heard, before Izo stomped on his foot as a sign to shut his mouth. Marco and Haruta, who were walking past the dining room, stopped and peeked their heads in.
"Hey, Thatch. Pops wants to talk to you in his office before you drive home," Marco said in a flat tone, his eyes clearly looking right past Ace. "About the restaurant you're going to open. Pops wants to ask you something."
Ace bowed his head even lower, as if trying to bury himself into the long wooden table, but Izo's hand caught his chin to keep it from hitting the edge instead.
"Got it. Marco, where are you going with Haruta?" Thatch asked back.
"None of your business."
"I'm almost the same age as you, damn it."
Marco's laughter rang out. The two of them walked out of the kitchen without saying anything else, leaving only Ace and Izo. Izo frowned, crossing his arms as he looked at his younger brother.
"Why haven't you hurried up and made up yet?"
"Because we're really over."
"Huh? You're kidding me, right, Ace?"
"Look, Marco doesn't even want to look at me. How can we get back together?" Ace lowered his voice, which seemed to be getting louder as if he couldn't control his emotions. "Even going back to being brothers like before is going to be hard."
"You must be blind."
Izo said calmly. He looked at the overthinker and sighed.
"Marco has been looking at you non-stop since you walked into the house, Ace."
"But just now..."
"He just didn't want to make you uncomfortable, so he didn't stare openly."
Ace sighed and sat down on a chair to calm himself. He stared blankly at the door that Marco and Thatch had walked out of earlier. He didn't know what to do. Should he run after him and say what? Sorry? The one who should be apologizing was Marco.
But then again, he also hadn't replied to the message where Marco had said 'sorry'.
"Izo, I think Marco is cheating on me."
Grab.
The young man's hands gripped Ace's shoulders, turning him to face eyes that practically read, 'Are you crazy?' Then Izo lowered his hands, realizing he was overstepping.
"Between Marco cheating on you and the end of the world, I'd say the world is probably going to end first."
"Really. I saw it with my own two eyes."
"Who?"
"An employee at a jewelry store."
What?
"Ace, you should really go talk to Marco directly."
"He's been going to that jewelry store every single week for a month straight." Ace showed a picture on his phone to Izo. "He even lied to me, saying he had surgeries at the hospital, but he was actually going to this store."
"Is it possible Marco secretly likes the employee at the jewelry store?"
"If it were a normal person, they wouldn't jump to that conclusion."
"Then what am I supposed to think?"
"For instance, maybe he secretly went to buy jewelry for you, or he's looking for an anniversary gift for you, something like that."
Ace sighed and pouted. He knew. He knew that when everyone heard the reason he broke up with Marco, it sounded stupid. But at the time, when he found out the truth about Marco lying to him about his whereabouts, he was genuinely angry. And he was really pissed that Marco bailed on their dinner date—which was so incredibly hard to schedule around their free time—just to go to that jewelry store.
He really loved eating burgers at that place, too.
"It's nowhere near our anniversary. Let alone my birthday, that already passed."
"But the reason you're so frustrated that this breakup has dragged into its second week is because of something else, isn't it?"
Izo said, as if he could read his mind in an instant.
"What? Spit it out."
And how could Ace ever evade someone he grew up with?
"I... I accidentally blurted out something Marco doesn't like."
He didn't know how to apologize because his pride stubbornly insisted that Marco had to apologize first. But once Marco actually did apologize first, he didn't know what to do next because he didn't want to admit he was wrong.
"I know a few magic words that can resolve this whole thing," Izo suggested.
"The words 'I miss you', Ace."
"Did you guys get into a fight?"
"Yeah."
"Getting dumped isn't a small thing anymore."
"You'll make up soon."
"It's been two weeks, didn't Ace already find someone else he likes?"
Smack.
Marco glared at his siblings who had teasing looks in their eyes. He shook his hands out as if doing a little finger warm-up, and then smacked the back of the person making cursed remarks out of sheer irritation.
Only slightly irritated.
"Marco!!"
"You brought that on yourself, Thatch."
"Ouch! Hitting me like that," Thatch rubbed his back, which was starting to sting. "We're brothers, you know."
It's because they were brothers that it ended with just that.
Marco didn't want to admit how irritable he had been toward his colleagues over the past two weeks. At first, he kept it together well enough, but going home to not find Ace there, or having to sleep alone in bed... Ace reading his messages but not replying, and then seeing him with his childhood friend at the restaurant on top of that.
He was frustrated with himself for not being better at making up with him.
At the very least, he shouldn't have let Ace get hot-headed, pack his clothes, and go sleep somewhere else.
"So what did you do? Cheat on him?"
"Thatch, do you want to get hit again?"
"I'm kidding!" Thatch shot back instantly, not wanting a repeat. "So, what did you—the guy whose whole heart is filled with Ace—do to cause a breakup? No, wait. You guys break up often, but dragging it out to two weeks like this is pretty unusual."
"He shouted in my face and told me that I didn't love him anymore."
"......"
"Asked me if he wasn't important to me anymore."
"....."
"And then said he wasn't going to love me anymore."
"Good lord. Ace is so quintessentially Ace."
Yeah.
Marco knew that the other person didn't mean a single word of what he said. Even if he said it out of anger, there was no way Ace didn't know how much Marco loved him.
'You don't love me anymore, do you?' translated to: 'I want you to love me more.'
'I'm not important, right?' translated to: 'I want you to pay more attention to me.'
'I won't love Marco anymore' translated to...
Translated to...
Did it really mean he was going to leave him?
Marco's expression grew more solemn when his thoughts reached this point. Thatch rubbed the back of his fellow comrade-slash-brother and offered some encouragement, before excusing himself to go see Pops in the office upstairs.
"Hang in there. Ace can't stay mad for long."
He hoped that was the case.
Ace didn't expect to find him waiting at the front door as the time ticked over into a brand new day.
All the siblings had gradually driven home. Some stayed over, some went on to party at nearby bars, but Pops, who had gone to bed early, had told Ace to stay the night, even though Ace insisted he had to rush back to work.
It wasn't about anything else.
He just didn't want to run into Marco again in the morning.
"Ace."
So, seeing the person who said he was staying over standing in a long coat at the front door was quite unexpected. But it calmed his heart, which had been in turmoil for the past two weeks.
"Marco."
"Are you heading back?"
"Yeah."
Ace answered shortly before looking down at his feet as Marco reached out to adjust his scarf. The cold winter breeze, carrying the chill before the first snow, blew in, making them instinctively step closer to each other.
"Do you have anything to say to me?"
"...."
"Marco?"
Ace looked up at the taller man and flinched at the icy cold hand that reached up to brush against his cheek. At first, he wanted to turn his face away, but before he knew it, he was leaning his cheek fully into the other's touch.
Marco slid his hand up to cup the faintly red ear and leaned his head down to rest his forehead against his.
"I miss you."
It was the magic phrase that made all the pride in Ace's heart vanish completely.
"I miss you too."
He whispered back so softly it would have been nearly inaudible if their faces weren't mere inches apart.
"I'm sorry for lying," Marco was the first to confess. "I rushed to fix the design at the shop because I was afraid it would be too late. But I really did mess up the ring size multiple times, and I barely had any free time."
"I thought you were secretly having an affair with an employee at that store."
Ace laughed at Marco's utterly baffled expression. His face was totally blank, as if he couldn't comprehend what Ace was saying.
"You know that even if it killed me, I would never cheat on you."
"Oh, the hunger of someone who got stood up for a dinner date can make your lover think of a lot of crazy things."
Marco's deep voice began to laugh along.
"Especially if it's that regular burger joint of yours, huh."
"Especially those burgers," Ace admitted.
Marco placed a gentle kiss on the lips he had been longing for, before pulling a small, palm-sized box out of his coat.
"At first, I wanted to give this to you in front of the grave."
"...."
"But today counts as an anniversary too. It's ten minutes past midnight."
"Ace, let's get engaged."
The one being proposed to stood there bewildered, not keeping up with what the other was talking about. But before he realized it, a silver ring with an engraved pattern had already been slipped onto the ring finger of his right hand.
"What?" Ace finally found his voice. "Weren't you going to wait for me to agree first before putting the ring on?"
"No, you have to put the ring on me to show you agree."
Marco smiled and placed the other ring onto his lover's palm.
"I'm not taking that ring back. It looks best when it's on your finger."
Ace burst into laughter, then looked up to ask what he was wondering about.
"Did you just say in front of the grave? Anniversary?"
"The anniversary of your mother's passing," Marco replied, using his thumb to gently trace circles on the back of Ace's hand. "I figured if we went to visit her grave on the anniversary, I would ask you to marry me in front of her."
"...."
"She is the one who gave birth to you, after all."
"Marco."
"I wanted to thank her and promise her that I will take good care of you."
Thank you for giving this child life.
Thank you for allowing Ace to grow up so well.
"But I'd rather cancel that plan before we actually end up breaking up for real," Marco said softly. "I'm not breaking up with you, Ace."
Thank you for giving him the chance to meet and love this person.
Ace nodded, trying to wipe away the tears that were streaming down and blurring his vision. He didn't say anything, but he forced his trembling hands to slip the ring onto the ring finger of Marco's right hand.
Agreeing to be his fiancé.
"I don't want to break up either."
Plan A: Don't give in to the ex-boyfriend.
Failed.
Plan B: Don't ruin Plan A.
Failed.
Plan C: Get back together.
Success.