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The glow from the corner bodega's sign always bled through the cracked blinds of the apartment, casting the already peeling linoleum in horizontal slashes of magenta and toxic green. But tonight in the early hours of 3:14 am, they looked exceptionally horrendous.
For all around Ace was a mess of yarn.
Not the nice merino stuff that cost a good fifteen dollars or more a skein from the boutique shop three blocks down, but the cheap acrylic yarn from a discount bin at some random craft chain by the highway. It was stiff past the point of any comfort, it left small fibers on your fingers, and the scent could only be compared to industrial oil.
In the center of it all sat a small object. It could easily be mistaken for various different monstrosities given how lopsided it was and how the seams were bulging due to Ace's inability to master a proper corner, but it was a crochet box.
And inside the box, resting upon a bed of black yarn, was a silver loop with a cluster of blue that was meant to represent a sapphire.
It looked like a child's toy. It looked like rubbish.
Ace closed his eyes, dropping his forehead against his knees as a memory from three weeks ago hit him with the physical sting of an open paper cut exposed to vinegar.
They had been sitting in the local park—the one with the broken swings and the reindeer graffiti that always came back no matter how many times it was scrubbed away—eating takeout while Sanji complained about his culinary arts professor.
Ace had laughed at something Sanji said—some biting critique of a classic French sauce that his professor knew little about but claimed otherwise—then reached into his pocket to pull out a blue raspberry Ring Pop he had bought from the bodega on a whim only hours earlier.
"Marry me." He had said, ignoring the way his heart hammered in his chest.
He hadn't planned on it, not really. It wasn't the right time. They were young, drowning in midterms, and surviving purely on instant ramen and the occasional stolen plate of pastries Sanji had smuggled out of the restaurant kitchen. And don't even get Ace started on the radiator in his place that clanked like a dying engine, or the bathroom that required a specific jiggle of the handle to keep the toilet from overflowing.
It was stupid. It was reckless. It was entirely, beautifully Ace.
Sanji had frozen, his cigarette caught half way to his lips in a way that was almost comical when paired with his wide eyes, and a for a moment following this, his expression softened into something that looked dangerously like longing.
But then the shutter slammed down.
Sanji had scoffed—a quick puffing sound through his nose—then took a drag from his cigarette as he turned away to hide the sudden flush on his neck.
"Get a real ring, Ace," Sanji had muttered. "Get something that doesn't melt in the rain, and maybe I'll consider it."
He had laughed afterwards, then changed the subject to the weather. Ace had laughed too, stuffing the Ring Pop back into his pocket where it eventually grew sticky and collected lint until he threw it into the gutter three days later.
But the laugh had stayed stuck in Ace's throat.
Get a real ring.
To Sanji, it was a joke. But to Ace, it was proof of his own inadequacy. He currently had $43.12 to his name. His next check from the shop wouldn't come for another two weeks, and forty percent of it was already earmarked for the electric bill and the chain lube he needed to restock his toolbox.
Even the cheapest, thinnest band of silver with a diamond that required a magnifying glass to see properly cost hundreds of dollars. Those hundreds were weeks of groceries. It was electricity. It was rent. It was gas for his motorcycle. It was the difference between keeping his boots together with duct tape or buying a new pair before the winter slush set in.
So he had gone to the craft store and spent $6.50 on acrylic yarn, then spent the next half of the day sitting on his bed and learning how to make a magic circle from a YouTube tutorial featuring a woman with a very clam voice and perfect pastel nails.
He would never admit it aloud, but he had unraveled the silver yarn four times because the loops were too loose, and the diamond went through countless redesigns so it would at least semi resemble the geometric precision Sanji deserved.
He had finished it yesterday at noon, then sent a picture of it resting in its crooked little box to Sanji with the same declaration he had said before, Marry me.
That was hours ago, and the text was still sitting there. Unanswered.
The silence of a phone that wasn't raining was louder than a car alarm. It had a weight to it. A thickness that filled the corners of the room until the air became difficult to breathe.
Ace picked up his phone with a shaking hand—not a violent tremor, thankfully, but enough that it brought a spark of irritation—and unlocked the screen. The messaging app opened instantly, creating a direct pipeline to his own humiliation.
Gordon Ramsay Could Never ❤🔥💋
The contact at the top used to be a little joke. His way of expressing his sentimentality six months ago. But during the tenth hour of silence, Ace had looked at it and felt a sudden, violent wave of nausea. The emojis were an univited intimacy, and the joke was nothing more than a childish assumption of closeness that he had no right to claim.
So he had cleared it out with one aggressive tap, and replaced it with Sanji. Just Sanji. It was clean. It was distant. It was a statement of fact rather than an expression of affection.
But upon looking at it now, he realized just how far his childish behavior stretched.
"Stupid," Ace muttered, his voice as dry as gravel being dragged across asphalt. "You're so fucking stupid."
As if to punish himself further, he looked at the photo he sent and gods did it look grotesque. In the harsh lighting he had used to take it, the band looked like a caterpillar that had died while trying to curl into a circle.
Why had he made that? No, why did he send it? What sort of grown man sends a knitted piece of garbage to someone like Sanji and expects to be taken seriously?
Sanji worked in a kitchen where presentation was everything while maintaining a GPA that was idolized. Sanji spent hours ensuring that a single sprig of parsley was angled at precisely forty five degrees on a plate. Sanji wore shirts that he ironed himself—even the cheap ones from the thrift store—because he couldn't stand the sight of wrinkles.
And Ace had given him a block of candy and a lump of yarn that would sooner give him a rubbing burn than any sort of joy.
Ace began to scroll upwards, past the week of ordinary texts.
did u buy milk?
got the double shift FML
Meet up behind the chem lab? 💋
I miss you
Every message was a tiny monument to the life they were supposed to be building together, but now they read like a series of warnings he had blindly ignored.
He stopped at a message from three months ago, the night they had gone out for Sanji's birthday.
Ace had saved for weeks to take him to a decent seafood place. It wasn't anything with those fancy five star ratings, but it had pressed white tablecloths with embroidered cloth napkins, and both of them had dressed better than their usual attire.
Ace had spent the entire night terrified that he would slip up in some regard. Either by dropping his fork, or spilling wine on the cloth, or using the wrong words with the waiter. This stress made him so tense, his shoulders ached for days afterward.
But Sanji… Sanji had been lovely that night. He had smiled that smile that always brought butterflies to his stomach and he had reached across the table to touch Ace's wrist. Even now, Ace could feel the phantom touch of his thumb brushing across his pulse.
But looking back at the text from the text day—thanks for last night, Ace. It was really nice—Ace didn't see the sweetness anymore.
He saw the charity.
He saw the polite gratitude of someone who was adjusting their expectations downward to accommodate a partner who couldn't keep up.
"He hates when I do this." Yet his thumb was drafting a new message before his brain could intercept the impulse.
wow looking back at this whole thing and it actually looks so sad lmao
The lmao was a shield. If he laughed at himself first, then Sanji's silence wouldn't hurt so bad. If he turned his own heart into the punchline of a joke, then the rejection only became part of the bit.
it was just a joke anyway! nothing serious or whatever
The lie tasted like copper in his mouth. Despite those words attempting to downplay the whole ordeal, it was the most serious thing he had ever done.
He had spent hours with that tiny hook, his thoughts buzzing with the thought of how Sanji's finger would feel sliding into that band. He had thought about the kitchen they would have one day. A real one with a stove that didn't have a broken burner, and had all the space that Sanji could ever want to create his marvelous dishes.
He had thought about coming home to the smell of garlic and olive oil and knowing that when he wrapped his arms around Sanji's waist, he belonged somewhere.
But he didn't belong, did he? He was merely an interloper in Sanji's trajectory
Sanji was going to finish his degree and get an apprenticeship at some high end restaurant in the city. Maybe even go to Europe. He was destined for linen and copper cookware and crystal glasses. Ace was destined for grease under his fingernails and a recurring thought from the damp walls of his basement apartment.
His thumb kept moving as the filter between his brain and his fingers dissolved under the influence of three days of poor sleep, and an overwhelming sense of insignificance.
honestly I should stick with weaving or bed rotting. this isnt my calling
He paused. His mind seized up on the syllables of calling like a dog biting a stick.
callings a weird word. cal ling. ever think someones first name is cal and their last names ling? gotta suck to suck
It was utter nonsense in the form of rambling. He was attempting to fill the void by creating noise simply so he didn't have to hear the silence that was coming back from the other side of the city. Unless he got a call in, Sanji wasn't working. So he could picture Sanji's phone lying face up on his nightstand as Ace caused it to flash with his slew of messages.
Would Sanji pick it up then? Probably, and he would look at them all with a mixture of pity and exhaustion.
calling cal ling! ring ring!
"Stop," Ace told himself, hitting his head against the wall with a steady, thump, thump, thump. "Stop talking. Just shut up."
But the phone was an extension of his own flailing arms. He was drowning in a three foot pool and instead of standing up, he was splashing violently while screaming for a lifeguard who had already gone home for the night.
sry. Im being annoying. i know u hate it when ppl waste your time
That was the core of it. The underlying fear that had sat in the back of Ace's throat since the day they had started dating. He didn't doubt Sanji's love, he never would, but he firmly believed that he was a temporary diversion for someone who had important places to go.
Sanji simply didn't have the time for a boyfriend who essentially spent his hours doing nothing and never making a name for himself. What did Ace have? A sick ride? Well, not fully. She was an old chopper that had seen better days but still carried him wherever he needed to go in a pinch. Good grades? Depends on who you asked. A big heart? A heart will only get you so far.
prob should throw this thing in the trash where it belongs. just forget I said anything. ok
He looked at the little box on his desk and felt a surge of anger. Not at Sanji, never at Sanji, but at the object itself. At his own hands for being so clumsy with its creation. And at himself for thinking that would be remotely sufficient.
Proposals were meant to be grand and romantic, yet this… was not.
gonna turn my phone off for the night so i dont accidentally send you a crocheted house nextlolimagine a crocheted housesummer would be the big ol bad wolf of it wouldn't ithere i go againsleep well man
He didn't turn the phone off, he couldn't, although the cowardly part of him knew he should. Instead he dropped it onto the floor beside him, the screen down so he wouldn't be able to count the minutes that passed since his grand old spectacle of embarrassment.
sleep well man
He hadn't called Sanji "man" since their first week of knowing each other. It was a regression. A forced reinstallation of the walls he had spent two years tearing down.
Ace tucked his knees tighter against his ribs, allowing his eyes to drift close as the first real light of the morning began to trickle in. He didn't sleep. He just sat there, listening to the city wake up and feeling the ache of someone who had realized they were entirely alone in a space full of their own garbage.
⚬──────────✧──────────⚬
The kitchen at the Baratie was always cold during the morning, but Sanji preferred it that way.
The stillness that came before the prep cooks' arrival was the only time where the space belonged entirely to him, allowing him a moment to breathe and to putter about even if his eyes were bloodshot from the exhaustion of working a double shift overnight.
It hadn't been the original plan, but there had been a sudden call off and there wasn't any possibility he could tell the old man no, nor did he want to. Even if the insults spat as easily as breathing between them said otherwise.
The kitchen, this restaurant, and the cranky owner meant a lot to him.
Sanji finished the carrots, scraping them into a cambro with the spine of the knife. Then he wiped the blade, set it down, and finally reached for his phone. It was early, but perhaps he could surprise Ace with a little good morning to wake up to.
The thought brought a pleasant skip to his heart.
Only for said skip to harden to lead upon seeing a wall of text from the very man in question.
His first thought was that he had missed an emergency, and thousands of different worse case scenarios passed through his mind. What if Ace's bike crashed en route from work or the university to home? What if something happened to his brothers, and he was needing Sanji? What if, what if, what if?
But while he was relieved to find that it wasn't quite an emergency of that extreme, his jaw tightened with every line that he read.
"You absolute idiot." Sanji whispered, his voice cracking slightly in the empty kitchen.
He could read the entire trajectory of Ace's night in those messages. The gradual dissolution of his confidence, the desperate attempt to turn the whole ordeal into a joke…it brought a heavy weight in his stomach.
Sanji knew Ace's spirals better than anyone. He knew that when Ace felt small, he attempted to hide behind a wall of self deprecation in order to make himself invisible. And he knew that he would need to be guided out of it, lest he sink deeper.
Sanji glanced at his hands. They were raw at the knuckles from the amount of heavy lifting done throughout the shift, and stained with the faint, yellowish hue of turmeric that never really washed out. He thought about three weeks ago when Ace first began to change.
He thought about the silly Ring Pop.
He hadn't meant it as a rejection. When he had told Ace to get a real ring, he wasn't thinking of anything lavish like diamonds or platinum. He had been thinking about his father, and the cold world that came with that side of the family.
With the Vinsmokes, love was an investment portfolio and marriage was simply a merger. He had spent his childhood watching people buy affection with gold and expensive stones while treating human beings like disposable assets. So when Ace had offered him a five cent piece of candy with an unwavering certainty in his eyes, Sanji's first instinct had been panic.
The panic wasn't because he didn't want it, the panic was because he wanted it so much that it made him feel sick. He had deflected because that's what he did. He had hidden behind the demand for a "real" ring because it was a standard defense mechanism… a way to delay the terrifying reality of being chosen by someone who had nothing to gain from choosing him.
And Ace, who carried his own massive, heavy box of old rejections from a childhood spent wondering if he had the right to be wanted, had taken that deflection and used it to build a cage for himself.
Sanji looked at the photo of the yarn ring once again, then zoomed in. He could see the places where the thread had frayed from being ripped out then reworked. He could see the uneven stitches where Ace's fingers struggled to hold the thin hook. But he could also see the care that went into each piece. He could see the love Ace had for him.
Ace had spent hours doing something he hated—something that required patience and stillness, two things that went against his nature—just because Sanji had used the word real.
"A real ring," Sanji muttered, his eyes stinging as much as his heart as he looked at the lopsided sapphire. "You stupid, beautiful bastard."
He checked the time. 6:15am. The prep crew would be here in fifteen minutes, and the delivery truck was already idling in the alleyway down below. He should be helping load the boxes into the kitchen and helping stock the supplies, yet he took off his apron, threw it on the table, grabbed his coat from the hook by the door, stuffed his phone into his pocket, and walked out of the kitchen to where his heart was leading him.
⚬──────────✧──────────⚬
The apartment smelled like old coffee and damp plaster.
Ace hadn't moved from the kitchen floor, even when the light has shifted from gray and neon to a pale, watery yellow that was both beautiful by itself, but also made everything look old and dirty at the same time.
His phone lay beside him, dead. The battery had given up around 5:00 am, but Ace hadn't been bothered to answer the beep with a charger. After all, it felt appropriate. The phone was dead, the conversation was dead, the relationship was likely dead, and he was just a ghost sitting in a kitchen waiting for the lease to expire.
His chest felt hollow. Like a cavity that had been scraped out with a dull spoon. There wasn't any anger left, not even the sharp angst that had driven his texts only hours before, not even any self wallowing pain either. There was just a flat, gray landscape of certainty.
He had tried to reach for something beautiful, but he'd broken it with his own clumsy hands. That was the rule of his life.
A sharp yet aggressive knock on the door shattered the quiet. Yet Ace didn't move, he didn't breathe.
The knock came again, louder this time, accompanied by the rattling of the wood in its frame. "Ace! Open the fucking door!"
Ace's heart did a strange, violent flip against his ribs. He knew that voice. He knew the specific, impatient cadence of it, but his brain refused to process that information. Sanji was supposed to be at his morning class shortly. Sanji was supposed to be ignoring him. Sanji was supposed to have changed his number by now.
He stood up slowly, his joints cracking like dry twigs. His legs were numb from hours on the linoleum, causing him to stumble for a moment as he walked towards the door, then pulled it open.
Sure enough, Sanji was standing just outside.
He looked terrible. His hair was damp from the rain, sticking to his forehead in messy streaks. His coat was dark with water across the shoulders, and his breath was coming in short, ragged puffs that smelled faintly of tobacco and coffee. And his eyes were intense and furious.
For a long, terrible second neither of them said anything. It wasn't until the hallway radiator clinked once, a loud sound that sounded like a starting pistol, that Sanji finally broke it.
"Your phone is off." His voice wasn't loud, but it had an edge to it that made Ace step back into the apartment.
"The battery died," Ace said, his arms flat against his sides and his hands curled into fists to hide the tremor. "Sanji, look… if this is about the texts, I was tired. I was being stupid. You don't have to—"
"Shut up." Sanji didn't wait for Ace to answer. Instead he stepped into the apartment and slammed the door behind him. He didn't even remove his coat. He just walked straight into the small kitchen, his shoes leaving dark, wet prints on the floor.
Ace followed him, his throat tight with a sudden, suffocating panic. "Sanji, seriously, just forget it. It was a joke. I told you it was a joke. I'm sorry I wasted your time. I know you have work—"
"I said, shut up," Sanji turned around, his chest heaving. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, which he slammed onto the counter. "Do you think I'm an idiot, Ace? Do you think I've been sitting around the kitchen for hours because I think this is a joke?"
Ace started at the floor. He couldn't look at Sanji's face. The light from the window hit Sanji's jaw just right that it highlighted a small smudge of flour that he hadn't wiped off. It made him look vulnerable, which was a terrifying thing to see on a person who usually looked like he could survive an apocalypse without wrinkling his trousers.
"I didn't think you'd answer," Ace whispered, the lie finally falling away because he didn't have the energy to maintain it anymore. "You didn't say anything all day, and when I looked at what I sent you… that stupid waste of yarn… I realized how it looked. I looked like a fucking child, Sanji. I can't even buy you a coffee without checking my accounting, and I'm out here asking you to—to bind yourself to that? To this?" He gestured wildly at the dingy kitchen. "It's garbage. The whole thing is garbage."
"Is that what you think this is?" Sanji's voice dropped, losing the heat it began with and turning into something much worse. Something hurt. He walked over to the desk. He didn't look at all the tangled yarn or the empty coffee mugs. He simply picked up the crochet box.
"Don't," Ace stepped forward, his hand reaching out instinctively to stop him. "Don't look at that. It's ugly."
Sanji ignored him. He opened the box with a gentle flick of his thumb, then looked down at the silver loop with the sapphire cluster. His fingers—usually so quick and aggressive with a knife—were careful as he lifted the ring from its bed.
"You used the wrong stitch for the base," Sanji murmured. "A single crochet would've made the band tighter. This looks like half a double. That's why it's stretching."
Ace blinked, his brain stalling out. "What?"
"And your tension is a mess," Sanji continued, holding the ring up to the watery light from the window. "You were pulling too hard on the silver. Acrylic doesn't have any give, Ace. If you don't relax your wrists, you get these gaps between the loops."
"Sanji—"
"How long did this take you?" Sanji turned to face him, the loop resting on the palm of his hand.
Ace swallowed hard. "Sixteen hours," he muttered, looking at his own feet. "The woman on YouTube made it look easier. I blame the voice and nails."
Sanji didn't laugh. Instead he released a long, shaky breath that sounded like it had been trapped in his lungs for day. Then he stepped closer to Ace, until the scent that was uniquely him and the restaurant filled Ace's nose.
"Three weeks ago," Sanji said, his voice dropping to that low register that always made Ace stop breathing. "I told you to get a real ring. Do you know why I said that?"
Ace shook his head, his throat too tight to form words.
"Because I was terrified," Sanji looked down at the ring in his hand, allowing his thumb to trace the blue cluster on top. "My whole life, I've been told that things have value based on what the cost. My family… they didn't give things unless they could buy a piece of you with them. When you gave me that candy in the park, you didn't ask for anything back. You just gave it to me, and it scared the hell out of me because I didn't know what to do with something that's just… given."
He looked up, his gaze bright with an intensity that hit Ace like a physical blow. "So I said something stupid. I said something mean because I wanted to put distance between us before I lost my mind and said yes in front of a bunch of pigeons and a guy sleeping on a bench."
Ace's lips parted, but no sound came out. His brain was still busy trying to process the information and rewrite the past three weeks of misery in a single second.
"You… you wanted to say yes?"
"Of course I wanted to say yes, you complete moron," Sanji said, a small laugh escaping his lips. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, but his eyes never left Ace's. "And then you sent me this. You spend sixteen hours ruining your hands because you thought I needed a piece of metal from a shop to know you mean it."
Sanji took a step forward, closing the final bit of distance between them, and took Ace's right hand. Ace's hand was cold, his fingers stiff from the morning chill and the immobility for hours, but Sanji's palm was warm, even after the walk in the rain.
Then Sanji slipped the ring onto his own left ring finger.
The ring was too big—Ace's estimation of Sanji's finger size had been overly generous—and as such the base kept slipping, and the cluster leaned heavily to one side and ruining the alignment with the center of his hand.
It looked ridiculous. But it looked perfect.
"It fits like shit," Sanji's voice trembled a fraction as he held the hand up between them. "It's going to stretch out the first time I wash my hands, and the color is tacky."
Ace looked at the ring upon Sanji's finger, then he looked at Sanji. At the flour still on his jaw, at the hair ticking to his forehead, at the eyes bright with emotions, at the fierce, defensive love written into every line of his face.
The heavy weight in Ace's chest didn't disappear—it wasn't magic—but it cracked open, letting in a sudden surge of heat that made his eyes fill with salt before he could stop it.
"I can make a better one," Ace choked out, a laugh catching in his throat as the first tear ran down his cheek. "I can look up a different video. I can buy some wool."
"Don't you dare," Sanji used his free hand and pulled Ace down by the collar of his shirt. "If you change this ring, I'll kill you."
Sanji kissed him then. It wasn't a gentle kiss, it was hard and frantic and tasted like rain and old tobacco. It was the kiss of someone who had run through the city at six in the morning because they were terrified they had left something precious behind in the dark.
Ace wrapped his arms around Sanji's waist, using the grip to lift him slightly off the floor so that he could bury his face into the corner of his neck. He held onto him with everything he had, his fingers digging into the fabric of the wool and listening to the steady thrum of Sanji's heart against his chest.
The apartment around them was still small, still dingy, and the electric bill was still due in four day, but the silence in the room didn't feel like an ending anymore.
It felt like an opening.
"You really went crazy with the messages, didn't you?" Sanji murmured some time later, scrolling through the chat from where they were seated on the couch. Ace was resting his head on Sanji's lap, while Sanji laid his free hand upon his chest.
"I told you," Ace said, his voice muffled against Sanji's leg. "The spiral is real. You can't leave me alone with my own thoughts for hours. It's an unsafe environment."
"Calling Cal Ling," Sanji read aloud, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "You're an embarrassment to the university, Portgas."
"Delete them," Ace groaned, reaching up to try and snatch the phone away. "Just delete the whole night. Let's pretend I'm a suave, mysterious man who proposed with dignity."
"No," Sanji said, moving the phone just out of his reach. "I'm keeping every single one of them, and I'm going to read them to your brothers at the wedding."
Ace froze, his eyes widening as he looked up at Sanji. "The wedding."
"That's usually what happens when you give someone a ring, Ace," Sanji's voice softened as he looked down at him. In the next breath the phone was placed down between them, and his fingers began to a slow, pace through Ace's hair. Untangle the knots, while bringing a blissed look to Ace's gaze. "Even a terribly tensioned one."
As his heart took a newfound, pleasant leap, Ace reached out to the phone where the contact name still read the cold and formal, Sanji.
He cleared that one, but the emojis didn't return. The flame heart and kiss emoji felt like they belonged to an older version of them. A version that was still playing a game of distances.
Instead he typed out a new name entirely:
Hot Fiance (The One Who Likes Yarn)
"That's incredibly corny. How many fiances do you have?"
"It's accurate," Ace replied, locking the phone and dropping it onto the floor where it belonged. He then turned his body so he could wrap his arms around Sanji's waist, and nuzzled against his stomach. "You're stuck with me now, curly. No refunds. No exchanges for real gold."
"I don't want a refund," Sanji whispered into the quiet room. "Just learn how to do a single crochet before the winter."