Aria's Pov
I expected awkward pauses, too many glances, maybe even him deciding to ditch me somewhere shady because "oops, pirate life."
Reality? Completely different. We were… good. Stupidly good.
It wasn't just sex — though, full disclosure, there was plenty of that. And every time was just as delicious as the last. But it was also the easy way he'd hand me food without me asking, the way he never made me feel like I was tagging along even when I teased him about carrying all the weight, the way he laughed when I poked at his pride.
Somehow, we slid into a rhythm. Eat, travel, tease, occasionally fuck like the world was ending. Rinse, repeat. Honestly? I was having the time of my goddamn life.
Which meant, naturally, Ace had to drop a bomb.
"I'm heading to Alabasta," he said one morning, while chewing on dried meat like it was no big deal. "Need to find my brother."
I froze mid-bite, eyes narrowing. "Alabasta? As in, desert hellhole Alabasta? You want to voluntarily march into a furnace?"
"Not voluntarily. Necessarily." He shrugged like it was obvious. "Gotta see him."
"You can meet him in a place with normal temperature."
He raised a brow. "You don't have to come."
Oh, so that's how it'll be.
I wanted to argue, but a spark flickered in my chest. Alabasta meant Luffy. Luffy meant Strawhats. Strawhats meant Zoro, Sanji, Nami, and Robin. Sure, Ussop is there, but he's taking so we don't count him.
"I'll come," I said finally, trying to sound like it was a reluctant sacrifice and not me frothing at the mouth at the chance to ogle green hair and six-pack blondes.
Ace grinned, satisfied, before ruining the moment. "Good. I wanted you to meet Luffy anyway. You're both the dumbest people I know. You'll get along."
I stopped dead, glaring at him. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me." He smirked like the smug bastard he was.
"Did you just—did you just call me dumb? In the same breath as your rubber-band brother?"
"You teleported us into the middle of a goat herd because you panicked. That's peak dumb."
"That was strategy!"
"Yeah? Tell that to the goat that headbutt me when I tried to save you."
We bickered the rest of the day, which meant things were perfectly normal between us.
The journey to Alabasta was long. And for the record, yes, I did consider just wishing us there. But then I remembered how drained I'd been when I'd dragged us just a few miles to avoid Marines, and I wasn't about to risk fainting in the middle of the desert. Imagine passing out face-first into sand dunes. Ace dragging my ass like a sack of flour. He might just leave me there.
So we did it the old-fashioned way: On foot. On boats.
And then the heat hit.
Anime had lied to me. Lied like a dirty, manipulative, sunlit bastard. Sure, Alabasta was golden and dramatic onscreen. In person? It was stepping into a convection oven cranked to broil. , Sweat plastered my shirt to my back within minutes, I was two seconds away from begging the universe for air-conditioning and my hair felt like it was personally staging a rebellion.
"Are you dying, or is that just your normal face?" Ace asked, entirely too cheerful for someone whose freckles should have been sizzling right off his skin.
"I'm fine," I wheezed, wiping my forehead. "Unlike you. You're about to fry like a rotisserie chicken trying to act tough in those clothes."
Ace, infuriatingly, wasn't even sweating. He had his usual open shirt, the sun bouncing off his skin like he was made for this. Which, okay, maybe he was. Fire guy, desert. Still.
"You'll burn," I warned.
He grinned. "Can't. Fireproof."
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, excuse me for being concerned about the delicate epidermis of my boyfriend."
"Boyfriend?" He tilted his head, grin widening.
"Shut up. I hate it here," I groaned, trudging through sand that swallowed my boots with every step. "I'm melting. You're traveling with a puddle now. Congratulations."
More bickering, more heat, more me fantasizing about iced lattes.
Eventually, we made it to the coast near Alabasta. The place looked calmer than I expected—no chaos, no explosions, no Baroque Works. Which, for anyone familiar with the arc, was weird.
"Uh," I said, squinting at the horizon. "Is it just me, or does it look like… nothing's happening?"
Ace shaded his eyes with one hand. "Place looks pretty peaceful to me."
Panic buzzed in the back of my head. If Crocodile was already taken down, then the Strawhats might've already sailed off. That meant Zoro abs, Sanji flirting, and Robin smarts could be slipping right out of my grasp.
But how the hell was I supposed to explain that to Ace?
"Hmm," I mumbled instead, trying to look casual while internally screaming. "Maybe everyone just… took the day off?"
Before he could give me a weird look, a shout carried across the water.
"Aaaaaaace!"
I turned toward the sound, heart slamming against my ribs. On a small ship near the shore, a familiar straw hat bobbed in the sun.
Before I could blink, an impossibly long arm stretched across the sand, the hand smacking down onto Ace's shoulder.
"What the fu—" I yelped as the rest of the rubbery body slingshotted after it, flying toward us with all the grace of a human rubber band.
I know.. I know.. I took a lot longer than I said I would, but I actually got extremely busy. I'm writing this on borrowed time actually. Anyway, that's for reading. And If I could find more borrowed time, I would write more.