The doorbell rang. Marco knew that it was Ace. He got a text five minutes ago asking if the raven could come over. It was twelve o'clock, and Marco was about to go to bed, when he received the text. Ace would only come to his house like this when his "adoptive "father let him or his father had to leave for some reason. Marco was waiting for the door; he knew that if Ace was hurt he would not want to see anyone. The doorbell rang. When Marco opened the door, he saw exactly what he feared. Ace stood in front of him with a bleeding black eye, and broken lip; the blonde was sure that Ace had more injuries under his clothes.

Marco lead Ace to his room, making sure that they did not meet any of his brothers on the way to his room. Marco told Ace to sit on his bed while he cleaned and bandaged Ace's wounds. They did not say anything for long time. Until Marco asked in a soft voice.

"Where is Teach now?" he watched as Ace thought.

"Business, he will be back in week."

That was good Ace could stay at his house for the night, but he would only stay at Marco's house if Luffy was okay, so Marco had to ask.

"So where is Luffy?" Ace smiled at him, but the smile did not completely reach his eyes.

"He is with Zoro, if you like. I can stay?" Marco knew that Ace was asking if He could stay.

"Of course, I would like it if you stayed" they lay next to each other on the bed.

Marco could hear soft snoring coming from the boy.

Marco couldn't sleep though. He thought about the first time he had met Ace. It was four months ago. Thatch had broken his alarm clock and forgotten to tell him, so he had slept in for the first three hours of school. When he finally showed up at school, he was sent to talk to the school counselor. Apparently they thought the reason he was late, was because he had problems at home. That, of course, was not true. His adoptive father Edward Newgate would never do anything, which could hurt his children. As he stood in front of the office, he could hear screaming from in there.

"You can't call him! I was late because of my narcolepsy nothing else!" a voice screamed.

"Your narcolepsy attacks are small sleep breaks and do not explain why you weren't at school yesterday." the counselor answered.

"I missed the last bus. " Marco remembered hearing a sigh come from the counselor like they had this conversation more than once.

"We both know that isn't true, but this discussion is going nowhere. For the rest of the week you have stay until five o'clock. I will see you room 5A." The door opened so Marco stood eye to eye with a handsome young male with raven hair and freckles. Ace walked away as fast as he could and the only thing he could think was that the raven looked cute.

Marco could feel his eyes shut. Remembering the past made him tired. The last thing he thought of was if Ace needed him the boy would wake him up; then everything went black.

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It was dark and silent; he was alone. He knew that Luffy was somewhere in the house, but he did not know where. He heard footsteps coming. The door slowly opened. He tried, no, needed to hide under the bed. He felt a hand wrap around his leg. Then someone dragged him from under the bed. Before he could move away a foot stood on his chest.

"Little shit trying to hide from me." The boy was desperate; trying to escape but nothing was working. Fist after fist hit him. He tried to fight back. He felt his hits hit the man, but the man did not stop.

"Ace stop," At first he thought it came from the man, but when the next fist hit him he started to fight back again. "Please Ace wake up!"

With a gasp Ace woke up, shoving Marco away from him. He did not want to see the blonde's face. Ace knew he had night terrors. When he looked up to Marco's worried face, Ace saw the broken lip where he had had hit him. The raven felt horrible for hurting the blonde. He felt like a horrible person; he hurt his boyfriend.

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thanks to my beta, I have this chapter checked on spelling errors