Warnings: Slight angst at the beginning, stalkers, shounen ai and implied sex.

The day he first met Luffy had been the worst day he'd ever had.

It had been the day his mother and his twin brother had died in a house fire, leaving Ace alone with his stepfather Marco, who, although got along well with his stepchild, had no time to comfort or even talk to him, no matter how much he wished to. He was constantly busy with his career, and now, planning the funeral and finding the two of them a new place to live. So Ace was left to grieve on his own.

He sat on a swing set in an empty playground — the same playground he used to play with his brother, Sabo, when they were young boys. The hinges of the structure creaked under his weight now more than they used to.

He buried his head in his hands and cried for the first time in his life.

And that's when he'd felt a pair of warm hands on his shoulders and immaterial whispers in his ear. That's when he looked up and locked his blurry eyes onto those of the ink-haired boy named Luffy — although he hadn't known his name was Luffy at the time — and heard a voice filled with (sadness? concern? heartbreak?) murmur, "Don't cry… Please don't cry." That's when Luffy had wiped his tears away with his thumbs and tucked Ace's head under his chin, and that's when Ace heard the boy's heartbeat going just a little bit faster than was normal and felt such a crush of warmth and comfort and love that he couldn't bring himself to pull away.

Ace sobbed into the stranger's chest for half an hour. He only left because Marco called him to meet up for dinner.

He started noticing that same boy around quite a bit after that. Always out of the corner of his eye, he would catch a glimpse of that same inky hair with a plethora of knots and a straw hat sitting on top of it all. It was like he was following him.

So he put his efforts into finding out who it was.

He learned the boy's name (Luffy) and superficial things like his favourite colour (red) and food (meat), but not much else. He did find out, however, that Luffy had been following him around like that for years, which explained how the kid appeared so quickly in a playground utterly devoid of people, just to comfort Ace.

So Ace had his very own stalker, who had been stalking him for years, and he hadn't even been aware of it. It wasn't quite as disturbing a revelation as he would have expected. If anything, it was a little reassuring that someone cared enough about him to go to such lengths. It wasn't something he had experienced much before.

So he started seeking Luffy out.

It was difficult, at first, as Luffy had conditioned himself to stay as unnoticeable to Ace as possible, lest he be caught. But he kept trying.

He managed to corner the boy once and invite him to eat at his table at lunch. Luffy said he doesn't eat lunch, which was a lie if any of the things Ace had learned about him were true. Ace invited him to come anyway.

So they sat together. Luffy was sporting a dark blush and Ace barely ate at all for how he kept almost saying something to Luffy. They kept sitting together each day until gradually they were able to chat easily like old friends who had known each other for years.

They started hanging out more often, to the point where they became best friends, even though Luffy never actually stopped stalking Ace. It turned into more of an 'it's just a thing we do' kind of stalking rather than a real 'stalking' kind of stalking. If Luffy wanted to keep a picture of him in his locker, or watch from the trees outside his new apartment, then who was Ace to judge? It's not like it really bothered him.

When Ace awoke from a wet dream about Luffy, he didn't question it. He just opened his window and called for the boy, who, sure enough, had been watching over him from the branches of a large oak growing outside. So Ace dragged him through the window, pushed him down on the bed and started kissing him.

There were no objections.

And when it was all over Ace pulled the covers up to their chins as Luffy shuffled closer for a cuddle. They fell asleep that way, cosy and sticky and content, but not before whispering confessions of all kinds into each other's skin.

They didn't need words to confirm that the window would always be open.

A/N: I had to write it down. I don't know why. But I did. I don't know if anyone will like it, but I had to write it.