So. Um. I had a LOT more I wanted to do with this, and then I half-wrote it, was interrupted, came back to it and discovered my creatve streak had died. If the ending is abrupt and useless, that would be why.

Finally I gave up having it lying around on my computer doing nothing and decided to post it.

firetears, this is for you, and I wish it didn't suck so bad. Sorry.

Title: Something not Entirely
Series: One Piece
Pairing: SmoAce
Rating: PG-13?

Smoker has never been popular with women, although he's not unpopular either. He's more comfortable dealing with a division of soldiers he can boss around than with women, who seem to cry very easily. But there are women who are drawn to him, because he is good-looking in a strange, indefinable way and he has a sense of morals so finely tuned that women know that at least he would never string them along, would never use them just because he can. Smoker isn't like that.

Smoker doesn't like cuddling. It makes him uncomfortable, which makes him irritable. The women he has had relationships with in the past often complain about it to their friends, how the foreplay was kept to the bare minimum and any sort of cuddling after the act was unheard of.

It was something you resigned yourself to, found some way to deal with it or left if you couldn't take it anymore. Women at least understood the unspoken cues.

Now Ace, on the other hand, seems to be deliberately obtuse, because when Smoker is too spent to properly protest he curls up right next to him and almost purrs with content, and his body warmth is too hot and too close, and Smoker hates it. But Ace is already snoring and if Smoker moves he'll wake him, so he stays stiff and miserable and manages to drift off somehow. When he wakes Ace is already gone, and all that's left is the slight indentation in the mattress from which the heat has already fled.

They don't always fall asleep immediately after, sometimes they clean up together and shower and wash the sheets. Otherwise, Smoker will have to give them to Tashigi to take care of and make some lame excuse to disguise the fact that he knows that she knows. Sometimes they talk, or eat, which is how Smoker discovers that Ace is clever and witty and has a stomach that never grows full.

And sometimes Smoker asks Ace, helplessly, what exactly they are doing together, because he's resigned himself to the fact that the freckled pirate keeps showing up when he least expects him with some blithe excuse about being in town, but he still doesn't understand why. Ace grins, or sometimes looks serious for a fraction of a second, and then he stuffs his mouth full of food. Or, if no food is available, he kisses his Captain just to make him shut up.

And inevitably they will fall into bed together and Ace will always manage to get Smoker exhausted beforehand, which shows that maybe he's not deliberately obtuse and just very perceptive.

Smoker doesn't know exactly when he stops minding, he doesn't remember which night it is that he wakes up to realize he is holding the pirate close. He does clearly remember the day he wakes up to a loudly snoring Ace who has managed to fling himself across all of the bed, and he wishes he doesn't know it's just a fluke all the way up until the next time, when it happens again.

And then realization begins to dawn as a nasty little feeling in his stomach, a premonition of a sort, because although Ace's visits are still surprising, they're managing to happen just when he needs them, or maybe he always needs them and only recognizes the need once is has been fulfilled, and he thinks that maybe he looks forwards to them a little bit.

One thing he never understands is how Ace can be so protective of his brother, and yet never seems to mind that Smoker is chasing him with the intentions of throwing him into a dank musty jail cell somewhere. Smoker wonders, sometimes, if maybe that's because the D. brothers share some secret knowledge about Smoker that Smoker himself isn't aware of.

He finds it irritating.

"You know I'm chasing after your brother, right? And I know you have major issues with anyone who messes with your brother, and more often than not they end up as suspicious smears on the sidewalk, so why aren't you beating me up or something? As I recall, that's what happened the first time we met, so what changed since then?"

And Ace grins that infuriating grin and nuzzles him, and says, "Well, I didn't know it was you back then, but now I do, so it's all fine."

This of course doesn't answer anything at all, but Smoker is getting used to not having his questions answered. He has hundreds of unanswered questions for himself, for one thing.