Drabble collection! Mainly because...I have so many drabbles on tumblr that I get from requests...but I'm to lazy to upload them here...

Rating & warnings will probably change per chapter (but likely won't go higher than T).

Rating: G
Characters: Ace & Luffy

"Why are you doing this?" Ace growled, fingers scrabbling against Luffy's shirt, tightening around his biceps and yanking him back. "You'll kill yourself!"

Luffy's flat gaze burned, and though he had to tilt his head up to look Ace in the eye, Ace still felt as though he were shrinking, his insides pulled tight. "I need to be able to protect them," Luffy said, jaw set and eyes hard, and Ace had no time to wonder when his little brother had grown into such a harsh young man. When had Luffy turned from rubber, easily pliant, to steel? When had he straightened his spine, laced it with metal, and shouldered the weight of the world and his crews' dreams?

He could feel the thud of Luffy's blood pressing against his thumb and forced his hands to relax in case his fire raged out of control and burnt Luffy. "You don't have to do it this way," Ace said, knowing his lip curled with the bitter words. "You don't have to win a fight but lose part of your life along the way, you stupid-!"

Luffy ripped his arm from Ace's grasp, back straight and taut and face devoid of the grin Ace had gotten so used to seeing from him. Instead, his lips were barred in a snarl that Ace knew he'd gotten from his crew, and he spat, "I won't lose anyone. I'm gonna fight for them, Ace, I'm not dying for them."

"Yeah you are!" Ace roared, and his fire howled with him, back erupting into flickering flames that licked at the sky. "You say that like you think I don't know your second gear hurts! That I don't know you're killing yourself every time you use it!"

"At least I'll keep them safe!" Luffy shouted back, his throat ripping the words and making them screech in Ace's ears, "I'm not losing anyone! Never ever again!"

Ace's jaw trembled as he locked it, a brutal growl in the back of his throat that he held back through sheer will alone, and he breathed a tiny tongue of fire through his teeth, trying to calm. "Luffy-"

"I'm not going to stop." Luffy interrupted, and Ace swallowed back the bubble in his throat that screamed yeah you will!

"Then promise me you'll only use it as a last resort," he said instead. "Only use it if your crew is in danger."

Luffy gave him a glass shard grin, sharp toothed and somehow close to normal, but Ace felt his heart clench at the loss of his little brother's innocence, his stomach tie itself into slow knots.

Luffy never promised anything he couldn't keep, and he was silent so long that Ace knew he wouldn't make the vow now. Luffy had a selfish, bleeding heart. He was gullible and friendly and fell in love with people as fast as people fell in love with his smile.

Luffy would fight for anyone he thought deserved it, and he was always believed in innocent until proven guilty, (until proven scarred and scared, and then he grinned and held out his hand. Ace hadn't realised that Luffy had perfected that tactic on him until he realised that Luffy had collected a crew of walking mishaps and self-called monsters and he could see parts of his scars mirrored in their bruises.)

Luffy would never give a promise he wouldn't die keeping, but this one would kill him either way, so he was silent and Ace forced himself to let it go and let Luffy keep his silence.

AN: Technically an au bc there's no feasible way for Ace to know about second gear? But I wanted to write about the situation anyway. vuv

Feel free to send requests at my tumblr (which is the same account name as this vuv) btw, and as a last note - please R & R!