AN: Why did I make a huge af project almost right after the big bangs and then write it in little more than two weeks? Idk, ask my desire to write lolles a long fic for her birthday.

In other news go wish lolles a happy birthday you guys because she is amazing and wonderful and beautiful and 100% the reason I've hung around this fandom for so long and 100% the reason I finished the big bangs and she is just amazing!

(HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARLING, SWEET LOLLES, TYSM FOR BEING MY BEST FRIEND AND DRAGGING ME INTO THIS FANDOM FOR LIKE 3 YEARS YOU'RE AMAZING (and my all-time favourite writing bud, but you knew that already ;3) ILYSM ;/u\;)

"So?" Sabo asked, leaning against the window frame, and Ace felt like shoving him off the edge just so Sabo would stop asking. "What do you want for your birthday?"

Ace gave a pointed groan in response, refusing to answer like he'd been doing for the past hour, but Sabo only rested his chin on his folded arms. "It's months away." Ace said, "Besides, I don't want anything!" he crossed his arms and trying to look immovable, but Sabo only grinned at him.

"Three," Sabo said, and then added, "you know I'm not going to drop the subject until you tell me. Or has fifteen years of being my best friend taught you nothing?"

"Arguably for three of those years I hated you."

"You loved me. Secretly."

Ace shook his head, lips pursed, and Sabo heaved a sigh. "Just tell meeeee," he whined, lips falling into a pout and big blue eyes welling up with obviously fake tears. Ace groaned at the sight, this time pushing Sabo's head off the windowsill.

"I don't care. Besides, I don't want anything but you," he said grumpily. Sabo stared at him, eyes wide, and in half a second Ace had rethought what he'd said and felt a furious red overtake his cheeks. "I- I mean- You and Luffy! Not just you in particular, I meant like, your company-"

The laughter that fled his lips sounded awkward and strained, but Sabo seemed to accept it at face value, nodding slightly too quickly.

"Y-yeah, I could find him for you," Sabo said, languid shrug obviously forced, but neither of them spoke of it, nor the tension that now hovered between them.

Neither of them spoke about a lot of things, in fact; not about Ace's 'home' in the middle of the woods, nor the pauses in their conversations that had become more frequent over the years. Pauses that had followed declarations like;

You're my best friend. I love you.

Who else would know me as well as you?

As if I'd ever get married to anyone but you.

Stay. Please.

This would just become another misplaced sentence in a long list of accidentally spoken thoughts that Ace kept engraved on his heart and in his memory, holding a tentative balance between Sabo's flustered, (pleased?) reactions and his own embarrassment – or, sometimes, the other way around.

"Do you know where Luffy is?" Ace asked, before he could blurt out something stupid about how much he wanted Sabo to stay, how much he wanted a gold to paint Sabo's hair with, or a blue to capture the glitter in his eyes.

Sabo shook his head, pulling himself back to the conversation. "Last I heard he was travelling past the ocean again. One of these days he's just gonna jump on a ship and leave, I swear."

They both shared a grin, knowing the truth behind those words. For almost as long as they'd known him, Luffy itched to travel and be free – and what greater freedom could be had then exploring the sea?

Luffy had first come into their lives when he'd started sneaking around and attempted to explore Ace's tower. A bit overzealous in those times, Sabo had knocked him straight through the window and into Ace's room, and what followed had ended up being the best mistake of Ace's life – even if he hadn't seen it that way when he'd been younger.

Sabo had been one of the newer guards – a page if they were going to be specific – who'd been tasked with protecting Ace's tower. Ten at the time, he'd seen Luffy sneaking around and had immediately gone intruder!

That led to the both of them tumbling into Ace's room, limbs a flurry of movement until Ace had stopped being frozen, entered the fray and tried to beat them both up for invading. When they all finally stopped, panting and with bruises on every bit of available skin, Sabo had stared at him and gone, "Woah! I didn't know there was someone alive in here!"

"What else would you have been guarding!?" Ace shot back, while Luffy looked between the two of them, his pointed ears flicking in confusion.

"Wait, if you're being guarded, does that make you-" Luffy gasped, sparkles coming to his eyes, "treasure?"

"No!" Ace had shouted, but Luffy refused to be convinced and had started coming back every day since that point, refusing to leave until Ace spoke to him. Sabo and Luffy, the persistent shits they were, had slowly and steadily worked their way into his life and Ace had seen them as one of the constants in his life – until Luffy declared he was going to become a traveller and explore. He'd offered for Ace to join him, and bitterness surged within Ace's heart when he told Luffy that he couldn't go.

Sabo had asked him why? looking absolutely confused and shocked, because he knew exactly how much Ace longed to be outside the tower, but Ace had merely shaken his head and refused to poke his head out of the tower window for the next few days so they could talk to him.

It'd taken four large peace offerings of foods Ace had never tried before (one of which Luffy ate) before Ace would consent to sitting on the windowsill again so they could talk.

A week after that, they'd sworn to be brothers, and never forget each other even through all their travels. At that promise, Ace had been afraid Sabo would leave, but the morning after he'd seen the familiar head of blond and knew that Sabo wouldn't be going without him, even if Luffy couldn't have stood another day of being tied to one spot. The drawbacks of fae blood, Ace sometimes mused to himself when he got another letter from Luffy, written in a messy scrawl from a town he'd never heard of.

(It hurt, sometimes, to see those letters and know he was never going to see the towns from which they were sent; he had the same problem as Luffy. There was too much fae blood in him, too much of a desire to be free, and knowing he wouldn't ever leave the tower hurt like nothing else. Knowing his feet were rooted to a single spot of land he could canvas entirely in less than ten minutes hurt.)

Almost fifteen years had passed since then, birthday after birthday flying by without Ace ever having left the tower. He was twenty-five, and yet the only parts of the world Ace had seen were what could be viewed from the tiny frame of his window.

Sabo was slipping from Ace's window when Ace managed to pull himself from memory, and he moved forwards quickly, catching onto Sabo's hand.

"Good luck charm?" he offered, pressing a soft kiss to Sabo's knuckles in the hopes they'd come back unscarred, would protect Sabo from anything that would mean him harm on the long trip down to the coast.

"Don't you think we're a bit old for this?" Sabo asked, voice sounding slightly strained, but he still stopped, leaning forwards to press a kiss to Ace's forehead (the sensation of soft lips against his skin would always make Ace shiver, but the tower was cold, and that excuse was easy to use and easier to see through, if Sabo ever wanted).

"Yours," Ace swore, and Sabo sighed quietly, lips quirked in smile.

"Forever," he promised back, and their hands slid along one another until their pinkies linked and their knuckles pressed together. For a second they were still, and Ace could barely breathe for longing, for hope.

Then, lungs aching, he exhaled and the moment broke. "See you soon?"

"Fast as I can," Sabo vowed, and Ace grinned because he knew Sabo meant it – would always mean it.

It had taken Sabo almost a full week and a half to get down to the coast and find Luffy, and when Luffy had been found, Sabo had been dragged into a celebration over Luffy's newest acquisition to his traveller/pirate crew – a skeleton by the name of Brook that'd been charmed several decades ago to never grow older, and an enchanted ship. It wasn't until the Festival of Lights was mentioned that Sabo was able to bring up why he'd came.

The Festival fell on Ace's birthday, and they almost always celebrated it together – now that Luffy had his ship, too, it seemed almost imperative that they be brought together again for at least one night before Luffy left to travel for who knows how long.

Thankfully, the trip back up was much shorter than the trip down. Luffy had collected a great many people for his crew, each with skills varied and talented. Nami's help in predicting the weather meant they were always ahead of any storm, and with Franky's collection of carts and strangely built caravans they made it back up to Ace's tower in less than a week.

Sabo was making sure they presented Sanji and his glorious food first, knowing Ace would be going stir crazy after having been kept in the tower by himself for so long.

When they finally drew in sight of the tower, however, Sabo found excitement bubbling sweet and hot in his chest, and he'd grabbed the paint set and new brushes he'd found at the markets. He and Luffy had shared a look, and then bounded ahead of the caravan, to impatient to wait.

He hadn't thought anything of the fact that Ace wasn't sitting at the window waiting like he always did when they went away. There were a million and one reasons for that.

He and Luffy easily scaled the tower wall, even with preoccupied hands, and he swung himself onto the windowsill, grin on his face and greeting on his lips-

But the only thing that greeted him was absolute chaos, and there wasn't a million and one reasons for that.

Paints spilled across the floor, a myriad of colours that only highlighted the emptiness of the room.

Ace was gone.

'Fast as I can' still meant at least a week and a half of travel, and so while Sabo was away Ace dragged out his sketch books and set to drawing the knights that the council sent out to replace Sabo. None of them ever talked to him, which quite frankly sucked, but Ace knew why – talking to him was expressly forbidden, and Sabo risked his knighthood every time he climbed up to Ace's window.

It had lead to more than a few quarrels between them, Ace arguing that Sabo should never have risked something he'd trained so long for, but Sabo had always merely scoffed and ignored Ace's protests about how he wasn't worth it.

The one time the argument almost came to blows was just after Sabo had been knighted and granted his own shield – and a way out of his parents' dreams for him to marry a princess. Ace had sworn at him, tried to order him out of the tower, tried to do anything he could get Sabo to leave, but it had only ended in Sabo screaming at him,

"I won't lose you! I won't have you so close and so far away from me at the same time. I couldn't stand it!"

That moment – though Ace hadn't realised it at the time, too shocked by Sabo's words and what he was willing to throw away just to stay near Ace – was the start of the list.

I need you.

I would rather die.

I'm glad you're here.

Stay.

Ace pulled himself from his thoughts with a growl, shaking his head to clear the memory of that quiet plea and trying to focus on his sketchbook again. By the time Sabo came back, Ace was planning on having ideas lined out neatly, ready to be painted.

No matter what Ace said, Sabo would've bought back paints from the port, and Ace wanted something worth painting to be on canvas by the time he returned.

A flicker of light blue caught the edge of Ace's eye and he frowned, pulling himself from the slumped position he'd taken against the window seat. In the forest, there had been-

The flicker of blue came again and Ace jolted, sketchbook forgotten as he leaned forwards to try and figure out what that flash of colour belonged to. It was hypnotic, almost fire-like, and it reminded Ace of the tales Sabo and Luffy had told him about will-o-wisps.

So distracted by the colour, Ace didn't notice that it had appeared where his guards were usually stationed, and yet neither of them had called out an alarm. In fact, he didn't realise that the guards may've been preoccupied until suddenly there was a man standing in front of him, those same blue flickers falling around his shoulders and hands.

"Hello," the man said, the faint pull of a smile around the edges of his mouth.

Will-o-wisps did not talk, was Ace's first startled thought as he stumbled from the window, and the next was, may not be a wisp, but that's not a man either.

The pointed ears clearly gave the stranger away as fae, and answered Ace's question on how he'd gotten so close to Ace's tower without Ace seeing him. While Luffy was personally shit at using them, glamours were one of the most frequently used tricks in a fae's arsenal.

"Who are you?" Ace demanded, unaware that he'd dropped his sketchbook and was now instinctively clutching his pencils tight, as though he could use them as a weapon should this stranger choose to attack him.

"Call me Marco," the stranger said, and then suddenly he'd stepped onto the windowsill and was in Ace's room. No-one had been inside the tower since Ace's disastrous first meeting with his brothers – there were spells preventing anyone from seeing his tower, let alone stepping inside. "Though to be quite honest, I can foresee you ignoring that name entirely and just deciding to call me a whole bunch of other things, yoi."

Ace frowned at him in utter confusion. "What?" he asked, grip on his pencils loosening just slightly. "Why would I- and how did you get in here? What are you doing here?"

"I'll start again maybe," the stranger (Marco, and wasn't that bizarre to know, someone else's name, when he'd been starting to think that maybe everyone's names were Ace or Sabo or Luffy) mumbled to himself, then turned steel blue eyes on Ace again, lips curled into a grin. "Hello, my name is Marco."

"I'm here to kidnap you."

Ace woke slowly to the feeling of being carried, someone's bony shoulder poking rather uncomfortably into his stomach. He groaned at the sensation, another sharp jab hitting him right in the centre of his abdomen, and felt the person carrying him stop. A hand dragged across his back, making Ace squirm to try and get free, but he was only repositioned and then levered off the person's shoulder.

He landed rather uncomfortably on what felt like dirt, and Ace felt fear begin to thrum in his chest.

"Ahhh, thank the Gods you're awake. You were really killing my back, yoi."

Ace glanced up, eyes widened at the sight of the blue fire fae from before- Marco. He was stretching, both arms placed against the small of his back, and for the first time Ace finally had a second to take him in.

Tall – though that could have just been because Ace was sitting on the floor – and well-built in a scrawny sort of way, Marco was obviously fae. Even if his pointed ears hadn't given him away, the slightly to-perfect edge to his features tipped Ace off to a glamour.

Ace, however, wasn't very interested in Marco's glamour. He was about to get to his feet and fucking fight this asshole, when his attention was drawn to the feeling of coarse rope winding around his wrists and ankles. He stared at it for a moment before realisation kicked in.

"Is this my hair?" Ace shrieked, tugging on the bonds on his wrists and feeling his scalp pull at the movement. "Holy fuck you absolute asshole, you tied me up with my own hair!"

"Told you that you wouldn't be using my name, yoi," Marco mumbled with a shrug, completely ignoring Ace's rage. With an awkward grunt, Ace managed to get to his feet and took an off-balance swing at Marco that he dodged with supernatural grace.

Ace fell over with a thud, groaning at the uncomfortableness and pain that surged through him. "I may have considered it if you had – oh, I don't know, not kidnapped me?" he growled angrily to the dirt, eyes scrunched against the dust and the sparse grass that tickled his nose.

"How else am I supposed to get ransom money? Ask politely?" Marco asked, helping Ace to his feet and brushing dirt off the front of his pants and bare chest. Ace had never before regretted not wearing shirts like Sabo always asked, because right now it just meant another layer of protection against this stranger utterly lost.

It was more than slightly uncomfortable knowing that someone could now blatantly stare at him if they wanted and he couldn't do jackshit. Neither of his brothers had cared about that, and so neither had Ace, but-

This was most certainly not one of his brothers.

"How's about you just realise you're not getting ransom money at all?" Ace said, ignoring the tiny pang in the bottom of his chest that came with those words. The Council didn't give a shit as to whether or not he died, and so any threats to Ace's life were likely going to be brushed off. The only reason Ace was kept alive was because-

Well, sometimes Ace wasn't sure.

"A life in the balance," Marco said with a hum, picking Ace off the ground, and Ace bared his teeth at the grip around his bicep and the fact he couldn't fight back. "Someone will pay. If not…"

Cold fingertips traced the shell of his ear, nudging the earrings that dangled there, and this time Ace really did snap out, trying to bite Marco's hand. Instinctively Marco reeled back, and Ace found himself off-balance again, falling to the floor before he could stop himself. He growled into the dirt, trying to get a grip on the emotions raging a war within him.

He couldn't settle on feeling mad, or terrified, or exhilarated. Ace had long since given up ever being able to leave the tower, trying to make himself content with four walls and one way out that he'd never use, and so now-

Now, with dirt under his cheek and the rustle of trees so loud above him, birds and crickets and frogs and these tiny sounds Ace couldn't even name-

His heart felt like it was going to beat straight out of his chest, the pure desire to explore so strong that he felt like he could burst at the seams.

At the same time, though, he knew he couldn't continue this unplanned 'adventure'. Unless he got back to the tower-

He was going to die.

AN: In other news, this is actually an almost-complete long fic! Which means I can post chapters every week or so, and I shall tell u guys how many chapters I have left once it's fully complete~ ;P (atm it's ~25k)

Anyway, please R&R, and go shower lolles with all your love (she deserves it guys ;u;)