Happy anniversary! :D It's been a year since this fic started and I would like to thank everyone for the incredible support you've given me. Extra large thanks goes to my betas, aqua-empress, Lady Spritzy and incredible lunarshores who all helped me a great deal.

(Insert whining about med school here)

Disclaimer: the characters are definitely not mine.

Song of the chapter: Light 'em Up by Fall Out Boy.

Spacing out on Godzilla's lessons was potentially dangerous and could bring a lot of negative consequences, including but not limited to: getting on her bad side, failing the next test,or receiving extra homework to prove that you understood the material. Despite being fully aware of all the risks, Ace found it extremely difficult to focus on what was said by the scariest teacher of the entire school. His mind was racing between 'I actually did it' and 'it actually worked!' He was finding it hard to comprehend – the plan was Stupid (with capital S, he was actually contemplating putting capital letters all the way through), it lacked details like 'what to do in case it goes badly' and was poorly thought through. Ace hated to admit it, but it was just like him to come up with something so badly planned. What kept surprising him was that 90% of the time his plans actually worked, despite being extremely stupid. As a comparison, Sabo's flawlessly thought through plans worked only 60% of the time. Sabo blamed it on the fact that nobody expected such level of stupidity and in privacy of his own head and in retrospect Ace agreed with his brother.

Today's course of action was topping every single idiotic plan Ace had ever come up with. Sure, he'd come up with it, but what on earth possessed him into going through with it? Again, in retrospect, it was peak of stupidity… and it actually worked. Sabo was definitely right, nobody expected such… thinking outside the box. Especially not Marco-sempai, who was not easily pushed off track – a couple of minutes ago Ace risked Godzilla's wrath by checking his phone, and sempai was still intending to talk to him.

Being a rational human being, Ace could guess that this stupid plan wouldn't work twice on a normal person, much less Marco. Thus he needed a back-up plan. Probably something equally idiotic. After ten minutes of coming up with different schemes and deeming them not stupid enough, Ace finally chose one. But then again, it was Marco-sempai he was going to try to side-track. On the other hand his last plan worked…

Ace sighed, his gaze drifting to the clock in the classroom. He idly wondered what was worse – Marco-sempai wanting to talk or Garp in his join-the-marines-or-else mood. Both were scary, but the prize would probably go to Garp, though sempai might beat him in a couple of years. Ace recalled what Marco told him when he tried to stall. He could easily see Marco-sempai in the court room running the show, it was oddly fitting him. For the fun of it, Ace tried to imagine Marco in different professions. He almost laughed out loud imagining his sempai as a kindergarten teacher and small kids marching in line. Another favourite was Marco as a policeman – Ace could clearly imagine poor suspects crying and confessing to all their sins. Plus the uniform wouldn't look too bad on him.

Since Godzilla was either in a good mood today (and that happened like a couple of times since Ace started at Enies Lobby High) or she didn't notice him spacing out (that never happened before), Ace lived to see the end of the class. He didn't even get extra homework which would have made his day has it not been for all the personal problems he had. With a sigh Ace got his coffee money and moved for the cafeteria. He really wanted to avoid the talk and his stupid plan, but lack of caffeine was forcing him to face his doom.

Cafeteria was slightly calmer than during the first break, though there still was a line for coffee. Raising his eyebrows slightly at the unfamiliar person in front of him checking her clock every couple of seconds and tapping her foot impatiently, Ace took out his phone to check for messages. There wasn't anything from Marco, but he had one text from Nami.

'Home with food poisoning, been up all night :( just woke up'

'Sorry to hear that :( get better :)'

The line moved a little; the impatient person in front of him looked like she was about to explode with anger at the people before her. Ace was about to ask that girl what was on fire for her to be so impatient, but to his surprise he got a call from Nami.

"Wassup?" he said, realising that Nami just saved him from getting his head bit off.

"Did Godzilla give you anything for me?" Nami asked, her voice hoarse and tired.

"Nah, she was in surprisingly good mood today, just general homework," Ace answered; the impatient girl muttered a curse loudly and left the line.

"Thank God!" Nami breathed out, sounding extremely relieved.

Ace laughed at his friend, greeting approaching Marco with a nod and a raised hand to show that he was busy now, but will be free in a moment.

"You know, Zoro would find it very amusing that you pray to God and not worship Satan," he said with a smile.

"This is just a façade, I have my reversed cross and an altar for children sacrifices in my basement," Nami said with a laugh. "Now I'm going back to sleep, I need my strength to fly to a witch Sabbath later tonight."

"Is that what you call your 'girls only' nights?"

"Oh, fuck off," Nami laughed.

"Get well and see you on Monday. Don't drink too much baby blood, you always complain it's giving you a hangover," Ace ignored weird stares he got from people around him.

"Shut up," Nami snapped playfully and hung up.

Ace chuckled as he put his phone in his pocket. Since it was his turn now, he turned to Marco.

"You want one?" he asked, gesturing at the coffee pot.

"No, but thanks anyway," his sempai answered with a small smile.

"Suit yourself," Ace shrugged, trying to act cool despite the internal turmoil. The actions from the last break flooded his mind and suddenly he had no idea how to act. Should he pretend nothing ever happened? Also, should he go through with his stupid plan number two? Could someone, please, tell him exactly what to do? "So… You wanna go somewhere quiet?" he asked, taking his time stirring the coffee to dissolve three spoons of sugar.

"Wha…? Um, no, I'd rather talk here," Marco answered hastily; there went both Ace's stupid plans, now what was he supposed to do?

"Alright," Ace spotted an empty table and moved to sit there, doing his best to avoid looking at Marco. This definitely won't be the best 'coffee conversation' he's ever had.

(^_^)

Somehow, Marco was pretty sure Ace was doing it on purpose. He naïvely thought that staying in the cafeteria would keep things on the safe side. Ha! While he was still trying to figure out how to start that conversation, Ace was quietly drinking his coffee, seemingly lost in thought. However, the moment Marco opened his mouth to say something, the words died in his mouth. Ace had finally looked up at him, but in all honesty Marco really wished his kouhai continued studying the table.

Before now the blond firmly believed that it was impossible to turn somebody on with just their eyes, but Ace seemed to like proving him wrong. There was Ace, sitting on a chair and completely relaxed, sipping his coffee, and Marco was trying to convince himself that if he did what he wanted right here and now, he'd be expelled.

"Well?" Ace said, his silvery eyes roaming the blond's body; Marco could easily bet all his future allowances that a certain kouhai had x-ray vision or, at the very least, that he was being slowly stripped of all his clothes in Ace's mind.

"Er..." Marco frantically tried to put together his rapidly shattering mind. It wasn't going too well because he suddenly remembered that Ace was in his judo club, meaning that they had to share showers countless times. That brought forth a question Marco really wanted to know the answer for – did he look okay? The sudden doubt surprised Marco – the only time he asked himself that question was before he left the house for school.

"You wanted to talk about something?" Ace helpfully suggested, seeing as Marco wasn't about to start talking anytime soon.

"Um... Yes, right, I wanted to talk about..." The blond resisted an urge to yell at Ace to look somewhere else because he was finding it hard to concentrate on anything with that x-ray vision. "I wanted to talk about... something..." Marco wanted to bang his head on the table between them. What was wrong with him? And what the hell was this right now? He shook his head to clear it.

"How about we do that during lunch? I have to be in the art building in three minutes," Ace said, finally looking away from Marco to a clock on the wall behind him.

"Yeah, good idea," the blond mentally patted himself on the back for finally being able to string together a couple of words and getting extra time to think.

He waited for Ace to walk away first before he got up and went to his own lesson. Marco could barely believe his own sudden stupidity. Without his frustrating kouhai anywhere near, he had trouble understanding why it was so hard to put together a couple of words and ask a question. Speaking of questions, he made a quick detour to the bathroom to see if he looked as dumb as he felt.

The good news were that his clothes looked fine. The rest, though... His hair was in complete disarray making him look as if he just got out of bed. With a sigh Marco tried to make his hair look less messy, did not accomplish much and went to the subject he considered a waste of his time, namely geography with elements of geology. He won't use the knowledge acquired there at all – not one of the professions he considered required knowledge about different types of soil, minerals and their locations in the country.

In the classroom Robin waited for him like a predator, ready to sink her claws in and hold him until he spilled everything. The problem was that he didn't have much to spill, except for his frankly embarrassing behaviour.

"So?" she asked eagerly, looking at him with eyes hungry for any kind of knowledge.

"So nothing," Marco grumbled as he took his seat.

"What do you mean nothing? You were supposed to talk to him!" she hissed quietly, wary of any person that could overhear their conversation.

"I tried!" Marco hissed back. Key word was 'tried'.

"For crying out loud, can you be a little more specific? What do you mean 'tried'? Did he refuse to answer?" Robin frowned at him.

"Um... no... he seemed willing to cooperate..." the blond mumbled.

"Then what?"

"Um... I may not have gotten around to asking him?" he said, averting his eyes.

"The hell got in your way?!" Robin looked at him with round eyes; Marco considered his answering options – a) his dick, b) x-ray vision, c) lack of brain cells. It didn't look good... It seemed like she got the point without his answer, so she made scary eyes at him and hissed: "If you don't figure this out during lunch break I will kick your ass!" With that she turned around to face the board and the teacher that was about to check attendance.

Marco sighed, agreeing that if he didn't get an answer from Ace during lunch then he indeed deserved to get his ass kicked by Robin.

(^_^)

Ace quickly made his way to the art building, all but fleeing the scene of confrontation. For all they cared he could have just skipped the 'artistic activity' as it was pretentiously called by the school. He was forbidden from entering the musical part of the building lest he be killed by the closest instrument the musicians could lift (thanks to his musical anti-talent), the painters/sculptors would rather die themselves than let him or Luffy waste their materials for something so abstract that it didn't resemble any kind of art and the theatrical/dance section was all too eager to get their paws on him, which left Ace with but one option – photography and design.

To be completely honest, Ace didn't even need to show his face there because of his extracurricular activity with Sabo already granting him a passing grade. Still, the school required him to spend a certain amount of hours in the art building, so he spent his time there as a creative advisor/coach for photographers and wannabe models. Basically all he had to do was sit, drink coffee and nod or shake his head from time to time. The only thing that bugged him were all the overeager people that thought that by sucking up to him they could get to Sabo. Naïve idiots, their allowances were too meagre to buy Ace a meal large enough for him to agree to make an introduction.

Once safely inside the building Ace changed his pace from quick to sluggish, not in a hurry whatsoever. He strolled into the department about a quarter of an hour late due to admiring of artistic creations of the painters and sculptors that were exhibited throughout the building. Ace rarely checked them out, but today he needed to think and what could possibly serve that purpose better?

The teacher nodded at him from the designer section separated from photography by glass walls and resumed pointing out bad ideas on a sketch presented by one of the students.

"You are late!" Vivi came over to him and grabbed his ear. "Whole sixteen minutes! When it's finally my turn to get behind the camera!"

"Ow-ow-ow, sorry, sorry," Ace apologised as he was dragged to his seat by the monitor.

"Apology not accepted! Sit!" Vivi forced him into his seat and grabbed her camera.

"What is it I'm looking at?" he rubbed his poor ear as he looked at the monitor; Vivi was the sweetest girl until provoked. On the other hand, weren't they all?

"You tell me," she said, checking the camera.

"No idea," Ace shrugged; after they broke up they immediately returned to their previous friendship, sighing in relief – dating brought an incredible awkwardness between them and without it they were million times better. Since Vivi was afraid of Nami's scary side, Ace took the blame for break up – his friend's scary face hadn't worked on him for quite some time. After that they promised to each other to never lose a bet to Nami, who wanted to try her hand at match-making. "What were you trying to do?"

"Do you remember that photo-shoot you had with lots of fabric?" Vivi came over to see the photos.

"Oh, so that's what it is..." Ace moved his gaze from the monitor to the supposed model who looked like big, colourful rug. "Um, I don't remember being turned into some nightmarish thing. I can't even recognize who that is."

"That would be me," the rug raised its appendix and Ace, to his utter surprise, recognised the voice – it was Tashigi, Vivi's classmate who had one goal in life - namely kicking Zoro's ass in kendo.

"Wow... Who did this to you?" Ace asked, barely containing laughter.

"I did," Vivi admitted with a faint blush.

"Take away anything with a pattern, that ugly green thing and that thing that looks like a potato sack," Ace said after he suppressed his laughter. When the girls did as he said, he was faced with a colour palette that looked like a disco ball hit by several lights of different colour. "Anything shiny too."

"Eeeh? But I wanted some to make it a bit more fun!" Vivi protested.

"Compromise – choose one shiny thing you want to keep," Ace suggested.

"Fine," his friend grumbled.

"And that bright red thing, the orange one too and anything in neon... Tashigi, how are you still alive?"

The no-longer-rug-but-not-a-human-yet in front of the camera shrugged. Ace looked at the growing pile of fabrics on the floor, idly noting that if he was wrapped in that, he would have suffocated within five minutes. With a sigh he got up to help Vivi unwrap Tashigi. When the result satisfied them both Ace suddenly realized that the bell would ring in two minutes and he still didn't have a viable strategy. Apparently his face was an open book because Vivi asked him:

"Are you alright? You look rather pale."

"No, I am definitely not alright," Ace mumbled under his nose the same time as the bell rang.

"Sorry, I didn't catch that."

"I am fine, Vivi, don't worry," he said with a sigh. He took out his phone and stared at it. Improvisation it was then, Ace decided and slowly went to his execution.

(^_^)

After getting a murderous glare from his best friend, Marco wouldn't dare to come back without any answer from Ace. He needed a strategy, a plan, a 'what to do in case Ace tries to get him off track again'. The problem was that he had hard time coming up with one – all of his plans were based on thinking inside the box, and his kouhai proved well enough that he wasn't thinking inside the box. The only thing he could decide on is that they would talk in private- in case he was unable to string two words together he could do the same thing Ace did during first break. Marco got the phrasing done during geography, now the only thing left was to ask him, but he was well aware that it was easier said than done.

The cafeteria was swarmed with people so Marco patted himself on the back for choosing to speak in private. Now, if he could just talk... Too busy with beating himself down mentally, he noticed his kouhai only at the last minute.

"So, are we going to talk?" Ace asked, tilting his head a little and exposing his neck.

"Maybe not here," Marco forced out, his eyes glued to the exposed neck. He did extremely good job at marking his kouhai, no one would question who he belonged to... Wait, what? Ace was neither a patch of land nor livestock for him to put a claim on him. Marco shook his head, angry with himself. The heck was wrong with him? If he wouldn't be able to talk to Ace right now, he'd ask Robin to beat some sense into him after school.

"Alright, lead the way," Ace put his hands in his pockets, looking very relaxed and not bothered by Marco's stupidity in the slightest. That made the blond wonder that maybe it was just him, that maybe Ace didn't give a crap about him. Somehow the thought of that being the case hurt.

Marco led them to another study room and opened the door, letting Ace enter first – he did learn from his mistakes. Ace shrugged and went to the far side of the room to prop himself on the writing desk, ignoring chairs. Marco entered after him, closing the door and leaning against it. So far so good.

"I've been meaning to ask you..." Marco started.

"I noticed," Ace smirked.

"Maybe if you let me finish I would get to actually asking," the blond said defensively.

"I did not interrupt you last break in the cafeteria," his kouhai rightfully noticed.

"I needed some more time to think..."

"Are you done thinking?"

"Yes," Marco's eyebrow twitched in annoyance at how offensive Ace was, forcing him into a defensive position.

"I am listening," Ace slid down the desk to lean against it with crossed arms; even from his place by the door Marco could see the defiant expression. He was starting to get pissed but something in his mind yanked at him, telling him to look closer and think again before he did something stupid.

Marco took a deep breath and looked at his kouhai again. The voice in his head was right – this didn't look like the Ace he had gotten to know this week.

"Why are you so defensive?" he asked, surprising both Ace and himself.

"I am not defensive!" his kouhai denied loudly, making Marco smirk.

"Oh, I beg to differ," Marco said, locking the door and taking step in Ace's direction. Ace automatically tried to take a step back but he put himself in the corner by standing by that desk. "Best defence is a good offence, isn't it?" Marco took another step forward.

"I guess so, what's it got to do with anything?" This time Marco clearly saw a flicker of panic.

"Oh, I'm just thinking. You've defensive the whole day. I want to know why," he said, taking another step.

"What did you want to talk about?" Ace suddenly pushed off the desk and took a step forward as well; Marco's smirk grew bigger – best defence indeed.

"Why are you so defensive?"

"What did you want to talk about?"

"Why are you so defensive?"

"I am not defensive, what did you want to talk about?"

"Yes, you are, and I want to know why."

"You didn't answer my question."

"You lied."

With each question they were taking a step forward until they stood in the middle of the room almost chest to chest, staring each other in the eyes.

"You didn't answer my question," Ace murmured, his eyes darted to Marco's lips for a split second.

"You lied," Marco answered in a low voice, mirroring Ace's movements.

"Yes," Ace breathed, barely audible. "Your turn."

"You are right, it's my turn," Marco purred, eliminating the distance between them and gently pressing his lips to Ace's.

Can't promise anything about time of the next update, sorry.

Thanks for all reviews, favs and follows!

Hope to see you soon,

~Rhe.