A/N: It was such a simple thought. 'Where do the Logia eater's clothes go when they shift form?' And pounce, the bunnies struck. And so, here is an Ace/Sanji with ZoroxSanji and SmokerxAce on the side. Written in one sitting at really early in the morning… cause it just wouldn't let go. Previously posted on Livejournal.
Disclaimer: One Piece and characters are the property of Eiichiro Oda.
"Ace." The cook's voice was quiet. "We're out of time."
Ace looked up from where he was still holding the final reaction at bay. "I can hold on for a little more. We can get farther out."
"Ace. There's a sail."
Of course. Of course there would be. Luffy wouldn't have been unconscious forever after the battle and Ace and Sanji knew that he'd come after them. And despite their capitulation earlier, his crew would fall in line. They would try. Ace dropped his head to touch the hot metal shell of Blackbeard's final move. Even in death, the traitorous pirate had struck one last time.
It had almost been too late on shore, nearly an entire hour lost while Robin and Usopp had tried frantically to disable the device, with Ace's own power shunting away the building heat, absorbing it into his own body. Blackbeard's discovery might not have been the fabled Pluton, but it would destroy anything within three kilometers.
Ace couldn't take his hands off the weapon, he estimated that when he finally did, it would explode within fifteen to forty seconds. Someone else had to steer the small ship clear of the island. Sanji had simply announced that it would be him. "It's a simple thing to find a good cook, ne?" Then he'd kicked Zoro in the head hard enough to send the swordsman crashing down. "We don't have time to argue," Sanji said as the others began to protest.
Both men knew that this was death for them both. Sanji would die in the blast and Ace would drown shortly afterwards. They had spent the outward trip in silence, Sanji expertly tacking the little sloop into the deeper blue of the Grand Line, Ace lost in his balancing act of this unnatural fire.
"They're still too far, but not for long. Luffy's got a hell of a reach, but even he can't make three kilometers." Sanji sighed and flicked his cigarette butt over the low rail. "I should have gotten a kiss before I left. Fine thing for me not to think of it the one time Nami probably would have."
"Could have used a nice shag myself." Ace shuddered and pulled his hands away, the sphere instantly beginning to brighten into a red glow, headed rapidly for the searing white that would end it. "Guess we'll have to make do."
Ace took two steps and caught the cook up, his lips descending fast. The blonde's response was instant, a low throttling moan rising from his throat, arms threading around the heavier man. Ace delved, sampling the flavors of the other, the harsh bite of tobacco, the lingering metallic aftertaste of blood. Sanji fit surprisingly well against him, the spare, lean frame molding itself expertly to his broader body.
There was a tortured scream from the little craft as the boards in the bow began to burst under the intense heat. Planks heaved under their feet, but they swayed with it, one of Ace's hands splayed across Sanji's back, the other laced deep into golden hair. He throttled viciously on his body's desire, he had taken in so much power he wanted to explode now but he gripped his flesh form by a spider thread thin strand of discipline. He poured that control into these last moments, feeling the cook fight along with him, the pair of them taking every final scrap of life they had.
In the last moments, Ace forgot where he ended and Sanji began. Which is why when the device blew and Ace's body instantly flashed over into flame, he took Sanji with him.
It was a trick all of the Logias learned. When you reformed your body after your first transformation to find yourself stark naked - and in Ace's case, his favorite pair of shoes burned to a crisp - you learned. To push your power out, just a little, convince it that the clothes on your body were a part of you, so that it would shift back and forth in your forms. Ace was good enough that he could pull his entire backpack with him, a few times he'd even pulled the dish he was eating into fire form and back, none the worse for wear.
Another living being… never should have changed with him. It was an instinctive thing for them, to resist being dissolved into sand or mist or flame. Ace shouldn't have had the capacity to do it. But Sanji had already acknowledged that the flames were coming for him, Ace was gorged on the device's power and both of them, despite their acceptance of their fates, wanted to live.
The power had a limitation though. It did not create two flames, just one. One single flame to be reformed later. One flame, two minds. Merged.
Ace spent 85 days on a tiny rock, slowly starving to death.
Sanji laughed at his little brother's antics as they played at becoming pirates.
The old bastard had entrusted him with the main courses and Ace had never felt so proud.
The fruit tasted awful, Sanji burped and set the table on fire.
A scarred chest pressed against their back, the faint chime of golden earrings a counterpoint to the thrust of hips, voices stifled so as not to wake the others.
The smell of cigars, he's the only one who'd ever matched them this way, smoke and fire mingling in perfect tandem.
Whitebeard. All Blue. One Piece.
Then the sea rose up as the force of the explosion was spent and wrenched them brutally apart.
"Sanji?" The cook looked up slowly at Zoro's worried face. Three weeks had passed since the sky had lit up in an inferno that had reminded the swordsman far too much of that pivotal day in Alubarna. Three weeks since they had found Sanji and Ace barely afloat, the cook's strength at an absolute ebb. For days afterwards they had both been in what Chopper had described as an intense shock. Both of them shivering, crying out for some lost thing, crawling back to curl against each other whenever they were separated as if they couldn't get close enough.
Sanity eventually returned, bodies recovered their vigor, but still…
"Sanji, you tried to touch the stove fire again."
The cook regarded his blistered finger. "I was just making sure."
Because sometimes I can't remember who I'm supposed to be.