How's everybody?

I have a word of advice for you - don't apply to medical universities, you might actually get accepted. Whatever free time I had I used for... well, not writing because the writing block decided to show itself again.

Since tomorrow is Christmas in orthodox churches and since I belong to an orthodox church - Merry Christmas!

As always, my eternal gratitude to lunarshores and her amazing betaig skills.

Song of the chapter: Closer To You by Adelitas Way. (I'm actually curious if anyone is listening to them, but I will continue to do this regardless)

Ace lay on his bed on his side staring at the phone in his hands. It was silent, just like a minute ago. He saw the clock change to 6:30, and the alarm rang. He switched off the alarm and looked at the phone again, trying to will it to ring. Ace was well aware of the reason for his behaviour but he didn't give a damn. He waited.

The clock slowly changed to 6:31, then 6:32. Ace stayed as he was – on his side with his phone in his hands. Then, finally, at 6:36, it rang.

"Hello?" he answered the call eagerly, sitting up.

"You sound way too cheerful for someone who just woke up," came the reply with a barely audible chuckle.

"I went to bed early yesterday, so I woke up early," Ace answered as he got out of bed and walked to the bathroom.

"I thought it didn't apply to you."

"To every rule, there's an exception," he replied smartly, putting the phone on speaker and then suddenly Luffy barged into his room with a loud yell:

"ACE WAKE UP!"

"Lu, I'm awake," Ace called from the bathroom, wincing.

"EEEEEEEH?" Luffy whined. "Can't you go back to bed and let me wake you up?"

"No," the elder teen opened the tap and started brushing his teeth, forgetting about the phone call for a moment because his mind went into 'time to feed Luffy soon' mode.

"No fair! I want to wake you up!"

"Lu, go shtart zhe coshee," Ace said with a toothbrush in his mouth, contemplating breakfast choices.

"Okaaaaay," Luffy replied with disappointment and stormed off to the kitchen.

Ace continued to brush his teeth with a nagging feeling that he forgot something. He thought hard about what he could have possibly forgotten, but nothing came to his mind – the morning was pretty usual despite him waking up earlier…

"I knew it, your brother enjoys waking you up in an inhumane way," said Ace's phone suddenly.

"Gah!" he jumped, surprised. "Shit, I forgot I was talking to you…"

"That's very flattering of you. I'm going down for breakfast so please be quiet unless you want me to die a slow and painful death."

"You just brim with optimism," Ace laughed.

He heard some rustling, then steps and then, finally, door opening and people exchanging 'good mornings'. With a smile Ace turned the speaker off and continued with his usual morning ritual. He got dressed and went downstairs, fully prepared to be assaulted by Luffy and his breakfast craving for meat. Finally deciding on making bacon and eggs, Ace set to completing his task of keeping Luffy fed enough to get him to school. At school the pirate bentou and Sanji would take over.

Busy with cooking, he only noticed last moment when his phone made a noise. He reached for it, but before he could pick it up the call ended. Ace decided to let it go since the last thing he heard was Marco telling someone to give him back his phone. Shrugging, Ace busied himself with cooking.

Well, he wasn't really busy with cooking – Ace has been making breakfast for Luffy for a long time - he did it automatically now. Ace was busy thinking. It didn't take a genius to figure out what he was thinking about, or, rather, who he was thinking about. After some serious internal excavations and his afternoon with sempai, Ace started to suspect that he actually liked Marco. Not in 'he's a cool guy to hang out with' kind of way but more like 'I want to date him' kind of way. What surprised him was that he didn't give a crap about Marco being a guy. He cared about a lot of things like, for example, Marco's demeanour or his sense of humour or even his over exaggerated sense of responsibility, but him having a dick was not one of them.

Hell, to be completely honest with himself, Ace in fact liked it if his memory of Wednesday was accurate. And, to be absolutely and definitely honest with himself without any half-truths, Ace kinda liked the fact that Marco was stronger than him… And that was all he was going to say about it!

The only thing he didn't like was Sunday. Sunday meant that Monday would be next, and then Marco would be dating someone else. He wouldn't be able to do anything if Marco decided to end things, but he still had three days left, and he had to make them count. Ace needed to somehow make sempai fall in love with him, which was easier said than done given his track record.

Ace was startled when his phone rang – he successfully cooked breakfast and had just finished eating it, completely lost in thought. Luffy was looking for his bag as always.

"Sorry about that," Marco said when Ace answered the call.

"I had to feed Luffy so don't worry," Ace answered with a half-truth. He was actually getting good at lying without lying.

"Ah, I see. You have my condolences," Sempai chuckled on the other end.

"ACE, IT'S NOT IN THE LIVING ROOM EITHER!" Luffy shouted.

"Check the kitchen!" Ace answered, going back to his room to fetch his own bag.

"It's nice to hear that your morning routine is constant," Marco commented.

"Oh, shut it," Ace rolled his eyes.

"You just overflow with cheerfulness."

"You bet I do," Ace snorted. "See you at school?"

"I'll be extra careful during the first break and make sure to look both ways before I cross a corridor."

"And I'll make sure you carry a cup of coffee before I run you over," Ace retorted with a smile, hanging up.

(^_^)

Friday morning for Marco started like majority of mornings this week. It was not the alarm that woke him but a very explicit dream about a certain freckled kouhai. It had only gotten worse since Wednesday, and Marco was seriously afraid that he would jump Ace the second he saw him at school. His body refused to listen to his common sense, which was severely overpowered by his dick, and a small voice in his head that said that jumping Ace wouldn't be a bad thing because for the moment Ace was his boyfriend.

Since yesterday they agreed that Marco would call in the morning and check if Ace woke up on time, and he did that, but, unfortunately, he had one brother too many. Still, despite the interruption and a small banter with Ace, his gut was telling him that something was off and since his gut was almost always right, Marco thought about the one thing that could have been the cause for it.

He thought that whatever happened yesterday stayed in yesterday, but there still was something that made Ace angry at him. What made the matter worse was that he still had no idea what that was. The only course of action Marco came up with was to literally ask Ace what was wrong and hope that Ace wouldn't say 'what do you think?' to him.

On his way to school Marco almost broke his brain replaying this week in his head from the very beginning. He couldn't come up with a single thing that could have made Ace mad at him. Yeah, he did his fair share of teasing, but it was friendly teasing. He hoped Ace knew that.

Marco stopped dead in his tracks when he spotted Robin by the school gate. She clearly waited for him because when she spotted Marco, a Cheshire grin made its way onto her face.

"Just shut up," Marco said when he passed by her.

"I didn't say anything," Robin answered, her grin growing even wider.

"Good, keep it that way," Marco sighed.

"You're no fun," Robin shoved him lightly.

"You really want to start this with me?" he smiled, raising his left hand, ready to shove his friend back.

Answer came in form of another light push that Marco easily evaded. He lightly pushed Robin back, minding his strength – if this was a game with his brothers he would have used his full strength, but this was school, and Robin was still a girl, despite having a black belt in karate. That didn't go unnoticed past his friend, who took offence at that and shoved him hard enough to lose his balance and almost fall.

"Robin, don't," Marco said warningly but with a smile.

"Or what?"

"Robin, I have thirteen brothers. Just don't."

"You know, not many people can say that nowadays. Does that bother you?" Robin either heeded his warning or spotted a teacher because she moved her bag to her 'shoving' hand.

"Not really. Should it?" Marco answered as they entered the school and went in the direction of their homeroom.

"I wouldn't know, I'm an only child. So it doesn't bother you?"

"Well, people's faces after they learn that are getting annoying," he answered after thinking about it for a minute.

"How did Ace react?" Robin asked slyly.

Marco sighed at the lost cause and thought back to the forest. Ace's face looked shocked, and he looked like he felt sorry for Marco, so he could only conclude that Ace imagined fourteen Luffys.

"I think he thinks I have his brother multiplied by fourteen at home," Marco said as he dropped his bag on his desk.

"Well, that would have been unfortunate," Robin laughed. "I have to say though, I find it strange that he asked you out."

"Why?" Marco frowned – he didn't think he liked where this was going.

"You're the first guy he asked out. Plus he was dumped just last week."

"Why?" Marco's frown deepened – he certainly didn't like what Robin was implying.

"Because he's nice to everybody. Stupid reason, if you ask me, but what do I know, I never dated him," Robin shrugged casually.

"Are you saying this is rebound?"

"I never said that. I just think it's strange."

Marco plopped on his chair with a scowl. While he didn't know the average length of rebound period, he had to admit that it could be the thing that made Ace so angry yesterday. Maybe Ace was regretting this whole thing. Not that he could blame him – on more than one occasion he could have appeared annoyed or bored, when in reality he was trying to stop thinking with his dick.

"Hey!" Robin suddenly hit him on the head with her notebook and looked him directly in the eyes. "Stop overthinking it. I love worst case scenarios, but that doesn't mean that this is one of them."

"Wh…"

"Zip it. And stop thinking."

Marco rolled his eyes as a thought crossed his mind – too many people have been telling him to shut up recently. He didn't really know what to make of it – maybe he was annoying. Robin didn't get a chance to tell him off even more because the bell rang, and she had to sit down. Her back didn't have the same authority as her face, so Marco returned to thinking, tuning the math teacher out.

No matter the reason, he still had to talk to Ace. That much was clear. He would ask what was wrong and then go from there. Robin was right – speculating without many facts was likely to drag him down the wrong road. With that in mind he pulled out his phone and sent Ace a simple message stating 'Need 2 talk. 1st break?' Marco was aware that this text was likely to scare Ace into having a heart attack (he knew from his own experience that such a message was never good), but he felt this was a necessary evil to clear everything out.

In a moment he got a text back from Ace: 'Sure is sth wrong?'

'No, just need 2 talk '

'Ok'

With a sigh Marco put his phone away and got his book out. This was going to be a long math lesson.

(^_^)

Ace was thinking. And thinking. And thinking. He felt like Luffy if he were being introduced to nuclear physics – he was trying really hard to figure something out, but was on verge of giving up and call everything a mystery thingy. His earlier determination to make sempai fall in love with him had suffered a severe blow from reality. The reality was that he indeed was a clumsy, impolite, and gluttonous idiot raised by mountain bandits. He wasn't exceptionally smart either, and his sense of humour wasn't the best there was.

Trying to counteract the upcoming depression, Ace started counting things he was good at. He could hold his ground in a fight (not that it helped much – sempai could relatively easily beat him), he got along with everyone (that didn't help either – most of his relationships ended because of that very thing), he was relatively good at modelling (although he failed to see how that was helpful) and he was good at taking care of Luffy. The last one was only helpful if he was auditioning for a job as a beast tamer at a circus – keeping Luffy focused and in line wasn't as easy as one could think.

He tried looking at it from another angle, namely remembering what his exes liked about him. After some time Ace came to an unfortunate conclusion – his exes were extremely shallow, meaning that they agreed on one thing. Every one of them thought he was hot. Ace didn't really know how much truth was behind their reasoning, but both Nami and Sabo called him a 'pretty boy' on more than one occasion. Still, how was he supposed to make use of that? Ace stared out the window for a moment, trying to find a use for his looks, until it suddenly dawned on him. He wanted to bang his head on the desk at the result.

While the answer was pretty obvious, it wasn't something Ace felt comfortable doing. In fact, the whole thing could come out awkward and forced with the amount of his experience in that particular area. Not to mention embarrassing, but, on the other hand, what did he have to lose? He already humiliated himself beyond human understanding, why should he care now? At least now he had a plan for what to do about that cryptic (and scary) 'we need to talk' message.

Thus, when the bell rang Ace calmly made his way to the cafeteria. They did not agree on a meeting spot, but they seemed to run into each other there so it was his first choice. Despite having decided on course of action, he got more nervous the closer he got to cafeteria. The plan had holes the size of Jupiter in it, and he had no idea what to do in case it went south, but he still gathered what was left of his courage and waited.

Sempai showed up a couple of minutes later, giving Ace just enough time to imagine all possible scenarios and even more reasons to why sempai wanted to talk to him.

"Sorry, got held up by my teacher. The guy doesn't take no for an answer," Marco said, stopping in front of Ace.

"What did he want?" Ace asked just to play for time, his voice levelled despite his heart trying to break through his ribcage.

"The same thing he always wants - me studying math at RLU after graduation." Sempai rolled his eyes – apparently the topic was old and annoying.

"And you don't want that?" He winced at his obvious stalling, but sempai didn't seem to notice.

"I could have actually thought about it, but he's been pushing me in that direction for two years now so I won't do that just to spite him," Marco said with a smug look on his face.

"What would you do then?" Ace was surprised sempai was still oblivious to his dodging.

"Don't know yet. Law school maybe?" Marco seemed lost in thought for a moment, but then he seemed to catch on what Ace was doing. "Let's go somewhere quiet, I want to actually hear myself speak."

Ace nodded – it was in fact very loud in the cafeteria during breaks. He followed sempai to one of the study rooms, heart hammering in his chest as he tried to decide if he should go along with his stupid plan. It was, after all, stupid. Well, worst case scenario was that sempai got tired of him and wanted to break up with him before the end of the week, so, if that was the case, his plan didn't really matter. Despite this thought being slightly calming, his heart was pumping blood like crazy when he followed sempai into an empty study room.

After entering, Ace locked the door behind himself and was met by surprised look on Marco's face. Mentally wishing himself best of luck, Ace set his plan in motion.

(^_^)

Marco expected a lot of things from Ace when they entered the study room. There were countless ways this 'we need to talk' talk could go. This, however, was not one of the things he would have expected. His brain short circuited when Ace grabbed his tie and pulled him into a kiss. His body reacted quickly though – before he could process what was happening he was already answering the kiss heatedly as he pushed Ace back into the door. One hand tangled in the black hair as the other was trying to get a better feel of that smoking hot body.

His lips left Ace's mouth to feverishly trace down his kouhai's neck. All thoughts about talking about anything flew out the window; he didn't give a damn about that anymore. Everything Marco wanted was right in front of him, letting out a barely audible moan when he sucked on the old mark. The hand in the hair dropped down in favour of exploring the body in front of him.

Ace had other ideas though – before Marco could do anything or put together a coherent thought, Ace switched their positions. He let out a surprised gasp when his back hit the door, which Ace immediately used to completely turn the tables and dominate the kiss. Needless to say, this was very far from what Marco was used to: somehow it went without saying that he was always the one to run the show. It didn't matter if he dated a guy or a girl, he was always the one in charge. This time, however, Marco got to be on the other side.

And Marco didn't exactly dislike it. He barely could hold back his voice when Ace completely eliminated the distance between their bodies, pressing his body to Marco's and kissed his neck. It was surprisingly addicting, Marco wanted more with every passing second. More contact, more touches, more kisses, and more of Ace. What he had was not enough. He wanted to know everything there was to know about his kouhai, from his favourite colour to every spot on his body that drove him crazy...

Marco switched their positions back, finally gathering enough willpower to do so - his body was content with allowing Ace to do whatever he wanted with it- and sneaked his hands under Ace's shirt to feel the skin. It was hot and smooth, and he could feel every muscle beneath it.

Ace made a soft noise into their kiss, which was gradually getting more sloppy, at the touch, making Marco suddenly aware of what exactly they were doing. They were in a study room at their school, making out like there was no tomorrow. Not that Marco was about to complain or do anything about it. Still, before he could take off Ace's shirt and get a better look, the bell rang, startling both of them.

The confused look on his kouhai's face turned into that of pure terror in about half a second. He broke free from Marco's embrace, quickly making himself more presentable.

"I'm really sorry, but Godzilla will have my head if I'm late," Ace gave him a quick peck on the lips before unlocking the door and bolting out.

Marco was left standing there, confused and completely disoriented. He understood why Ace was in such a rush – he'd had Godzilla last year in English, the hag was merciless (although Marco suspected she kinda liked him and wasn't as hard on him as other students for whatever reason). However, that was about the only thing that made any sense. He had no idea where everything else came from, all he wanted was to talk (well, not really, but he could at least pretend like it was true).

He slowly followed Ace's example, making himself presentable and leaving the room. Absentmindedly, Marco took out his phone and checked for any messages from Robin – they had a free-ish period, namely they had to work on a project that was due in December. Mostly people did whatever they wanted, often using this time to do some homework; Marco used it as an extra-long break to do nothing at all or play cards with Robin.

There were several messages from Robin – 'Where are u?' followed by 'The bell is gonna ring in a moment' and 'Anyway, I'm in a study room across from library'.

He made his way to Robin's location, deep in thought. Yet again Ace proved that he was impossible to read or predict. The… situation in the study room came out of nowhere, forcing Marco to take a step back in his conclusions. He wrecked his brain again trying to gather enough information to solve a puzzle called Ace. Unfortunately for him, Ace wasn't one of his math problems that were easy to solve. He was an enigma Marco just couldn't understand.

Robin was in their usual study room, her head shot up from a book she was reading when Marco entered. For a moment they just stared at each other until Robin finally spoke:

"I hope I did not disturb you," she said with a slight smile, holding back her teasing for now.

"You didn't," Marco made his way to the round table that was in the middle of the study room and slumped on an empty chair.

"Then why are you so gloomy?"

"I'm not gloomy," he folded his arms on the table and dropped his head on them, hiding his face. "I'm thinking."

"Aha… What about?" she asked. Marco answered by lifting his face and glaring at her for a second. "Alright. Although I don't know what is there to think about."

"I don't know… I just can't understand what's going on in that head of his!" Marco huffed into his arms.

"What is there to understand? Ace is very straightforward: he's terrible at lying or hiding things. Any worse and he'd be Luffy who can't lie at all," Robin laughed. "If he doesn't like you, he won't act like me or you, he'll be as obvious as it gets. He might not punch you straight in the face, but it will be very clear regardless."

"What would make him angry then?" Marco said, more to himself, but Robin answered anyway.

"It didn't look to me like he was angry at you. More like very interested."

"But still?"

"You clearly didn't insult Luffy or Sabo, otherwise you would have a black eye at the very least," she said thoughtfully. "And you didn't switch his coffee to decaff… You know, he's surprisingly mellow for someone with that type of upbringing. There aren't many things that would make him angry."

"Just great…"

"Have you tried asking him? He'll probably just tell you right away," Robin suggested.

"What do you think I tried to do?" Marco glared at Robin again.

His friend stared at him with wide eyes for a moment, then laughed loudly.

"Seriously?" she managed to say though laughter. "And that," she gestured at him, "is the result?"

Marco just sighed, hiding his face again.

Thanks for all the reviews, favs and follows! Also, congrats to Vivianne95 for being the 100th reviewer.

It means a lot to me to have such a response to my fic and the support you give. 100+ reviews! Did I expect this? No. Am I happy? You bet I am!

The very last thing I would want to give you is more waiting, but, unfortunatelly, heck if I know when I'll have tome or inspiration...

Still, hope to see you sooner rather than later,

~Rhe.

PS. Godzilla was inspired by my actual english teacher... brrr...