Well, here's the next chapter. It's a little on the short side, but we cover some important things here, so I hope you enjoy it :D
As always, beta-read by Aerle :)
Chapter 9
"Marco," Ace says, turning on their makeshift bed to lean on his arms.
Marco, on his back and with an arm pillowing his head, looks at him.
"Yeah?"
Ace grins slightly, pleased at how Marco is getting used to answer him verbally. He doesn't seem to need to think about some of his answers anymore.
"I know condoms are great, but maybe we should study."
Marco looks at him for a moment, no doubt trying to understand the sentence of which he only knows part of the contents —Ace belatedly realizes he hasn't explained 'maybe' nor 'should', and, while the second would be difficult, he doesn't even know where to start with the first— before nodding and moving out of bed.
It is past midday already, and they haven't moved from the bed more than to grab some food they have eaten here. Ace doesn't bother to move now either, instead watching as Marco goes to retrieve one of the books from his bag, proving that he has understood the gist of the sentence at least.
Ace sits up after Marco settles next to him again.
"Green?" he asks when he recognizes the color-themed book.
Marco nods and opens it on the first page. Ace leans on Marco's shoulder to see the page better.
"Okay. That's a pear. It's a fruit. You remember 'fruit'?"
Ace swallows, looks down at the camera he holds in his hands —a cheap one, but it is still far more money than he feels comfortable risking like this— and shakes his head. There is no point in worrying about this, it is something that they have to do before the month is over.
Sighing, he turns to Marco, who is sitting next to him and has been looking at him in puzzlement for the time he has hesitated like an idiot.
"Okay, this is a camera," Ace says, showing said object to Marco.
Marco nods, the expression on his face telling Ace that, though he understands that is how the object is called, he has absolutely no idea of what it is.
Ace doesn't expect this lesson to be an easy one.
"This serves to take pictures," Ace explains. Marco blinks. He knows all the words in that sentence —even if he has never heard the verb 'take' used in that sense— but his expression makes it clear that he has absolutely no idea of what Ace means.
Ace has counted on this happening, of course, and so he reaches for his nature book —that has been waiting next to him for this exact reason— and opens it on the first random page he can find with a picture.
"A camera," he explains again, waving the camera, "makes pictures," he continues, pointing to the picture of a tiny purple flower. They have already covered the verbs 'do' and 'make', though Marco has a lot of trouble trying to know which is used when because of how badly Ace was able to explain them —thank you, English language, for being so confusing on that matter.
Marco blinks, stares at the camera, then at the picture, at the camera again, and finally nods in a very hesitant way that can be easily read as 'I have absolutely no fucking idea how that's possible, but I'll believe you'. No panic or violent reaction, that is good.
Ace turns the camera on and leans close to Marco so that they can both look at it.
"Look, you just-" Ace cuts himself off when he realizes that Marco isn't listening. He is staring in utter astonishment at the camera.
Ace realizes belatedly that the screen shows their feet, and of course, that would confuse Marco greatly. And Ace hasn't even taken a picture yet.
Marco leans down to one side, looking at the bottom of the camera with such concentration that Ace has to bite back a snicker. He looks just too cute with that bewildered expression on his face. Very cautiously, Marco approaches his index finger to the camera and pokes the lens. Nothing happens. Marco's even more confused expression tells Ace he expected that something would happen.
Ace taps him on the shoulder.
"Come on, sit up."
Reluctantly, Marco does.
Once they are both looking at the screen, that still shows their feet, Ace wiggles his feet. Marco jumps back, startled, and this time Ace does laugh. He stops when he notices Marco, who hasn't made a move to approach again, is glaring at him. He grins.
"Don't worry, it's okay. I promise." He extends a hand. "Come here."
Squaring his shoulders visibly —Ace has to hold back another laugh— Marco does.
They spend the next hour with Ace aiming the camera at random things, never actually taking a picture, so that Marco can get used to it. They even play with the zoom, something Marco finds fascinating. He doesn't allow Marco to take the camera, which earns him a glare, because he isn't sure how Marco will react if he accidentally presses a button and the camera does something.
When they run out of things to look at inside the cave, they go outside.
After Marco's third attempt to convince Ace to lend him the camera, Ace decides he is ready to move on to the next step.
Marco's awed face when Ace takes a picture of a tree and shows him is so breathtaking that Ace doesn't feel the tiniest impulse to laugh. Instead, he hurries to raise the camera and take another picture before Marco can react.
It isn't until he is looking at the picture itself that Ace realizes he might have made a wrong move. Marco has noticed he has taken the picture, and suddenly Ace remembers how many people, when cameras first came out, believed pictures stole the soul. If Marco has a reaction like that...
"Ace? You okay?"
Ace looks up at him. He can't backtrack now.
"Yeah. I took a picture of you."
Readying himself to get the camera out of the way fast if he has to, he turns it around before Marco can answer.
Marco doesn't panic, he doesn't even jump back like before. He just reaches out a hand and touches the screen.
Next thing he knows, Marco has snatched the camera out of Ace's hands and, following Ace's instructions to the letter, taken a picture.
Ace is treated to an image of his very confused face.
"O-Oi!" he yells, and Marco just smirks at him and takes another picture of him.
Shaking his head, Ace smiles and points to a bush off to the right, telling Marco to zoom in and take a picture.
When it eventually starts to grow dark, Ace braces himself for the last lesson of the day: the flash. Marco doesn't even bat a lid at it, and Ace belatedly realizes he is so used to flashlights that he probably just sees the flash as a different version of one. Which isn't entirely wrong.
All in all, it is a good lesson: Marco doesn't break the camera or become afraid of it, instead taking an obvious liking to it.
They will leave videos for another day.
If anybody were to stumble upon them now, what they would see would look like two weirdoes paying a comical amount of attention to a simple digital wrist watch. A simple digital wrist watch that Marco finds fascinating.
After the success yesterday with the camera —though it is weird to wake up to find your sort-of-boyfriend taking pictures of you while you sleep— Ace has decided to move on to another lesson that needs the support of technology: time.
Working from the base that Marco already knows what a day is, Ace has explained that it is composed by hours, that are composed by minutes, that are composed by seconds. Ace kind of dreaded how that particular explanation would go, but it turns out that Marco is familiar with the concept of measuring time, and he only has needed to learn the division system itself.
After that, the watch has come to play. Explaining the hours in the traditional clock way has been easy enough. The digital way... well, that one has derived into an explanation of written numbers that has occupied most of their morning and gone on well into lunch. Many things have caught Marco's interest before, Ace thinks, but few have done so with the same intensity as the concept of written numbers has. Instead of stopping at sixty, as was the plan, Ace has covered everything he thinks Marco will need to write and read numbers up to a very large number, throwing in the explanations of 'thousand' and 'million'. Marco's rapt attention has been worth the extra time.
After lunch, once Ace has ensured that Marco can read both formats, they have moved on to explaining when a certain time is. For that, Ace uses the current time, the meals and the concepts of 'day' and 'night' as references. While the explanation advances, he starts to introduce new concepts: morning, noon, afternoon, evening, midnight, early, earlier, late, later...
He is so excited he even adds 'week' as a last minute decision, and spends the entire dinner explaining to Marco that each day of the week has a different name.
He stops before he can make the mistake of mentioning the existence of months. That can be tricky, and will probably take some time, seeing as months have different numbers of days, and could take a while. Especially considering that Ace himself doesn't know the reasoning behind it.
By the end of it, despite having been sitting for most of the day, he is exhausted. Marco doesn't look much better.
They fall asleep outside, having made the mistake of stretching back 'just for a moment'.
Ace forgets to call Sabo and Luffy.
Ace wakes up to the sound of his phone blaring obnoxiously. Judging by the almost complete lack of light, it's an ungodly hour in the morning.
Marco pokes him and, when Ace looks up at him, gives him a very transparent glare: 'silence that thing or I'll break it'.
Sighing, Ace forces himself to roll away —damn if Marco isn't the best pillow in the world— and reach for where he left his phone last night.
He manages to answer it in what he thinks is the last ring before the call is sent to voicemail.
"AAAAAAACEEEEEEE!"
Ace winces and pulls the phone away from his ear. Marco throws him a dirty look —and not the fun kind of dirty— before turning his back on him in a clear gesture that he is trying to go back to sleep. Luffy can be horribly energetic in the morning. And loud.
He should have let the call go to voicemail.
He sighs.
"Hey, Luffy... Any reason to wake me up at..." he looks at the screen and grimaces, "not even five in the morning?"
"You didn't call!" Luffy yells, again, and Ace immediately shushes him.
"Don't yell."
"Why not? You're awake!"
"Yeah, but..." He pauses. He can't say 'my possibly not human boyfriend you don't know about is trying to sleep', so he goes for only half of the truth. "I want to go back to sleep, and I won't be able to if you keep yelling."
"Oh!" Luffy exclaims. "Okay." The last word is a whisper, which is so fucking cute Ace can forgive Luffy for calling so early. Not that he will tell him, but still.
"Sorry I didn't call. I fell asleep."
The next step on their lessons is the little book about families that Ace bought in town. He bought it with a very specific purpose in mind, and that is to tell Marco about Sabo and Luffy. That is why, two hours of explanations and handwaving after they start, Ace pulls out his phone.
"This has a camera, too," he says, pointing at the lens. When Marco nods, Ace turns the screen on and quickly goes to the gallery. Marco is looking over his shoulder, and no doubt growing very confused at the little device, but he doesn't ask anything about it.
Ace pulls up a picture he took with his brothers at the beach back in late June, in which the three of them appear crammed on the same hammock and in the process of trying to shove the others off. It is the most serious picture of the three of them that Ace has currently in his phone.
"These are my brothers," he tells Marco. "This is Sabo," who is shoving at Ace's face with his right hand and trying to fend Luffy off with the left, "and this is Luffy," who is barely hanging on the hammock and trying to step on Sabo. Right after that, he used Ace's distraction with Sabo to kick him off.
Marco chuckles, and leans down over Ace's shoulder to have a better look at the picture.
"They're idiots, but I love them." Marco doesn't know what the word 'love' means, but the look on Ace's face must be enough to give him an idea, because he just nods and turns back to look at the screen.
Ace thinks he is committing their faces to memory.
"I'm going to tell them about you," Ace says, turning off the screen.
Marco moves around him to sit before him.
"Me?"
"Yeah. You..." Ace hesitates, suddenly realizing that he has assumed, but hasn't really asked. "You're coming with me, right?" he asks, feeling less sure about it now that he has to say it out loud.
"Coming where?" Marco asks in return, and it is the first time Ace realizes that Marco has absolutely no idea of what might happen even the next day. Again, Ace simply assumed. Marco's worry when Ace left makes a lot more sense, now.
"Home," Ace says.
Marco tilts his head. He doesn't understand. They haven't studied that concept.
But they have studied another, there was a drawing on the families book and Marco asked how it was called. He already knew what it was.
"To my house. Mine, Sabo's and Luffy's. I'm going back in twenty eight days. Will you come with me?"
Marco smiles. It is a happy smile, a pleased one. A relieved one. Ace feels horrible, the realization has hit him like a truck. He hadn't even considered that Marco might have been worried about what would happen next. He is such an ass.
"Yes," Marco answers verbally, nodding.
Ace smiles. It takes a little effort, because he feels like shit, but he manages it.
"I'm gonna tell them. About you, and that you're coming."
"With... that?" Marco asks, unsure, pointing at the phone. And of course he has realized Ace talks to someone with it, he probably has heard Luffy's and Sabo's voices coming through when he observes Ace talking on the phone, and he obviously understands it as little as he understands how the camera works.
The smile comes more easily this time.
"Yeah, with this. A phone," he says, earning himself a glare, because it has been a couple of weeks since Marco understood that it was called that way and not 'that', as he had believed at first, and he isn't pleased at the reminder. "Where's the camera?"
"Here," Marco says, taking it out of his pocket and giving it to him. Ace should have known; Marco has spent the entire morning taking pictures.
"I'm gonna send them pictures of you, okay?"
Marco nods, then tilts his head to the left.
"How-?" He shakes his head and stands up. "I'll find dinner," he says instead.
"Okay," Ace says with a nod. It's a good thing Marco didn't finish that question, because Ace has absolutely no idea how to answer it.
Marco must have figured it was too complicated, too.
Once Marco is gone, Ace switches the memory card from the camera to his phone, finds a couple pictures of Marco he likes to have them ready and dials Sabo's number before he can talk himself out of it.
He speaks as soon as the call is answered, not waiting for even a greeting.
"Hey, Sabo. What would you say if I told you I've been living with a guy these past few weeks and am bringing him home?"
To be continued