Chapter 12: Sometimes Triangles Have Soft Edges
Koala had to practically drag the two sobbing men from the grave after their reunion. She couldn’t blame them, she’d gotten teary eyed and even started crying herself during the absolute deluge of emotions that erupted between them.
Deuce had thought Ace was gone and had been planning on dying after finishing his book. Ace was in Sabo’s body and had to convince him. Secrets only Ace could know flowed between them, as Deuce broke down more and more under the onslaught of proof that his captain was right there.
She’d cried for them, feeling the palpable heartbreak followed by confused joy—
But they had to get away from the grave. Especially since, apparently, Ace thought Deuce and himself should have killed themselves together??? That was— Koala didn’t use this phrase lightly— kind of completely fucked up. She could only imagine how hard service under Whitebeard had damaged both men.
But she sure as HELL not going to let them try to make up for lost time in THAT regard, so she’d taken to dragging them down into town as they sniffled all over one another. It only took like–three punches to get them moving, in good time.
She’d asked where Deuce was staying; honestly that’d be the best place to talk this out, right? Nope. Deuce was staying in the old second bedroom of some nice old lady who’d seen him wandering around town in a depressed haze. Her son’s old room.
They decided that was absolutely a bad idea, Deuce walking into her house with two oddly dressed strangers and taking them to his bedroom would probably alarm the poor lady—so they decided instead on buying a bottle of wine from the tavern and heading out to the hillside beyond.
Framed by the windmills as they lazily spun, the four of them in three bodies settled into the grass and uncorked the wine.
Ace hadn’t yet let go of Deuce’s hand, and that didn’t change as he laid down in the grass beside him.
“Thanks for grabbing the wine, Ko.”
“Hey, you know I’m happy to.” Koala laughed, blowing him a little kiss. She offered the bottle first to Deuce, who took it with a raise of his eyebrow.
“I appreciate it, really.” He laughed weakly before taking a long sip of wine. “….so you’re in the body of—Sabo, Ace?”
“Yeah. I can get him for you, if you want to talk to him. We’ve been practicing switching back and forth. I guess I’m like, possessing him, maybe? Technically?”
Deuce lowered the bottle, his book resting on his lap.
“Switching back and forth. Like—which one of you is talking? That’s…” He laughed. “That’s fucking insane.”
“It’s pretty weird to watch,” Koala agreed, “but it’s impressive, they’re really getting control over it!”
Deuce pointed between Koala and Ace,.”And uh—Sabo and Koala, you two are close?”
Was it that obvious? Koala felt her face heat up as she squirmed in the grass. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact we are.”
“They’re partners,” Ace explained. His whole body was leaned up against Deuce. “Like you and me.”
Deuce pointed the bottle. “I’d thought that’s what you meant—” he paused before he chuckled. “That has to be awkward, huh?”
Koala felt her face heating up even more. “W–welll…it was for a bit—.”
Maybe she should try steering the conversation somewhere else? If nothing else, this was an embarrassing foot to get off on.
“It’s had its ups and downs,” Ace said, snatching the bottle gently from him. “But we’ve mostly worked it out, I mean, at least for now. You know how I never quite managed to get Isuka to kiss me?”
Deuce leaned forward with a smirk, his expression—well, Koala could tell he was trying to be okay with all this as possible and it had landed him somewhere near ‘manic’.
“Of course I remember. You fumbled it at every turn. Maybe if you hadn’t spent one of the last times we saw her leaping out of the ferris wheel, you’d have managed!”
Ace didn’t seem to be in a much more stable state. He was grinning like a maniac now. “Might have! I uh, didn’t have anywhere to jump out of this time. Managed it with Koala.”
Koala flushed deeper and pressed her head into her hands. They were in a state—they were coping—but it didn’t make it any less embarrassing!
She fumbled out a punch to catch him on the arm before she groped for the wine. “You could have jumped off the hotel balcony, dummy.”
Deuce glanced between them with a slight flush of his own, before he pointed with a smirk. “No way. You’re pulling my leg. Ace—you’re as smooth as sandpaper, you couldn’t manage to kiss a girl within what? A handful of weeks?”
He laughed, and wiped his eyes again. “Okay, okay, you caught me. Admittedly, I went for it and she reacted like I’d turned into a frog. Then Sabo had to talk her into kissing me to apologize. It was the most fucking awkward thing ever. I totally fumbled it.”
Koala stared at him for a long moment like he’d just turned into a frog.
A long, silent stare as she took in his interpretation of events. It was generous to call it an interpretation really. It was more like—
Well, it sure wasn’t what happened. ‘Sabo had to talk her into kissing me to apologize’ her foot! She slapped him hard on the arm. “That’s not what happened, dumbass!”
Deuce laughed out loud, slapping the grass with his hand. “Ough, she’s got an arm on her don’t she?” he said as she sent Ace rocking with the slap.
Koala puffed out her cheeks. “What happened was he surprised me with a kiss at the end of a dance, but I froze up ’cause I got flustered—and I hadn’t talked about if it’d be okay with Sabo. So when we got back I got Sabo to drag him out so I could kiss him myself!”
Ace laughed and rubbed the spot she’d slapped him. “One of the first things Sabo warned me about was how rough she is. It’s cute. And I like your version of events better, Ko, even if I’m not sure about which really happened.”
“That’s ‘point of view’ for you,” Deuce smirked wryly. “You never know who’s being an unreliable narrator….and good. The world needs more rough girls.”
He leaned on his hand. “So you two are kind of a thing now. Or at least have kissed.”
Koala had an idea where this was going. He was trying to judge the way things were going to be now—now that Ace had stopped him from killing himself for a moment, and had stepped back into his life.
“Yeah,” Ace nodded. “We’re still trying to figure it out but I’m kinda stuck with her partner, so. I mean– it’s not like she’s bad company. I’m getting to like her real well. I think you two would get along…”
Koala watched as Ace nuzzled up to him— clearly trying to judge Deuce’s reactions the same way Deuce was trying to judge his own.
Deuce glanced at her for a moment, giving her a half smile as he reached for the wine.
“You seem like a pretty fun girl, Koala. It’s clear Ace likes you pretty well. You shoulda seen him when he was trying to flirt with Isuka.”
Isuka came up again. She’d have to ask Ace more about that later. Still, Koala felt her face flushing again as she leaned her elbows on her knees and propped up her head with a smile “I shoulda—and I like to think I’m a pretty fun lady. I mean—I’m an ass kicking spy, what’s more fun than that?”
Deuce laughed, raising the bottle to his lips as he looked down at Ace with a slight flush.
“Does she know about you an’ me, Ace?” He paused for a moment. “Fuck, it’s weird seeing you make those familiar expressions on that face. Not—bad but…wow.”
Ace laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. “You should imagine what it’s like for me looking in the mirror! It’s so weird, Deuce. But yeah, she knows. I made a point to be extra clear about it so things didn’t get— well I mean this is already weird and uncomfortable enough for everybody, right? I’m sorry for putting you all through this.”
He already knows about me and you, Ace assured Sabo as they chatted. I mean, at least he assumes. I told him once, after we were really together, one night. About my first love.
Sabo chuckled internally. Every time you call me that. It’s sweet, Ace, but it’s so weird! You never used to say things like that when we were kids.
Well, can you blame me? I wasn’t getting drunk when we were 10. And I didn’t even know what a ‘lost love’ was at the time.
Deuce raised the bottle of wine to his lips to take a long sip.
“Thank fuck. I guess that makes that all make much more sense—I mean. You found your lost love, huh? And surprise, he’s got a girlfriend. But she’s a fun gal, so it makes it easy—you guys get close and…” He waved his hand. “Love triangle solved. Useful, given the two body problem.”
He saw Koala flush more, smiling despite the way she chewed her lip. She nodded. “It helped that we were enjoying one another’s company a lot—he helped me out with something important too. And during all that—yeah, he told me about your relationship.”
Ace felt himself flush as Deuce immediately called him out– even specifically saying it that way ‘lost love’.
See? It sounds so hammy out loud, Ace!
It’s romantic!… but yeah you’re right it’s totally hammy. I was drunk as hell that night.
But he chuckled. “Yeah, we’ve been trying to be open. Can you imagine trying to keep secrets, or not talk to each other with things like this? My first instinct was to hide that I was even here– but Sabo talked me out of it.”
Koala leaned over and whalloped his arm again with a sharp frown. “And I’m still miffed about that! That’d have made everything SO awkward, idiot! Thankfully Sabo had a little more sense than that!”
Deuce laughed again, his face flushed and his brow knit.
“Yeah uh—keeping secrets and keeping that kind of thing inside isn’t easy when you’re…like that. I imagine, anyway.” He ran his hand through his hair, pushing it back and clearly trying not to freak out. “I dunno what I’d do in your situation. A few more hours, and I might have found out.”
The words stung. They’d barely gotten to Deuce in time. If they’d been a few hours later… He clung tightly to Deuce’s hand, squeezing in his own.
“Imagine if you wound up in Koala’s body somehow!” He played the fear that gripped his heart off like a joke.
Don’t think I didn’t notice what you said earlier, Ace. Sabo hissed at him internally. About how the two of you should have— I can’t even bear to think it!
Sorry, Sabo. I didn’t exactly mean it.
He didn’t exactly not mean it either, and Sabo knew that too.
Deuce’s fingers curled in his own as he glanced back towards Koala with a sharp laugh.
“I think that’d be even weirder than your situation, Ace. You’ve got that whole ‘back in your first love’s arms’ thing going on. It’d probably just be me and Koala over there screaming and pointing back and forth for an hour—but like , ‘in the mind’, so to speak.” He was playing it off as a joke too, but the expression that crossed his face—he might have been terrified by how close he’d gotten.
Koala blinked, and grabbed for the wine to take a sip. “Oh that’d be bizzare. But I’d get used to it. I’m adaptable. Part of the whole ‘intelligence agent’ thing.”
“You’re so adaptable, Ko. We’d figure it out. But I’m glad as fuck that it didn’t come to it.” He pressed his cheek up against Deuce’s for a moment. “You too, right? Even with how weird this is?”
Deuce nuzzled his cheek against Ace’s with a flustered laugh. God this was weird. He felt like the entire world was warped around him and stepped straight into a fairy tale. But hell help him, he believed it.
There was ample proof already—but the way they talked so easily back and forth? It was familiar—a familiar patter, an unmistakable pattern. So he was convinced. Now he just had to figure out what to do about that.
He watched as Koala sipped the wine like a woman who desperately needed it with how flustered she was getting—he could relate, sister.
Ace and Sabo had a relationship with her, yeah. Ace was downplaying it for his benefit, and probably also for the fact that he himself wasn’t entirely sure—but it was clear. And it was clear that Ace didn’t want to let Deuce go into the abyss again.
He kind of didn’t want to go anymore either. But that meant Ace wanted to pull him back in—pick things up like they were before Whitebeard got his hands on them. Right?
Which left the tangle of ‘now there’s Koala, a girl he’s yet to get to know.’. She seemed fun, she had some in common with Isuka actually; just enough, but still wildly different.
Ace was hurting from his own death, Deuce was still hurting too, but there was a path forward. It was just the weirdest goddamned path Deuce had ever seen.
He smiled at Ace with a low chuckle. “Yeah. I’m adaptable too. It’s not gonna come to that. Even with how weird this is.”
“I’m glad,” Ace said quietly. The insistent squeeze of his fingers emphasized how glad he obviously was. “I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do about… any of this. But I missed you.”
Deuce felt the heat stinging his eyes again as his heart did somersaults in his chest.
“Same,” his breath shuddered as he managed a smile “I missed you too, Ace. I really didn’t know what I was gonna do after I lost you but—” He shrugged his shoulders. “This is all so—much. But we’ll figure it out, yeah?”
“Yeah. Yeah we sure will. I won’t–” Ace took a long, shuddering breath. “I won’t let things go south again, okay? I’m not– I’m not going to give up again.”
Deuce was taken aback for a moment. ‘I’m not going to give up again’.
Ace had given up. Years ago. Damn, if he hadn’t seen that during the times under Whitebeard. When they’d burned their own flag together, they’d both given up. They’d lost everything—their hopes and dreams, and one another in a single moment.
They’d given up.
Ace had been beaten down by the world, and Deuce had been beaten with him. They’d both become something they never wanted to be. Ace an obedient follower, Deuce—a second rate, extraneous doctor. Just like back home.
He hiccuped sharply, and pressed his hand to his face.
“Me neither.”
He’d been about to give up again—he was going to give up again, and Ace came for him at the last absolute moment. “I promise I ain’t gonna give up again.”
Koala watched them with the wine on her lap.”You both shouldn’t—you’ve got so much to live for, even with all the strangeness. There’s so much you two can do if you put your hearts to it.”
“I never thought it’d be like this,” Ace said, sitting up and taking both of Deuce’s hands, pulling them gently away from his face. “But I really feel like I’ve got more hope now after dying than I did before.”
Deuce squeezed his hands with a furrow of his brow. “That’s the second saddest fucking thing you’ve ever told me, Ace—but I ain’t surprised. Guess sometimes you have to come out the other side to get some fresh perspective…”
“I guess so. But I hope we can get one together. All of us. I can already tell Sabo likes you.” He chuckled softly and then bit back a little sob. “The second saddest thing I ever told you, huh?”
Koala leaned on her hand, watching him with curious big eyes as he continued—man, he was briefly distracted by how apropos that name was. He shook it off to squeeze Ace’s hands tightly.
“He does, huh? Good to know. I uh…I mean the first saddest is probably that time we got drunk and cried about our dads, Ace.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Ace didn’t manage to bite back the little sob this time, but he did sniffle and laugh afterward. “That was pretty fucking sad.”
Koala leaned forward enough to put her hand on Ace’s back with a soft huff of breath. “Sounds like it was miserable.”
“Trust me, it was. Least manly day of my life.” Deuce drawled as he squeezed Ace’s hands a little harder with a tearful laugh. “But hey—you almost topped it, Ace. Keep trying.”
“How about I don’t?” he laughed. “I’d rather focus on happy things, if we can. Or at least hopeful ones.”
“I’m seconding that. If this turns into a pity party I’m going to whack you both upside the head,” Koala sniffed.
Deuce broke down into a snickering laugh, pressing his hand to his face to hide his smile. “Yeah.”
Deuce’s sun had burned out when Ace had died, leaving him in a sort of endless darkness that’d been encroaching ever since they’d been dragged into Whitebeard’s shadow. He’d thought he’d never see the light again, choked by the shadows of his past and a future without anything to live for.
But somehow the sun had returned.
It’d returned with a head of fluffy blonde hair and an unfamiliar face—and flanked by some redhead with fiery temper. It was absurd—but he was finally feeling like he could see a spot of light on the horizon.
“Yeah. Let’s hang on to that hope, huh?”