ᴀᴄᴇ ᴏꜰ ꜱᴘᴀᴅᴇꜱ

Road-trip of Doom

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It'd been an entire month and a half since you last heard from Ace. You suspected that he may have been in an area without cell service, which would have made sense considering Whitebeard often chose the places with the worst reception, but you were okay with that. Glad, even. It gave you the opportunity and the headspace you needed to ponder upon your emotions and your turbulent thoughts. And during that time, you even focused on your classes and took your finals, while also clearing up your terrible attendance record with the dean. For a while then, your life returned to normal. Well, as normal as it could get with Luffy around, but still relatively standard compared to the never-ending chaos when Ace was around. It'd been as if you'd gone back to the time before you met him. To a time where all you looked forward to was your next episode of Vikings or your daily dose of strawberry milk. It wasn't so much bad, as it was boring.

You missed those times where you tripped over your ankles and fell face-first into the mud, just to see him laughing at you, or the times where you woke up to the sound of his soft breath on his pillow; face relaxed and unconcerned. Or the times where you caught him fooling around with his brothers, so carefree and willy-nilly, like a blithe garden gnome -- if that made sense.

As foolish as he was, perhaps you were just as idiotic for falling for so energetic a moron.

Your problems seemed never-ending with him, but maybe that had been because of the fact that the two of you were trying so hard to shove an eight-year relationship into the span of a month. It was bound to fail, and you knew that now. From the awkward jealousy to the petty arguments, the two of you were practically acting like children who'd never been in a relationship before. Granted, you may not have had a relationship with someone you actually liked before -- as in, LIKE, like -- but that was no excuse for the failure to properly communicate your problems or lash out at the other when it felt convenient to you.

And it was because of your haste that the two of you had so many problems. Sure, you had a passion and a friendship that was on par with Luffy's, but the budding romance you had needed time to develop, and instead of properly nurturing it, the two of you cut corners and rushed into a relationship that should have taken time.

When you were with Law -- even after he'd profusely apologized for that Halloween night, and you accepted his apology and forgave him -- he still acted as if he'd broken your friendship. Sure, it had been hard to look at him the same after that, but you knew with time that the bond that you had before would surely mend. Still, there was a voice in you that told you that you didn't feel for Law the same way you did for Ace, and that was ok. Law was someone you felt you had a strong bond of friendship with, almost a brotherhood. And the times you hung out were amazing, if not a little awkward with how just uptight the ravenette was, but that wasn't the main part of your friendship.

With him, you felt... satisfied, but not whole.

It was so different from how it was with Ace. With him, there was always this razor's edge of insanity that made you feel like you were going to fall over. The more you thought about it, the more you realized just how intense things with Ace had been -- you had done too much too fast, without regard to how it'd affect others around you. When you were with Ace, it was like nothing else in the world existed; no one else existed, but the two of you. It was all-consuming, all fulfilling, and it blessed you with a new level of happiness you'd never felt before, but at the same time, you felt that with consuming content came dark sadness. It came to a point where you knew you needed to hash out things with the male and come clear, to say what needed to be said.