If you're still taking prompts, a sweet moment between Alex and Ace maybe?
hi friend! sorry this took so long, i rewrote it bc the first one wasn’t really what i had envisioned. anyway have some love and pizza! :)
read it on ao3
Opening a door while holding two large pizzas is not the most difficult thing Alex has ever done, but it ranks pretty high. Well, the holding part is easy— it’s making sure the pizzas don’t fall that’s hard.
He probably doesn’t need to get plates out, but he does anyway, since they might as well have the option, and then he goes to knock on the door to Ace’s room, since he’s been sleeping for thirteen hours straight and should probably be woken up.
He only has to knock a few times before the door swings open and Ace says, “I know you get up earlier than I do but this is ridiculous.” Then his face changes. “Pizza?”
“Yeah, and it’s four in the afternoon, so I think you’re the ridiculous one.”
“I think you are.”
“No, you are.”
“No. What kind of pizza?” Ace asks, already sliding past Alex to get to the kitchen.
“See for yourself.” Alex has memorized Ace’s top two pizza orders (it isn’t that hard to do when he can summon up dozens of different memories of Ace ordering pizza), so his bases are probably covered.
Ace opens the boxes and says, “Fuck yes, I love you,” and then he does take a plate, so getting them out wasn’t useless after all.
Alex blinks. ”Okay, when you say love, do you mean love as in like loving pizza or as in love, love?”
“Both, if you’re down with that.”
Alex grabs a slice of pizza. “I’m down with both.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 2/?
Fandom: Sharp Zero (Webcomic)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Alex/Ace, background Elliot/Danny, background Eli/Isaiah
Characters: Alex Becket, Ace/Crank, Kate/Dispatch, Madina Matar, Elijah Rose, Vindicators (ensemble), Danny Becket, Elliot Hong
Additional Tags: this is gonna be so au, that's the problem with writing fic when the comic is in early stages, so GONNA BE AU AS HELL, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, More characters to be added, and tags
Summary:
Ace is pretty sure there isn't supposed to be a Vindicator in his apartment, but what does he know?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 3/?
Fandom: Sharp Zero (Webcomic)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Alex/Ace, background Elliot/Danny, background Eli/Isaiah
Characters: Alex Becket, Madina Matar, Elijah Rose, Vindicators (ensemble), Danny Becket, Elliot Hong, Ace, Ace|Crank - Character, Kate Rodriguez, Kate|Dispatch - Character, Kim Garcia
Additional Tags: this is gonna be so au, that's the problem with writing fic when the comic is in early stages, so GONNA BE AU AS HELL, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, More characters to be added, and tags, they're all disasters every single one of them, secret identity shenanigans
Summary:
Ace is pretty sure there isn't supposed to be a Vindicator in his apartment, but what does he know?
guess who!! fuckin!!!! updated!!!!!!!! (and added some more tags!!)
When that Sharp Zero guy had showed up, it had started causing a lot of problems for Ace. Mostly because Redshift apparently hadn’t thought to try punching Crank’s mask as a way to get him out of commission— he can’t exactly fight when he’s trying to hold it in the place. The mechanism isn’t the sturdiest. (And he’s probably going to lose some teeth eventually.)
So Redshift has been using that as a way to get out of fights, but Ace has been able to get away before either his mask falls off or he gets his ass kicked, mostly thanks to Kate.
It was probably only a matter of time.
Crank is the diversion, since they have some breaking and entering to do and they can’t accomplish it if Redshift is always on their tails. Unfortunately, Redshift went straight for the mask, and Ace is having some serious difficulties keeping it up while also posing enough of a threat for Redshift to keep focusing on him. The flames can only do so much when he can only use one hand.
Redshift likes to teleport directly behind people, and it’s a trick of his that Ace knows, but when he goes to swivel and punch him, Redshift catches his free arm instead in an unforgivingly tight grip.
“Great,” Ace mutters, because one hand is stuck holding his mask up, the other can’t move without it breaking, and he’s in the middle of a turn, so he’s not exactly balanced. (He proves this last point by falling over backwards.)
Redshift is surprised enough to let go of his arm, but then Ace tries to catch himself. As his hands, both of them, hit the ground, so does his mask, and Ace can just tell that Redshift is standing over him. “Fucking great.”
“Who are you?” Redshift asks. “You can’t get away, so there’s not really anything you can do except tell me.”
Ace looks up, and he’s about to say something that was probably going to be witty, but then Redshift says, “What the fuck.”
“Huh?” (Which is definitely not the snarky response Ace was going for.)
“Ace? You’re Crank? Of all the damn people in LA, it’s you?”
“Do we know each other?”
And then Redshift takes off his mask.
“What the fuck,” Ace says, because it’s Alex. Alex is Redshift. Redshift is Alex. It’s kind of all he can say. And then his brain proves him wrong because the next thing out of his mouth is “You’re literally the tallest person I know, how did I not realize?”
“I don’t think that’s what matters right now.”
“Yeah.”
They stay there for a while, Ace sitting on the ground, Alex standing over him.
“We tried to stay relatively harmless,” Ace says finally. “Me and Dispatch.”
“What, by showing up and starting fights? How exactly is that harmless? Why are you doing it in the first place?”
“We needed the money.” The biggest fight Ace and Kate had ever had was when Ace tried to help pay for Mrs. Rodriguez’ hospital bills with the paycheck they both got for causing havoc as Crank and Dispatch, and she’d never backed down on that, but Ace sneaks groceries into Kate’s fridge and she pretends not to notice that in three weeks she’s only had to go to the store once, for tissues. “And we never went out if there was something else going on.”
“You almost killed me eight times.”
“Ten times.”
“No, it was eight.”
“No, I’m talking about how many times you almost killed me.”
Alex sighs. “I have no idea what to do in this situation.”
“Same.” Ace picks up his mask and stands up slowly. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to sleep on it.”
“It is four in the morning. We should both be asleep.”
“Yeah. Damn, I can’t believe neither of us ever noticed the other, like, vanishing in the middle of the night and coming back with a shit ton of bruises.”
“Probably because we were busy trying to disguise our respective shit tons of bruises.”
“Probably. I’m gonna meet up with Dispatch.”
“You aren’t telling her who I am, are you?”
“Nah, I’ll just say that I know who you are and you know who I am. She won’t pry.”
“I hope not.”
“Right. Well. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m going to crash with Kate for tonight.”
“Oh, I was going to say I would stay with Danny?”
“Kate has a guest room, Danny doesn’t.”
“Okay. See you tomorrow, then. Hopefully we’ll straighten something out.”
“Knowing us, probably not.”
“Fuck you for the straight pun, and also, I think we can figure out what to do. In a way that won’t get either of us killed, fired, or imprisoned.”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m not breathing a word of it to anyone in Mission Control until we have a solution, because otherwise someone will explode.”
“I’ll talk to Dispatch.” Ace is halfway down the alley when he stops and turns around. “We’re gonna be okay.”
“Ugh,” Ace says from the kitchen. “Can you come help me get this stain out?”
“What is it?” Alex gets off the couch and heads in the direction of Ace’s voice. The man in question turns out to be standing in front of the sink, scrubbing at a gray tank top.
“Hair dye.”
“But you haven’t dyed your hair recently.”
“I know.” Ace punctuates that remark with a particularly vicious movement of the steel wool. “I put it in the wash with a towel that had dye on it, and I’m pretty sure the steel wool is going to destroy the fabric before it gets the stain out, but it’s the only thing I haven’t tried yet.”
“I’m not sure what you think I can do to help.”
“Stand there and look encouraging. Or just order a pizza. I’m in the mood for someone to deliver food to me.”
“I’ll order the pizza. Looking encouraging is not my strong suit.”
“I mean, this way we get food, so that’s probably for the best. I want bell pepper and pineapple on my half.”
“That’s disgusting, but fine.”
“At least I don’t put peanut butter in Greek yogurt. You have no room to be criticizing my pizza toppings.”
When the band finishes their set and they all get out of the bar, Alex says, “That was amazing!”
“That’s what I said the first time I saw them,” Danny says, and then he’s going to talk to Elliot, but Alex hangs back for Ace, who’s still in the bar.
When he finally gets out the door, the first thing he says is, “Hey, have you seen my—” and then Alex tosses Ace’s flannel at him and it lands on his face. The “oh, thanks” is slightly muffled, then Ace puts it on properly and says, “So you caught it, then?”
“Obviously.” He’d barely even had to move to grab it out of the air when Ace had unexpectedly tossed it into the audience.
“Good, I was aiming for you. So what did you think?”
“It was amazing,” Alex repeats. “I don’t think I knew how good you were at guitar until tonight.”
“It’s my hidden skill.”
Alex grins at him. “It’s your hidden skill that you show off onstage?”
(this is so fucking long lmao this is the first one i’ve had to put under a read more, also hey, send me sharp zero ficlet prompts!)
Alex stares at the counter, which is covered with various boxes and jars of ingredients and a single sheet of printer paper, and then he stares at Ace, who has unearthed aprons from God-knows-where and is looking for a spatula. “I’m just going to go on the record saying that if this goes horribly wrong, I was the one who said we should just buy a mix instead of making it from scratch with a dodgy recipe from the Internet.”
“Hey, do you want the cake to be unique, or do you want it to taste like Betty Crocker?”
“I’d rather it be Betty Crocker than a mess?”
“The reviews said it was good. Besides, if it doesn’t turn out good we can just write our own reviews.”
“Okay, okay, let’s decipher the recipe.” Alex scans the paper. “Do you have an electric mixer?”
“Yeah, I was waiting for you to ask that, because there’s a stand mixer on the top shelf of the cupboard and there’s a thirty percent chance of injury if I try to get it down myself, so you and your three quarters of a foot of extra height can go get that.”
“What kind of injury?”
“Duh, it would fall on my head. Your head is too high up for it to fall on yours without defying gravity.”
They manage to combine the wet ingredients with minimal splattering and only one eggshell that Ace had to pick out of the bowl, so they move on to the dry ingredients and Alex flicks the stand mixer on to high.
“Oh my god shit that was not a good idea!” he says as the flour starts flying out of the bowl. Even with super speed, it takes him a while to turn the mixer off, mostly because it took a few seconds just to register what was happening.
Ace snorts. “You look like your hair is going white prematurely.”
“You look like you just bleached your mohawk really badly.”
“Yeah? Well, the stand mixer just happens to have a low setting that everyone uses to mix in dry ingredients.”
“First of all, you just went ahead and let me set it on high? And second of all, I doubted you for the aprons, but not anymore.”
“I know what I’m about when it comes to cooking.”
“Pft, no you don’t, you spent twenty minutes looking for a cake recipe.”
“I’m a perfectionist. Okay, now let’s set it on low. We can deal with the flour on the walls once the cake’s in the oven.”
Ace operates the stand mixer while Alex tries to get some of the flour out of his hair, but he only succeeds in spreading it around.
“Did we ever come up with a reason to rationalize making a cake?”
“No,” Ace says. “I think the batter is ready?”
“Yeah, it looks ready to me.”
They’ve cleaned the flour off the kitchen, made the icing and stuck it in the fridge, washed and dried all the bowls and stuff, played with Lil Ashtray, cleaned the flour off of themselves, finished a bag of popcorn, and still have had plenty of time to stare at the timer as it ticks down.
After what seems like an eternity, it beeps, and Ace gets up to open the oven. “You have longer arms, you get it.”
“Ugh, fine.” Alex puts the cake pans on the counter. “How do we tell if it’s actually done?”
“We stick a toothpick in and if it comes out dry, it’s done.”
“Okay, so where are your toothpicks?”
“Oh, I don’t have any, so I figure we’ll just use a fork.”
“That’ll make a huge hole in the cake, though.”
“I’m pretty sure every frosting recipe has extra frosting so you can cover up your mistakes.”
“Can it cover up my eighth grade school picture?”
“Same. Well, probably, but I’d rather put it on something edible.”
The cake is done, and they pile on enough frosting to make it look like they knew what they were doing, and Ace takes a picture before they cut into it which is a good thing because it doesn’t look nearly as neat once they’ve taken pieces.
“It tastes good,” Alex says once he’s about halfway through his slice.
“What did I say about not doubting me?” Ace replies with a grin.
