things go missing when sabo needs them, and ace doesn't help him look. he sprawls nearby—headphones clamped over his ears, tracking eyes, socked feet jittering—while the cushions come up and the wardrobe's gutted. sabo's mornings are a flurry; new chalk outlines for his keys, reminders that lead nowhere, and the vague sense that he’s losing his mind.
it’s two weeks after moving together that sabo starts a ledger. he’s got a bad head, one too many hits loose, and memory shares an address with his absent items. wallet bedside drawer, he writes. gloves top shelf, and his lighter, prone to the most migration, living room ashtray. he’s running out of paper by month three, at the same speed he’s running out of patience.
then things appear where they shouldn't.
ace’s pockets, turned inside out, were full of harvested buttons sabo doesn’t recall losing. ace’s backpack stayed bloated, and the demi-saison jacket sabo'd been sweating without, swapped for a peacoat at too-hot-degrees, is stuffed inside.
so, you’re nipping my shit, sabo stares down at a fountain pen he’d bought on impulse, used only once and freshly pulled from ace’s weed pouch. sabo would let him have anything he asked for. why are you filching my shit?
ace isn't even using any of it.
the ledger answers before ace does.
seasonal raids, when sabo's work conjured plane tickets on the table where he couldn't misplace them, waiting on a passport. ace hates dragon with gravity, sabo's work too, which smuggled time away from them. they'd video call in starved minutes between sleep and responsibility, ace bitching in his hammer-swung voice, sabo laughing it quiet. his ledger's obsolete. he closes it in time for ace to step out of the shower.
“oi, 'bo—” drawled and lazy. “you seen my razors? m’ scuffed.”
ace’s eyes slide to him, fluent suspicion, heat-red. “that right?”
sabo hums. “cross my heart—or yours. one n’ the same.”
the towel's hooked on ace’s hips, where bone hinges and belted muscle cuts inward. it’s a hand towel, if anything, far smaller than his preferred pick. sabo has a good idea of why that is. he takes a final sip of orange juice, staring at the pulp wisps.
ace keeps glaring, and sabo can’t help the sliced, boyish grin he aims at him.
“you can use my electric?” sabo trills, and the deadpan makes him laugh. he splays his arms. “search me, baby. might find what you're missing."
hi!! i’m 19 and looking for a one piece roleplay partner :)
i’m looking to roleplay either ace x sabo or law x luffy! and i like doing longer, more detailed roleplays where we can actually build a story together. i’m pretty open when it comes to plots (canon, aus, angst, aob, whatever), i just like when there’s some effort and chemistry there.
i’m looking for partners around my age (18+ preferred) just for comfort and to keep things on the same level, and someone who’s okay with more than one-liners, but i’m not super strict or anything. i just want something fun that we can both get into.
sabo's guilt has an address, right between the ribs, and ace lives there too. a needling on the left that pangs sharp and fades gradual. the sun's drafting across skin, and the balcony is coffin-narrow. they sit with a pecorino board between them, sweating wax paper, its rind dense with a smear of fig jam and pancetta unneat to match it. across, is the sea—and the sea belongs to luffy now, with its pressed eleven o'clock colour. no name for it in any language they knew.
ace doesn't speak of the sea anymore.
"i thought i'd be happier," he says. "that 'm here to see it."
luffy's era. sabo stares at him and bites through bread. its underside holds the grit of balcony tile. light's pooling in every ridge and white channel along ace's body, reorganised into tight, glossy sheets. ace tunnels his hand and spits out a cherry pit, meets sabo's eyes, gauging. the years had been the least of their ageing. sabo's bite is too small for how long it's taking to swallow.
"i guess i just didn't expect him to look like that," ace drops his shoulders.
"like roger."
mouth pursing, smile thinner than wheat stalk. "never saw the fool 'cept in print. fuck do i know, right?"
sabo doesn't have the heart to tell him roger survives in the mirrors ace avoids. "you don't know him." and judge him too much.
"know enough," the scoff is missing bite. ace is softer in his hurt than his ego; sabo's guilt cramps. he's strong, speaking around the stem in his mouth, wincing with each pulse of phantom pain. spits the thing sideways off the balcony without knotting it. "call me a virgin birth, at this point. got no daddy, if i get the worst who ever did it."
sabo's mind sees outlook's hands. vein-wrought, sliding cutlery across the table. he thinks of calf-skin belts, wet when whipped. whiskey stains, round and drying amber, on wallpaper. his door pulled from its hinges and his mouth bleeding on the inside. "luffy's king. we're alive. he ruined nothing."
ace's blink shutters. "ruined me."
sniffing, sabo dusts his hands and crawls over; wine canister tumbling, bread abandoning the board, settling into his lap decided. crossboned legs are not comfortable to sit in. ace's arms come around him, and sabo mumbles into his mouth. "i owe roger my life." indebted. "without him, that house would've killed me."
sabo's never thought of roger much before this moment. startling, how he existed in sabo's constitution unseen until now. "sooner or later, i would've slipped off corvo with too much intention."
the brush of lashes tells him ace has eyes wide open. sabo's looking at his mouth. "sabo."
"wouldn't be me, without him." he continues. "wouldn't be me, without roger, 'cause i wouldn't have you. who would've saved me from myself, ace?"
"owe my mother, if you wanna owe," the hand on his lower back fists and wrings fabric. "but don't thank her for it." it. their lives are it.
"thank you, rouge." sabo hums, presses into a kiss. "and thank you, roger, since your son won't."
No work getting done, as usual, but they'll probably set fire to a part of HQ. It happens. Luckily, Dragon's learnt that he needs to have a "clean up after Sabo" budget.
I already read the blogs of the toxic codependency au of Ace and Sabo but my biggest question is or one of my few questions about that AU is did they meet when they were kids and grow up together or did they meet at school?
either way i enjoy reading how possessive and antsy both are!! Specifically with sabos manipulation to get ace to fall on his knees for him when they were applying bond spells..
In this AU are ace and sabo adults or in a boarding school? uhh what made them so attached to each other too? I assumed it could’ve been trauma related like an attachment issue with an incident etc but idk if thisll have to do with anything to any future chap 😅
Thanks for all the wonderful stories you've shared with us; ! op related or not <3
Im really hoping your back and fingers feels better soon. Here are a few simple tips that might help? ? (I know this doesn’t work for everyone but hope it does something :’) : try warm baths to relax the muscles, take short gentle walks when you can, use a comfy chair with good support for your back, and maybe stand up for a little while every hour or so! Please rest up and take good care of yourself anytime you can 🫶
[HI ANON I AM SO SORRY i promise i had most of this post typed out the day you sent this, but i saved it as a draft to insert the world-lore below the cut later and then just never got back to it. this is very late but i still hope it's helpful!!]
oh boy i could talk circles around myself for the magic au but not for those specific ones which sucks. i don't think i have anything on them before the curses are put in place in my notes but i will check to confirm
nope unfortunately i don't have anything :( the focus of that au is the consequences (depending on who you ask) of the curses and how the two's lives are affected by them going forward. it's really rare that i don't think about a character's background in an au setting and how it affects their personality differently from canon, but this just happens to be one of those rare instances.
so the three parts of the au correspond to the concepts i had to do for an art class, each covering a progression of age. they're in their late teens in part 1, but it's up to interpretation whether that's anywhere from 16 to 19.
as of now, part 2 is set up "before" and "after" the graduation requirement, and it switches between the two with every scene, so it's set to end with their graduation after they present proof of the requirement's completion. i'm unsure if i'll extend this just because it runs long as is, but nothing is set in stone atm.
the third part covers the longest stretch of time and is wholly undefined, simply just "life as adults sometime after graduation". each of the parts build on each other, and in this one's case, it deals with the ramifications the "after" portion of part 2 had on ace and sabo. to go along with the actual scenes, it has quite a bit of detail mentioned in passing of what's been going on in their lives that doesn't get covered in detail.
the school is something i wafted on and never made a decision which is why it's so vague where they live. it could be an apartment, it could be a shared dorm room. clearly idk or it would have been more obvious. also it's not meant to be a boarding school AT ALL lmao
i feel like this is such a letdown so i'm gonna ramble a bit about worldbuilding and other things involved in parts 2/3. it'll be under a cut so if you don't want to be spoiled on anything, you'll have warning to not click. (i think if you're viewing on desktop and not in the search/tags then it won't do that stupid 'expand post' thing that deletes the read more tag lmao but if not then this is your fair warning)
idr if this got brought up in pt1 so if so i'll re-explain: there isn't really a defined magic "system" so there are tons of ways to use magic and cast spells ; staffs/wands/what-have-you serve as magic amplifiers and enable the mage to use less mana for a more complicated, powerful spell
"sabo knows that, traditionally, mages very seldom have peaceful deaths."
there is a sub-category of magic user – witches, who are former female mages whose magic has run rampant and out of control ; when a mage becomes a witch, she is designated as a target and put on a kill list ; but it's a lot harder to fell a witch than your average mage of prodigious skill, mostly because a witch has an infinite pool of mana to draw from, and rarely acts within reason
at some point in their adult lives, ace and sabo help save a city in need and are given in return a property out in the fields to settle in, which they do gladly, content to come back once they're winded from their misadventures
when sabo is an adult, the third and final version of his magical garment is composed solely of cosmic threads forming a lace-like design ; because the entire garment is made of magic, sabo can draw out of it from any point rather than just the inner lining like his past cloaks ; the garment is constantly rippling and glowing with magic, and it takes a lot of mana to manifest it in physical form as something sabo can wear, so he won't keep it on for very long at a time
ace teaches basic anti-magic lessons near their estate (still in the outskirts of the city) to children who have mage potential, both as a form of protection (not just against a mage, but magical creatures as well) and sabo loves sitting off to the side (barely) and watching
sabo is blessed with so much raw power and yet only cares about revolving his life around ace, so he refuses offers over the years to rise to a higher status in the magical world, to conduct experimental research with a specialized team, to have a seat on the council in the holy city– any and everything that would take him from ace he brushes aside so casually that he's forever labeled as an eccentric and a recluse
