written for an anon prompt on my tumblr.

"I'm not sick," Ace says stubbornly. "I'm a fire logia. I can't get sick." And then he sneezes, sharp and sudden.

"Bad timing, with that sickness you don't have," Thatch says. "We've still got two more days out here."

"I know; don't worry," Ace says, scooting back from the fire. "I'll just run hot for a while and be fine."

"Does that work?" Haruta asks, leaning away from him and the heat he's suddenly throwing.

"Dunno," Ace answers. "I haven't been sick since I ate my fruit. Honestly thought I was immune."

He doesn't look happy, and Thatch can see why. Being sick is always miserable, and worse if you're not used to it. He knows he packed an extra blanket, though, because Marco denies his nesting tendencies and yet always ends up stealing everyone's bedding. He digs it out and hands it over. Ace glances at him and he shrugs. "If you want it," he offers, and sets it on the ground.

Ace reaches for it, then pauses to stare at his hand for a second. Thatch doesn't get a chance to follow suit because suddenly the blanket is flipped open and wrapped around bare shoulders.

Thatch and Marco share a worried glance. Ace never uses blankets, and he doesn't accept help that easily either. And Ace isn't even using it like a blanket; he's got it wrapped around his back and over his head like a makeshift cape.

"You sure you're feeling all right?" Thatch ventures.

"I can't be sick," Ace says, but he's just a lump of blanket now. "I can't."

"Because you're fire?" Marco asks.

"I'm from East Blue," Ace says like it's an explanation, but it really isn't. It's interesting, but as far as Thatch knows, there's nothing about East Blue that makes its residents any hardier. The five of them exchange glances, but they must agree with him, because Haruta drawls out, "Yeah…?"

The lump of blanket twitches and hesitates but finally says, "I had the Scrawl."

"The what now?" Vista asks. Thatch stops to think, but there's actually not many on the crew from East Blue; it's by far the most peaceful sea.

But Marco makes an oh kind of noise. "There's a disease in East Blue," he says, because of course he knows. "Childhood thing, like chicken pox or flower fever. It's really bad but almost never fatal, yoi. It compromises the immune system for the rest of your life, though," and there's some worried looks until he adds, "not harmfully! But when you get sick, it comes back, yoi."

"Oh!" Namur interrupts, "It's the ink sickness!" Marco arches an eyebrow at him, and he nods. "I've seen it before in certain parts of Paradise. That's out East Blue way; probably spread from the Grand Line somehow."

That sounds likely, actually. It's the kind of thing that makes only Grand Line levels of sense, after all, but Namur's not done. "We were taught it was a curse that went wrong, back in my tribe. Some rich man in a castle said something rude, and he was cursed to wear other people's words on his skin or something."

Marco nods and takes the story back. "The Scrawl means that if Ace is sick, he'll be covered in ink till he's better, yoi. It's all stuff people will have said about him to his face, isn't it?"

Ace says nothing, but Namur nods. "Stuff said about you in your hearing that you believe," he clarifies. "My niece had it as a kid. Always real proud when she gets sick because she says wearing complements is the best accessory."

The blanket twitches again, and Thatch steps in. "We're gonna respect Ace's privacy," he announces. "If he's really sick and he gets all decorated up with complements, we're not gonna try to read them, okay?"

He glances around, but everyone's staring at him. "What?" he asks.

Marco shakes his head. "Didn't expect that from you, is all," he says, and Thatch puffs himself up.

"I'm very mindful of people's privacy!" he says, and everyone laughs at him. Well, that's not nice at all, but at least it broke the mood. "I am!"

"Sure you are," Ace says, finally talking again. He's got the blanket pulled back enough to show his face and it's just as it always was. "You respect privacy, and I'm never hungry."

Thatch clutches his chest and falls over with his other wrist over his eyes. "Betrayed!" he gasps, because if keeping eyes on him is what's getting Ace to calm down, he will gladly flop around overdramatically for the rest of the night.

And it works, because as they chat and pick at Thatch, Ace's makeshift hood comes down. He falls asleep well before the rest of them, and whether it's a narcolepsy attack or just exhaustion, no one says anything when Marco leans over to tug the blanket into place, covering all his skin.

Thatch blinks himself awake in the morning light. Right, they're outside, coming back from that thing-right. He yawns and sits up; he's never been slow to rise. Years as head chef on a pirate ship mean he's generally up first.

Sure enough, everyone else is asleep. It's false dawn, so it's to be expected. He gets up anyway, stretching and looking around.

The fire's gone out; someone must've banked it last night. He goes over to check on Ace, but the kid is curled into as small a ball as possible. The blanket's ridden up over his feet, though, and Thatch can see jagged black streaks even from here. He steps forward, intending to tug the blanket down, but he can't get close; the air around Ace is painfully hot.

Well, Marco can do it when he wakes up, Thatch decides. He's got some time to kill, anyway; may as well take a walk. He might find a good place to watch the sunrise from; that'd be nice.

Well, he doesn't see the sunrise, but he does find a tree with a bunch of those lovely purple fruits they had back in town. He picks enough to hand around for breakfast and a few more to take back to Pops.

By the time he gets back, everyone's awake and up. "Good morning!" he says, and starts throwing fruits at people.

Haruta catches the first one in the face, but everyone else manages to grab theirs out of the air. Namur tosses his right back, and Thatch catches it easily and passes it on to Marco to give to Ace.

He drops the rest on his blanket and rolls them up carefully to take back. When he makes room in his sack, though, his fingers come across a marker that's always at the bottom of his pack, and he takes it out before packing the fruit in.

He walks it through his fingers as he wanders over to Marco, who's standing above Ace. "How is he?"

Marco makes a face and together they stare down at the blanket-covered kid. "You gotta get up eventually," Thatch tells him.

The unhappy grumbling and shifting says that Ace does not agree, and the heat he's putting out is enough to stop Thatch from trying to, uh, help. "Look, we'll all turn away or something, okay? You can keep the blanket."

Ace doesn't move, and Thatch gives up. "You do it, Marco," he says. "You're the fireproof one."

"I'm not fireproof." Marco says even as he walks right into the heat haze like it's nothing.

"Sure," Haruta says, walking by, and Thatch catches their wrist. "Hey, what're you-"

Thatch holds a finger over his lips and then wiggles the marker. Haruta's eyes light up and they nod. "Yeah, can you-"

"Shhh!"

"We ready, yoi?" Marco walks purposefully between them, trailing what's probably Ace. Hard to tell under the blanket cloak, but there's one hand poking out to clutch it closed with a bold brat across the back of it.

Thatch darts his eyes away, feeling kind of bad. He hadn't meant to read it, really, but it's hard not to. He lets Ace and Marco go first, shouldering his pack and falling in step with Haruta.

There's more black peeking out of the top of Ace's boots where the blanket doesn't quite cover, and Thatch keeps his gaze anywhere else. It's an awkward kind of quiet, much different from yesterday's bawdy jokes and loud off-key marching songs. Now the only sounds are the nature around them and occasional violent sneezes.

Haruta tugs at his sleeve, and they pass the marker back and forth for awhile. Thatch waves it behind them and Vista reaches out to take it, too. He promptly tries to use it on Namur, and there's a quick scuffle.

It's loud enough for Marco to turn around, though. He walks backwards for a few steps, looking them all over. "Everything okay, yoi?"

"Just fine," Haruta lies breezily.

Marco stares at them for a few steps, so Thatch makes a spinny-finger gesture at him. He huffs but complies, and leans in a bit to mutter something to the Ace-like thing shambling along beside him. It's probably about how dumb they are, but that's okay.

"How does he do it?" Vista asks. "I can feel the heat from all the way back here."

Ace sneezes again and said heat flares, and everyone but Marco flinches and falls back a few steps. "Marco likes fire," Thatch says, hoping he's right. "He doesn't mind. Probably feels right at home."

"Any hotter and he's gonna combust," Haruta mutters, and like their words were a trigger, Ace sneezes once again, the heat flares, and the blanket on his back catches fire.

They all jump and Vista says something exceptionally nasty. Marco moves in, hands hovering uselessly, and Ace whips the blanket off to beat out the flame.

Thatch wasn't expecting it, really, which is why he doesn't look away in time-that's totally why. It's not his fault, he knows, and yet when his eyes catch on the giant letters across the back of Ace's shoulders, above his tattoo, he still feels like he's betraying something.

He feels that for the whole time it takes to unconsciously read and process the word monster, and then he just goes still. Ace is turned away, stomping out the flames, and they all know at a glance what exactly it was that Ace hadn't wanted them to see.

His tattoo stands out as much as ever, but it's framed now. Monster at the top, all the way across both shoulders, and underneath in a beautiful scrollwork there's should've been drowned at birth.

Thank god you don't exist crawls down his ribs, and there's one word sentiments scattered around, all stark and pretty in concept and horrifying in meaning. Thatch, for all his good intentions, can't bring himself to look away and his ears are full of the echo of Namur's voice saying, stuff said about you in your hearing that you believe.

"Ace," Marco says, quiet and hurt, and Ace's shoulders go rigid under that horrible ink. He turns slowly to face them, smouldering blanket in one fist. There's defiance in his eyes and mistake across his freckles.

Someone next to Thatch makes a wheezing sound, but he doesn't look to see who because when Ace turns his head and tilts his chin up in anger, they can all read should do the world a favor and die circling his throat.

He's a tapestry of horror and cruelty, and it's all on display. Thatch's eyes wander and the only remotely positive things he finds are the two brothers, curved dense and close over his heart, and captain curled over one wrist.

And then Ace falters. "What…?" he says, staring at Haruta, and Thatch glances over to where he'd written family across their forehead. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

In the face of this, though, their marker attempts look stupid and insulting. "Sorry," Thatch says, and holds out the marker. "I had it and it seemed like-I'm sorry, I didn't know…."

Ace blinks at them. "Why would you…?" he asks, confusion plain, and that hurts almost more than the words do. Things you believe, Thatch thinks again, and he's suddenly angry.

"Because we're your family, Ace," he says. "And you were sick and scared of-and we wanted to make it even! And I never had the Scrawl but I do have a marker, and if you don't believe us enough to get our words on your skin, then cut back the heat and I'll put 'em there myself!"

Ace's chin comes down a bit; he's defensive but actually listening. "It doesn't...that's not how it works."

"Shut up," Marco snaps, and Thatch tosses him the marker. He uncaps it and steps in, ignoring Ace's flinch. "If what's true is on your skin, yoi, then what's on your skin is true." And he writes family, big and bold, under his left collarbone and right over you're a curse.

"Loved," Thatch lists, and Ace flinches again but stays still while Marco grabs his arm to write that over print small enough that Thatch can't read it from here.

"Cute," Haruta adds, and Ace goes a deeper red than a fever would account for. Marco nods and puts it right under the double brother.

"Hey now," he says, trying to pull away, but Marco's not having it. "Hey!" he says again, but he stops struggling, and when Marco pulls at his shoulder to spin him around, he goes.

His shoulders are tense and high when Marco puts marker to skin, but as Whitebeard goes over monster, he relaxes a bit. "This really isn't-"

Marco draws a long line through the awful sentence below his tattoo, and then does a few more just to black it out completely. He sets to work crossing out things and writing better ones, and Ace stands there, still holding the blanket, and lets him.

And then Vista shakes himself and says, "Give him a tramp stamp."

"What?!"

"Oh, yes, do!" Haruta adds. "Make it say 'pretty'!"

"No!" Ace says, stepping forward and turning. "No, that's not-we're done…!" He's still surrounded by a heat haze that makes it impossible to approach, but Marco steps forward anyway.

"Come back here, yoi," he says, and Ace tries to flee.

He makes it a few steps before Marco tackles him and sits on his legs. He puts the marker to work again as Ace claws at the ground and yells about how pretty he isn't, and he only stops to sneeze three times.

"When you're not too hot to approach, you can return the favor," Namur points out, and when Ace immediately goes quiet he adds, "but it was Thatch's idea!"

"Was not!" Thatch squawks, turning on him. "Haruta drew first!"

"You gave me the marker!"

"You used it!"

And it's the dumbest argument Thatch has had in a long time, because yeah, he's obviously at fault. He's got idiot on one forearm and brother on his wrist and all right at cooking, I guess, on the back of his neck in permanent marker, but up ahead, Ace is laughing, and that's more than worth it.