The two of you fell asleep in the truck bed, Ace snuggled against your back after asking if he could. When you woke up the next morning you were snuggled against his back. There was morning dew on the rim of the truck bed, but none down in the actual bed with the two of you. Body heat might have been enough to keep it dry, but you imagined it had more to do with how fire favored both of you.

The sun was up enough that you could easily see. Another hour or so and it would crest the tree line and spill into the truck bed more. The quiet of the morning was almost as calming as the star-filled skies had been the night before. Moving slowly, you sit up and stretch. The morning air is cool, full of the scents of grass and wood, amplified by the dew you're sure.

You consider briefly trying to make something for breakfast before Ace wakes up, but you've never cooked anything of note on a campfire, and unless you can sort out how to control your curse, you don't even know how to start a campfire. Certainly not first thing in the morning when the entire world is wet with dew.

Looking over you're considering how best to wake him up, when you realize you just want to watch him sleep. His hair's soft against his freckled face, and the slow steady movement of his breathing is a little mesmerizing. You can feel heat radiating off him now that you've moved away and cooled off yourself. It's easy to picture all three of them piled together during the winter, making use of Ace's naturally occurring heat.

"How long are you gonna stare?" Ace mumbles, opening one sleepy eye and looking over at you, sly smirk on his lips.

"An hour at least," you tease. "Go back to sleep."

He rolls over, curling around you and draping his arm over your lap. "Lay back down and nap with me."

"I can't stare that way," you say the word playfully, putting your hand over his.

"I can think of better things to do than stare at me," he says, face nuzzling into the small of your back.

"But you're cute when you're sleeping."

Ace makes a noise and you can picture the unamused look on his face.

"Adorable." You add, laughing as his arms tighten around you. "Cute as a button!" you declare just before you yelp when Ace pulls you down onto the bedding. He's over you for a moment, pouting down at you.

There's something in his eyes, scanning your face for something for a long moment. You can feel the blood rushing to your face.

"Sn-snuggle me, or kiss me," you put your hands over your face. "But don't keep staring like that."

Warm hands slip around your wrists, gently moving them away from your face. The sure smile on Ace's lips doesn't calm the pace of your heart, especially not as he pins your wrists to the bed and leans down.

"Cute." He muses, leaning closer slowly.

"You... You're a menace." You pout, looking away as he closes in.

"I could just stare at you for an hour." He threatens, sweet smirk across his face.

"You were sleeping," you whine, closing your eyes.

"You could just keep your eyes closed."

"It's not the same and you know it."

"Palomita," It's not just what he says, but how close he is when he says it that causes your eyes to open and meet his. You can see the fire in his eyes shift to something more mellow before he leans down and kisses you softly.

He moves your wrists, shifting to his elbows as he presses soft kisses onto your lips. Soft smiles between each kiss, he puts your hands on his shoulders before leaning in and kissing you deeper. His hands slip under your shoulders, warm and steady. He gives you another soft kiss before falling backward and pulling you up in a smooth motion.

Those warm hands hold you in place as you lean down and give him soft kisses in return.

"We need to get breakfast." He says, pulling you closer and urging you to rest your head on his shoulder.

"This feels less like getting breakfast, and more like angling for a nap."

"Every good breakfast starts with a nap."

"We just got done sleeping." You laugh.

"Exactly, the bed's still warm, perfect time for a nap."

"We need to eat."

"We won't starve in another couple hours."

Sighing, you resign yourself to a small nap at the very least, letting yourself relax against Ace. After a moment you realize you can hear his heart beating, and shift a little to be able to hear it better. The soft rise and fall of his chest, and the loud thump of his heart, along with his natural warmth, lull you off into a light doze.

You're certain you've dozed for hardly more than twenty minutes, but eventually you lift your head and look at Ace. He smiles before cracking open an eye and looking back at you.

The smile on your face falters a little. "We should head back today."

Ace sighs, leaning up enough to kiss your forehead before laying back down. "You've got to meet with that royal fart tomorrow, don't you?"

You bite back a laugh and nod. "I was hoping I could talk to Sanji first. Saturday night's probably a bad time to try and speak with him."

"After hours we could though. Luffy and his friends usually go there until close and then help clean up and close so everyone can go home earlier." He explains. "We can grab breakfast, nap in the afternoon, and head over around one in the morning and it'll work out."

"You're really gunning for those naps." You grin.

Ace's face flushes a little. "I... slept really well last night. Better than I have in years."

Ace's embarrassment becomes your embarrassment quickly, and you squirm out from his grasp.

"Breakfast!" You declare, moving to the tail end of the bed and grabbing your shoes.

"Ah, wait!" Ace calls out, sitting up and scrambling over to where you are. "Let me check your shoes for you."

"Check... my shoes?" You ask, handing them over despite your confusion.

"For bugs." He answers, attention on your shoes. "We're up in the cab, so there shouldn't be any. The real issue is when you're camping without the tent in sleeping bags in the grass." He assures you. "But I didn't want you to put your foot in and get a nasty surprise."

"I appreciate that." You murmur, looking around the truck bed as Ace hands you your shoes. He laughs, ruffling your hair.

"I'll protect you little luz." He promises. "Like I said, up in the truck should be fine."

"It's... it's not a fear, fear." You insist, pulling your socks and shoes on. "But I've never been outside much. I've not seen many, and I don't know which ones are safe."

"Most of 'em are safe." He assures you, pulling on his own boots after checking them. "Most of them will scatter the second they realize they've bumbled into a human, and only a few are even aggressive."

"That's a relief."

"If you get bit though, let someone know." He continues. "Sometimes people have allergic reactions, and sometimes there's ways to make it go away faster." He opens the tail gate and hops onto the grass. "No sense in suffering when you don't hafta."

"I bet Luffy would be willing to teach me."

Ace laughs. "You do not want to learn about bugs from Lu." He warns, offering a hand and helping you down. "He knows a lot about them, yeah, but you're going to get a very practical, hands on lesson, and maybe we should ease you into that."

"Books first." You offer, smiling sheepishly.

"Books first." Ace agrees.

He gets the campfire going, and breakfast, while you pack up the things you can, tidying up what could be tidied. The two of you plan out the day in a little more detail, and Ace sends Luffy some texts to get him to reach out to Sanji to start coordinating things for that night.

Luffy pouts about being left out of the camping, and Ace convinces you to pose for some selfies, showing off your breakfast and the campfire in the mid-morning light. The teasing poses turned into making funny faces into the camera, which derailed into giggle-fits, and Ace just taking pictures of you, the sound of the phone's "shutter" making you aware of how often he was clicking it.

Trying to get him to stop turned into exchanging kisses, soft threats of stealing his phone to erase the awful photos, and sweet promises that he would just take more pictures. Breakfast, and Luffy, were forgotten for a moment before the impromptu make out session is interrupted by return texts from Luffy letting you both know he had gotten everything sorted with Sanji.

Once you finished breakfast and got everything packed, you stepped out in the middle of the field and just let the sun wash over you. Ace stood by quietly, letting you take the moment. The sun was up high enough the grass was still cool, but the dew was nearly gone. In another hour it would be a proper early summer morning, and hot by the afternoon.

"You want to try, before we leave?" Ace questions when a small sigh escapes you. You look over at him and tilt your head as he takes a few steps back. "There's not going to be anyone around, even though the sun's up, so long as you don't go flying around, no one's going to see you in this field. You can try to go bigger if you want."

"... Is it always so hard to hold in?" You question, and Ace gives you a very small nod.

"It gets easier." He promises. "It's like finding a balance with it and yourself. But, I think they have their own will, you know? Sometimes the trick is learning how to acknowledge that without causing yourself problems."

Looking around, he looks back toward you, taking another couple steps back. "Want to see how big I can get?"

You almost choke. "As long as you're talking about your fire!"

He laughs. "I am, I am!" Taking another step back, Ace stands up on top of the fire pit, putting an arm high over his head. "I'm going to send it away quick, but I should be able to do this safely. Stay back pajarito."

You step back at the words, and watch as Ace's hand turns to fire, and that fire builds, and builds. Flame licks from his arms and hair, as the sphere over his head grows larger and larger. There's nothing feeding the fire except Ace's will and curse, but in a few short minutes there's nearly a small sun's worth of flames rotating slowly above him.

His flames have always been beautiful to you, and ensorcelled within them, his body flickering along with the fire, he is even more beautiful to you. Him and his flames are mesmerizing, and enticing, and some part of you is painfully, willfully pulled in by them. You take a step closer without realizing it. Ace's focus is on the flames, and the area around him, being sure that he's not setting the field ablaze.

Once he notices how you're looking at the sphere of flames, he releases it. Before he can ask anything, before you can think, your body shifts and you turn into the white-feathered bird that you still don't understand, flying straight into the rolling inferno.

There was nothing unnatural about your course of action. Nothing that made you question the desires of the curse within your veins. Fire is beautiful. It is life. It is your love, and your lover, and there is no reason for you to doubt it. Within the flames and fire you are safe, within them you are empowered, within them, you are unstoppable.

Ace's flames burn your feathers to ash. The heat is impossible against your lungs and cruel against your skin when the feathers give way. The rationale part of your mind laments your demise, an end at your own hands no less. One that no one, not even you, will understand. One that you'll never be able to explain.

But as the small pin feathers turn to dust against your skin, the heat lessens. You breathe in the flames and feel your body igniting with energy. The searing flames are soothing, like spice and glass turned from shards to liquid sugar. Time slows, the world halts as you're given time to process the changes.

You can see yourself in the flames. A form of your body rolling in the mix of ash and warmth. Your curse, given shape, you think. It is shaped like your bird form, and cannot be Ace, and you don't yet see yourself as anything other than you, but some part of it is. For there's no true divide between you and your curse.

Its wings spread wide, and cries out in the torrent of fire and heat. The sun is home, the sun is life, the sun is renewal. It is your friend, and ever so are flames from within and without.

You spread your wings wide along with it.

The motion was easy, but the effect was huge. Your body was easily the size of Ace's truck, and the act of your twelve meter wingspan cutting through the air was enough to break the flames around you, scattering them to the winds as you stretched wide as you could.

Ace was dumbfounded. Eyes wide and jaw slack, tears dried on his face as his breath hitched in surprise. You'd flown into his fire and for a second, a dreadful, painful, terrible, undefinable second, all he could think was that his curse had hurt you too.

Had consumed you.

But here you were. At least five meters in height with wings so large the wind from your one simple movement nearly forced him a step back.

You wanted to know if you could get bigger, and the answer was a resounding yes.