Just Add Nuts

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She heard his mouth open, but before a sound could come out, shook her head and cut in, “No, it’ll have to wait. My assignment takes president.”

She heard him exhale heavily, disappointed. After a beat, he inhaled “Yeah, the missing marines, your flock mentioned it.” He said, pointing to her ship.

Isuka closed her eyes and took in an impatient breath, deciding to let the “flock” joke go today. “Does “confidential” mean nothing to them.” She placed her hands on her hips and found Ace’s eyes again, “Well, if anything, I hope they mentioned that the situation is potentially life or death, so I really need to focus.” She turned her back to the flame user and raised the binoculars back to her face. “I’d love for today to be the day I finally put you in sea prism cuffs, Portagas, but my hands are tied.”

Isuka sat, binoculars still at her eyes, waiting for the sounds of departure. She felt her back begin to tense as silent seconds ticked by.

“I can feel you staring. I meant what I said about focusing. Time for you to go ba….HEY!”

Before she could process what was happening, the bottom of Isuka’s rowboat disappeared from beneath her, and she was being lifted onto the Striker. “FIRE FIST PUT ME DOWN” The Ensign yelled towards seemingly deaf ears, as she was deposited onto the flame powered vessel that was somehow already making its way towards the island.

Isuka attempted to turn around and pound the man’s chest, but the arm that secured her back to his torso was like a vice grip. “YOU BETTER TURN AROUND RIGHT NOW IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU!” He was ignoring her. The red head stomped down hard on his booted foot, growling loudly in frustration when it went straight through to the ground.

Ace laughed jovially, “What’s good for me” He said loudly to be heard over the speedboat, “is to help you finish up here so we can find out if you’ll make good on your threat to put me in cuffs.”

The Nailer took a few measured calming breaths. From what she knew about the Spade Pirate’s captain, arguing with him was going to get her absolutely nowhere. He decided he was tagging along, and that was that. At the very least, she could use his much faster vessel to her advantage. Sighing loudly, she wondered how she was going to explain this in her incident report.

The Ensign certainly never lied when composing reports, however the number of details she had felt the need to omit or be intentionally vague on were ramping up quickly as of late. The guilt that came after each debriefing with Vice Admiral Draw was getting difficult to swallow.

Ace, likely sensing the resignation in her posture, loosened his grip around her arms so she could free them, his steady hand instead finding a home around her small waist. Isuka unconsciously leaned into the warmth of his body, a stark contrast to the biting wind hitting her face. She gripped his forearm to get his attention, “Let’s do a lap around the island, and I’ll give you a quick rundown.”

The right side of her face was suddenly much warmer than her left as the captain bent his head down and placed his mouth near her ear. “Sorry, can’t hear you when you talk away from me.” She could hear the cheeky smile on his face.

Isuka’s body betrayed her yet again, responding with a weakness in her knees and an infuristingly increasing familiar ache. The marine immediately began rationalizing; she was a 20-year-old woman, and the Fire Fist was a roguishly attractive male who never wore a shirt. Having THAT physiological response was an uncontrollable inevitability. 

‘Well, if he’s trying to get a reaction out of me, he’s going to be disappointed.’ The Ensign thought to herself as she attempted to swallow down her feelings. She pushed his chin gently off her shoulder and turned her face towards his ear, repeating herself in her best attempt at a measured tone. Her stomach clenching at each unintentional brush of her lips to his skin.

2025 feels like the year I finally convince the man to cosplay the Winter Soldier to my Widow so we can continue our dark hair red hair couples trend.

This coat was such a quick but fulfilling project for me. It's so sharp in person, and I can't wait to eventually do a proper photoshoot with it.

He missed her.

Artwork by @cronos_809

Apologies for the long winded answer.

We became really big One Piece fans during the pandemic, and as of last year, decided that we needed to cosplay from the series. Brandon randomly decided to cosplay Ace even though the character wasn't on our top favs list yet. When I saw him in the cosplay, it was like falling in love again. I was so deeply attracted to him that it inspired us to learn more about the character.

As we learned more, we both became obsessed with Ace and decided his plot would feel so much more full with a romance. We poured into looking up all the popular ships, but none of them clicked for us. We finally learned Novel A existed from a random reddit post and thought the characters looked very good together. I very much identified with Isuka, and Brandon was impressed that, even with such a small amount of content, it felt like a very believable romance. He wanted more content, so I wrote a couple of stories for him, which inspired him to start drawing scenes. We are working up the courage to start posting our content soon.