You'd never been a big fan of sports. The only knowledge you ever had came from random social media posts or when your friends and family mentioned it in passing. The only sport you played in school was track. The only sport you played now was running after a bus when you were late.

So when you boarded the plane and finally found your seat at the very back, you didn't think much of your seatmate. He was slouched low, hoodie up, sunglasses sitting on his nose, headphones around his neck. He smelled like one of those stupidly expensive colognes, the kind that hits you before the person even turns your way. But you didn't dwell on it. You exchanged a polite smile when your eyes briefly met, settled into your seat, and pulled out your book.

That was it. No double-take. No quiet inhale of recognition. No slow reach for a phone.

Nothing.

Portgas D. Ace had been famous long enough to know exactly what recognition looked like. The slight widening of the eyes. The way people's hands moved toward their pockets before they even made a conscious decision. The smile that came with it — not a natural one, but the specific kind that meant they were already composing the caption in their heads.

He knew that look, the way he knew the squeak of sneakers on a hardwood court. Automatic. Unavoidable.

Except you didn't do any of that.

You just. Sat down. Tucked one leg underneath you, flipped open your book to a dog-eared page like you'd been mid-sentence for the last hour, and disappeared into it completely.

He waited. Purely out of habit.

You turned a page.

He almost laughed.

Three rows ahead, he could already see someone craning their neck, phone angled just slightly too casual to be accidental. The flight attendant who took his carry-on had done that thing where they smiled too wide and held eye contact a second too long. Even the guy across the aisle had done a double-take the moment Ace sat down.

But you had called the window seat a "people watching goldmine" under your breath when you sat down, looked out at the tarmac for exactly four seconds, decided there was nothing interesting, and went back to your book.

He found himself reading the cover from the corner of his eye. Couldn't make it out from the angle.

You reached into your bag without looking up, pulled out a small pack of crackers, and started eating them with the focused energy of someone who had completely forgotten other people existed.

Ace pulled one side of his hoodie string.

Let it go.

Pulled it again.

There was something genuinely funny about this. Not in a mean way. Just — he couldn't remember the last time he'd sat next to someone on a flight and felt like a completely ordinary person. Not a jersey. Not a highlight reel. Not a contract number. Just a guy in 24B who may or may not exist to the girl beside him.

It was a long flight. He'd checked.

And somewhere around the time you flipped to the next chapter, tilting the book slightly so the overhead light hit the page better, he decided he didn't mind that at all.

He leaned just slightly in your direction, not enough to crowd you.

Not because he needed a recommendation. If anyone asked, Portgas D. Ace's current reading list began and ended with cereal box nutrition labels and hotel bathroom shampoo bottles. His contracts went to Sabo first and came back with color-coded sticky notes that Ace read approximately half of before signing anyway. He was not, by any definition, a book person.

He was just trying to figure out why you still hadn't taken a single photo of him.

"Hey." His voice came out easy. Unhurried. "What are you reading?"