Ahhh can you do mas + ...a love potion? Please? 💖💖💖💕🌹🌹💕💖💖💖
ahaha i immediately had so many thoughts for this but i went for the happy one, not the awful one, because i thought you might like that more?
“I made you tea!” Ace says, and he is, in fact, holding a mug.
Marco puts down the report he was reading and searches for a delicate way to respond, then remembers this is Ace and bluntly asks, “Why?”
Ace pouts. Like, full-on, lip out and sad eyes pouts, and asks, “Can’t I just make tea for my favorite Commander?”
Marco blinks, mildly alarmed.“Where’s Sabo, yoi?” he asks instead of taking the mug.
“Here I am!” Sabo calls, half-falling through the door. “Sorry, Ace almost made me drop them.”
“Drop what, yoi?” but he can see, even from here, that it’s a plate of some kind of biscuits.
They brought him a snack. Ace, who accidentally lights cereal on fire, and Sabo, who thinks peanut butter on anchovies is delicious, have brought him a snack.
This obviously deserves his full attention.
“…Thank you?” he says hesitantly. The tea, when Ace hands it over, looks like tea. It even smells like tea, though no kind he could name. The biscuits look whole and a pale sort of unburnt yellow, and they are not obviously inedible. “What did I do to deserve this, yoi?”
“Nothing,” Ace says, watching him intently.
Sabo plasters himself against Ace’s back, chin on his shoulder, and says, “We just thought you might want a snack, is all.”
He does not believe them, not for a second, but he nods anyway and stares down at the tea.
He looks up but their eyes are hopeful and happy, so he holds his breath and takes a sip.
It’s–well, it’s not awful, but also potentially not tea. The taste lingers unpleasantly on his tongue, like smoke and peppermint. “It’s…interesting,” he says, trying not to make a face. “Thanks.”
“Try the cookies,” Sabo says, leaning in, and Marco can’t help but notice that their fingers are laced together and white at the knuckles. Something’s going on here, but he caves, as he always will for these two, and reaches for a biscuit.
It’s not salty, like he had thought it might be. Not particularly sweet, either–a dry sort of crumbly that smells of lavender but tastes of nothing in particular. Still, he’s neither vomiting nor dead, so he’s gonna count this as a win.
He washes the dry biscuit down with another swig of the weird tea, and then looks back over at them. “It was good, yoi,” he says, and manages to keep a straight face through the lie. “Thank you.”
They’re both staring at him, and he blinks, suddenly self-conscious. Are there crumbs on his face, or…?
“Feel any different?” Ace says with a studied kind of casualness.
He blinks and takes stock of himself, but…no. Not even vaguely nauseous. “No…?”
Ace hisses and jerks his elbow back at Sabo. “I told you it wouldn’t work!”
“Shut up!” Sabo says back. “We both agreed it was worth a try!”
“What was, yoi?” Marco asks, more or less calmly in the face of whatever these idiots had fed him. “What did you give me?”
Ace growls but Sabo nudges him and he finally throws up his hands and says, “It was a love potion! This lady on the last island gave it to us and told us that if we made it into something and gave it to you, it would work!“
Marco looks at them, then looks back at the tea. “I see, yoi.”Then he tilts the mug back and drains it, ignoring the awful taste it leaves in his mouth. If he has to deal with it, they can too. “It wouldn’t’ve worked anyway, even if it was real. Next time, save your money,” he says, “and try asking me first, yoi.” And this is as close as he’ll get to them coming to him, so he sets the mug down and goes to them.
