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romance-rambles · 19 days ago

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au - magic/knight!alkaid | can i ask: do you love me?

By a series of accidents involving love potions and cookies, you end up with a boyfriend.

k, fluff + one (1) background relationship, mentions of angst, accidental usage of love potions, reader is mc, series: none

WHEN IT COMES TO THE morality of love potions, there is usually no universally-agreed upon answer, in large part due to the sheer variance in what, exactly, constitutes such a thing.

The law, however, is as full of loopholes as it can be—as long as it doesn't seem to talk, walk, or act like a drug capable of inducing others to fall in love with you, it isn't. And so, if such a thing were to ever find its way into someone's food, it technically wouldn't be a crime.

Then where, you wonder, does the present situation fall under?

With horror twisting your lips into a grimace, you gaze silently at the empty tray of cookies, sat upon the table unsuspectingly. No crumbs remain on its surface, though that speaks more to the character of the man who accidentally devoured them than any skill on your part. Alkaid has always been like this, even when your delicious cookies were nothing more than chunks of coal.

Despite the conclusions you manage to draw so easily, a question—one qualified enough to be called idiotic—slips out of you.

"Did you…" You swallow the lump in your throat. "Did you eat all of these cookies?"

Alkaid chuckles, smiling warmly. "Of course. They were as delicious as always."

On the topic of love potions, sweet in taste as they are, they tend to be amber in color. Sugar turned into caramel, or honey gleaming in the sunlight, as your friend once described it. A treat perfectly suited to her tastes.

Food dye is what brings out the pink hue oft associated with love, and the association is such that there are those who believe that love potions in any other color are simply…

Defective.

It was this same association that led Ehlonna—who came to you in tears, her once-in-a-lifetime request as much a paradox of selfishness and selflessness as she herself was—to request a more natural approach. As the soon-to-be Princess of Leighton, even so much as a hint that a love potion existed in her possession could not only be damaging to her reputation, but would incite needless worry in her brother and father.

Her brother who has just inhaled a plate full of cookies made accidentally with the love potion you crafted for her.

You don't scream. For one, you can't scream, but it is a near thing. The devil whispers in your ear, isn't this a good thing? And it takes a frightening amount of time for your conscience to talk you down.

This is why you don't play around with love potions.

"That's good." An awkward smile. An even more awkward silence. "And you feel okay? They didn't taste…funny?"

The love of your life laughs again. You think it's deserved, a little. A lot. It takes the embarrassing sting off the joke that is your current existence. How does one accidentally put a love potion in a batch of cookies? They run out of sugar and attempt to make due with honey.

How does one mistake a love potion for honey? They put it in an inconspicuous jar and wake up to bake at three in the morning. All because of a nightmare, one as equally like to come true as the opposite, where the groom looked suspiciously like the man in front of you and a blob of colors substituted as the bride.

"Have more faith in your baking," he says gently, holding his teacup to his lips.

On average, knights are not the best at holding their own against magic of any sort. But Alkaid bucks the trend by being startlingly difficult to hex, which, by all accounts, should bode well for him.

Except for the fact that he did, in fact, succumb to the last potion you tested on him. Trust, after all, is a powerful thing. It knocked him out for a week, and when he woke up, it was to the sight of your inconsolable form at his bedside. Even his own family wasn't half as concerned, though his father did advise against using him as a test subject in the future.

"I do," you say numbly, resting your arm atop the chair. Soon enough, it is your entire body that the wooden dining chair—one older than even you—must support. "I really do…"

His amused smile fades, making way for an expression full of concern. Setting the teacup down, he asks, "Has something happened?"

You exhale.

Ordinarily, you would confess everything to him. But everything entails secrets that are not yours to give away. Like the part about Ehlonna nearly taking a lover, for one. How the prospect of marrying for duty terrifies her enough that she would sooner numb herself to the world. How the love of her life vanished at the start of the month, the only proof of his existence being the whispers of the townsfolk and the songs the children sing.

So, you play around with the truth instead, to the best of your ability.

"I think…" You slip onto the seat in front of you with a sigh and a careful bite of your lip. "I think I poured a truth serum into those cookies. It's not where I keep it anymore."

But no one said it'd be a good lie.

His eyebrows nearly disappear under his bangs. You've always appreciated the siblings' willingness to go along with whatever excuses you offer them. Call it gullibility, as some people do, but you think it veers on blind faith.

Whatever questions he has sit on the tip of his tongue—then he swallows them back down and places a hand over his forehead. Gently moving the tray to the side, you lean in close, upper body crossing half the table as you wait your turn.

Alkaid has always made note of your hands. How they often run cold, instead of warm. The telltale increase in body temperature that results from love potions, then, could be obfuscated by that fact.

Frustration knits your eyebrows together. Pinching the bridge of your nose, you ask:

"Do you feel like telling me anything?"

"Not particularly," he answers, looking concerned. For you, you suspect. Then, he takes your hands and squeezes them gently. "It's been a long time since that day. It isn't out of the realm of possibility that I've gained some resistance since then."

Your expression tells him all you'd like him to know. It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility—if he was anyone else. You'd love to give him some other potion to prove your point, but you can't risk him getting knocked out before the delegation for the Kingdom of Leighton comes knocking on Eden's door for their new princess.

Which is…

Two days from now.

You feel yourself breaking into cold sweat again. The potion takes a month to make.

And Ehlonna is nice. Ehlonna is understanding. Ehlonna is your best friend, and with love troubles of her own under her belt, she will surely understand your circumstances. There's nothing to forgive, her saintly voice echoes in your mind.

On her part, sure.

On your part? Absolutely not.

The smile on your lips grows forced. At the same time, Alkaid reaches out and brushes your bangs out of your face—and you'd love to draw conclusions, but he's always been like this.

"Alright, why don't you ask me a question?" he proposes, half-exasperatedly. "If you've wanted to ask anything at all, now's your chance."

Do you love me?

You swallow the lump in your throat with great difficulty. "What's your favorite color?"

"Green." A lie. The answer is purple.

"What's your favorite season?"

"Summer." A lie. The answer is undetermined—his usual line is, Spring is the season flowers bloom, but Winter is the season we met.

"What's your favorite food?"

"Whatever you and Ehlonna make." A truth. He'd have to be the liar of a lifetime if it wasn't.

This back-and-forth continues for a while longer, his initial reason for visiting nearly forgotten by both of them. It's not as though they'd made any progress on coming up with a fun night for Ehlonna anyways. You'd preemptively rejected places that were sure to remind her of Yin, which left the two of you with almost no options in the nearby town.

Eventually, you run out of questions, but the soft smile on Alkaid's lips does not fade. The devil whispers in your ear, and, for some reason, he sounds a bit like Yin, Ask: do you love me?

You opt for a slightly different question. "Is there a girl you like?"

His eyebrows furrow at the question, and his lips purse. He looks a bit uncomfortable, really. But it's only for a brief moment before he smiles again.

"Yes." A statement, undetermined.

Taking a deep breath, you ask, "Is that a truth or a lie?"

"Which one would you rather it be?" he counters.

Silence engulfs the home you inherited from your mother. It's deep in the forest near Eden's capital, with enchantments cast specifically to keep it hidden from unwanted guests. If someone wants to commission you for a magical product, they must ask during your business hours, at the quaint little art store you own.

The lavender walls of the dining room seem quite intriguing, all of a sudden—even to an eye like yours, which has seen them since birth. There's a few scratches on the table from when you were a child, and the chair slats feel more uncomfortable that usual when you lean back against them.

It would be easy enough to pick the first option, you think. But if the end result is anything like your dream…

Eden—more specifically, you—can only handle one broken-hearted mage right now.

"Who is it?" you eventually spit out, to the tune of your heartbeat thrumming in your ears. Regret instantly floods your veins, but it's too late to back out. Your mother did not raise a coward, nor did she raise someone unaffected by sunk-cost.

"She's…" He pauses, seemingly at a loss for words. "Wonderful. Kind. The most beautiful woman in the world—"

You wonder if you can tune him out.

You wonder if you should.

Every little compliment functions like a dagger, repeatedly stabbing you in the heart. Even so, you count each one and wonder, Could that be me? Who else does Alkaid know who sometimes eats like a slob? You're not proud of it, but hunger often has a way of making you forgo niceties.

And it can't be his cat, either. Sparkles, despite his name, is not a girl.

"Is she sitting in front of you?" you blurt out finally, when it seems like he's about to stop. Then, to make up for your mistake, you bury your head in your hands and pray this ritual grants you invisibility.

"How'd you know?"

When you look up, Alkaid is smiling his usual gentle smile.

THERE IS A LITTLE FOOTNOTE in the banned potion's textbook that provided the recipe for this love potion. You learn about it that night, after pulling the book out of your shelf to occupy your sleepless night in a productive manner.

Half of it is written in a handwriting you've only ever seen in letters your father wrote before his untimely death—the one you modeled the curves of your alphabet after. The other half is written in your mother's handwriting, still in cursive, but with a definitive air of practicality to it, in that it would nearly be illegible to anyone else but you.

It says:

A love potion will not go into effect if the target of the ingester's affection and the first person they see are one and the same. In rare cases, with sufficient willpower, if the two people are separate, the ingester will be able to overcome its effects.

Biting your lips has no effect on your ever-growing smile. Neither does the prospect of having to tell Ehlonna about your mistake dampen your excitement about today's events.

Perhaps that makes you a bad friend. Perhaps wondering if the love potion would've failed anyway, owing to Ehlonna and her brother having an incredible willpower, makes you a bad friend too. In any case, in the following days, it ceases to matter, because your hunch about Ehlonna's fate happens to be correct.

Just not in the form you expected.

When you finally show her and her new husband the textbook—smuggling it into the manor carefully and quietly, though the Duke tends to turn a blind eye to your shenanigans—on the day after their wedding, the three of you can only laugh, as you did in the old days.

— happy (very) belated birthday to @chiefcroissantdeanbanana

#fics by aya #lovebrush chronicles #for all time #lovebrush chronicles x reader #for all time x reader #alkaid mcgrath #alkaid mcgrath x reader #lovebrush alkaid #lovebrush alkaid x reader #lbc alkaid #lbc alkaid x reader #rambles from here on ->#uhh fun fact i had a different fic planned and then i scrapped it at the last minute bcs i hated it #anyways you're very cool vivi and next year i promise ill be more timely #the fic's premise actually came bcs i read too much harry potter and #also i read a light novel that was vaguely like this

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