#if tumblr shoves it in the poke tag I'm NOT held responsible

[spark-circuit]

having a normal one in the Supreme Machine Character AI group chat lads

[tryingberryhard]

Happy Valentines to Azureflame who is not on Tumblr I am so sorry to the person I tagged!!!

Golly gee willickers I hope I tagged the right person

I have a little thing for you! Going off of your prompt: Ace giving Julius chocolates. I tried to draw this but hoh boi was that not working, so a ficlet it is. I'm hoping sometime I can actually draw a little segment of this as well, I think the atmosphere of it would be cute! If that works out in the future, I will be sure to tag you in it <3

For now, I offer this! Thanks for the great prompts, I had a lot of fun with this.

Julius didn't flinch when Ace slammed his door open.

He merely continued working as Ace sauntered over, carefully nudging a pin into the clock he had on hand. If he could just get a few more pieces in place, the clock would be practically finished—

"Julius~!" Ace sang out, leaning on the far side of the table. "Julius, I brought something for you."

"I should hope so," he didn't glance up from his work, instead poking through a pile of springs to find one of the right size. "You were meant to be here 17 time periods ago." Ace lit up at that, practically giggling as he casually shoved a pile of parts towards Julius.

"Don't - ugh." Julius made a half-effort to salvage the pile before giving up, pinching between his eyes. “Please Ace, I’m in the middle of working.” He watched as Ace slowly and deliberately slid a gear towards the edge of the table, not unlike a cat.

Julius caught the gear before it hit the ground.

“You’re happy to see me, aren’t you?” Ace had stretched across half the table at this point, the bag in his hands practically on display in front of Julius.

In fact, it likely was a display.  A very disruptive display, that had knocked Julius’ hand aside and knocked several parts askew in the clock he had been so diligently fixing.

“Ace…” Julius took a breath, finally turning his attention to his unshakeable nuisance, expression tense and, unfortunately, resigned. “I assume there is a good reason you could not just place those clocks in the box of broken clocks?” Ace’s expression turned mischievous for a moment before he stood back up, making his way to Julius’ side and leaning against the table beside him.

“I brought you a gift!” Ace proudly dropped the bag in front of Julius, who groaned as several bright pink heart-shaped chocolates spilled out onto his workspace. Ace chuckled at the reaction, waiting contentedly for Julius’ response.

“I don’t suppose you bought these in town…”

“Nope!” Ace grabbed one and unwrapped it, popping it into his mouth. “This one lady, she was headed to deliver these chocolates to someone. But she had been hiding her girlfriend’s clock,” he shrugged, and began stretching his arms out, “she was easy enough to kill. She wasn’t expecting it, I don’t think.”

Ace turned his mischievous expression to Julius, his face quickly brightening. “So, I got all this free chocolate!”

Julius began plucking the stray chocolates to drop them back in their bag, shaking his head. “It’s probably too sweet anyways, Ace.” Ace beamed in return, placing a second bag (that drooped with a much larger weight, the clanking of metal tipping Julius off that that was the delivery he had been expecting) out of Julius’ reach.

“Awww! C’mon Julius, you haven’t even tried one yet.” Ace pouted, moving closer into Julius’ space, who promptly tried shoving him away.

“And I don’t need to. I won’t like it, Ace.”

Ace laughed, grabbing another chocolate to unwrap. He held it up to Julius’ lips, tapping it against them once, twice—

Julius grabbed his wrist, pushing the treat away from his face as he grit out, “Ace, I’m not going to eat that—”

Ace wrapped his free arm around Julius’ shoulders, pulling him into an awkward side-hug carefully bordering on chokehold as he continued forcing the chocolate to Julius’ face, smile glowing.

“Ace—!” The chocolate was pushed into his mouth right as he shoved Ace off of his side, chewing remorsefully.

“Isn’t it yummy, Julius?”

Julius grabbed the bag with the rest of the chocolates, face perfectly controlled as he stood, placing the bag aside.

“You were late, Ace. Get going.”

Ace chuckled, finally making his way to the door. “I guess I should stop by the castle. I think I heard that Alice was headed that way!” Ace disappeared through the door, calling a quick “Be back soon!” before shutting it behind him.

Ace quickly changed his tune to pout again, glancing at the door with disinterest. “Ah, already? I just got here…”

Julius huffed out a breath as he began to try and restore his workspace to what it had been. “And you’ve made plenty a mess in that time. Get out, I have work to do.” Julius paused, thinking for a moment before continuing, “There are plenty of others you can cause problems for.” He turned to glower at him. “So long as it doesn’t cause me more work.”

Julius muttered a quiet, “Feel no need,” before sitting back down. He glanced at the bag of chocolates, taking it in for a moment before returning to his work.

The next time Alice visited the Clock Tower, she was surprised to find a bowl of cute heart-shaped chocolates on the counter. Julius shut her down before she could even ask about it.