#later Ace calls Deuce to question why did he help him pick out a ring for Yuu

[bluesylveon2]

*Ace does something stupid

Deuce picks up the phone: hello?

Yuu/MC: why did you let me marry Ace? He (proceeds to rant about him)

After some time

Deuce: is there anything else you need to say?

Yuu/MC: Ace is an idiot but he is my idiot and I love him

[twstdreams]

I've loved your non-romantic/platonic content that you've done so far! Adding on to that list, could I please request a short story surrounding MC, Ace, and Deuce? An accident occurs which ends in MC turning into a little kid and now it's up to the two boys to put their differences aside and babysit their friend until she's back to normal. Girl pronouns plz! Lol I can only imagine the chaos that would ensue. If you don't feel comfortable with this ask you can skip it! Thx for reading :)

I am always up for platonic content and shenanigans! Long story, so the rest is under the cut!

Warning: Minor spoilers for side stories (briefly alluded to)

Length: ~2.3K

“It’s this one!” Deuce declares with unfounded confidence.

“No, it’s not!” Ace rebuttals despite not making it past page 10 in his textbook.

“It’s mine!” Grimm shouts even though he most definitely does not understand the experiment at hand. 

The magicless student can only sigh. Deuce and Ace suck at potions. So when the two bicker about what to add to their cauldron, the prefect doesn’t even blink an eye. Deuce mispronounces an ingredient, Ace corrects him, but neither are even talking about the right thing. She can practically sense Crewel’s glare despite her eyes remaining on the cauldron, cautiously waiting for bubbles to appear so she could add the indigo milk cap mushroom. 

What is added next to her cauldron is not the mushroom in her hand but a random root Grimm throws in. In Deuce’s haste to catch the gremlin, he spills over his own cauldron and some of their potion spills into hers.

“What are you doing?” she asks, but it’s too late. The mixture in her cauldron is boiling profusely and suddenly envelopes her in a cloud of smoke.

“Funya! MC, are you okay?” Grim inquires. Deuce and Ace also call out her name but there is no response. When the smoke clears, everyone in the room is left speechless.

The potential beast tamer hasn’t moved but an inch but she’s at least two feet shorter and with rounder cheeks and wide eyes. 

“WHAT?” she screeches in disbelief, suddenly too short to even reach the cauldron, “Fix this!” 

And this is how the group’s long catastrophic day begins.

Adventure 1: The beginning

“What?!” Grim shouts. If looks could kill, Crewel’s glare would have toasted the monster.

“Yes, it is hard to predict when MC will return to normal because you carelessly threw together that potion. It should wear off in a day, but there’s no guarantee,” the teacher explains through gritted teeth. The bell rings but the quartet barely registers it.

“Go to the headmaster! It’s not my problem anymore,” Crewel declares. 

Unfortunately, as most meetings with the headmaster are, the conversation is fruitless.

“Hah? We’re supposed to babysit her?” Ace asks.

“Yes! It’s your fault, is it not? Take care of her until the spell wears off,” Crowley declares.

“Isn’t there any way to break the spell?” Deuce inquires while nervously glancing towards MC.

“It’s hard to tell because you added in unknown amounts of various ingredients,” Crowley answers before muttering, “It takes too much time! I need to know what happens next in my novel.”

“Tch, what a lazy adult,” MC comments with a bored expression. She figured this would happen. She can’t even recall a moment when the headmaster had actually been helpful.

“What did you say?” Crowley demands. Deuce immediately picks up MC and heads for the door.

“Nothing! We’ll take care of her! See you later headmaster!” Ace explains while the two boys dash out of the office. They book it out of the hallway and then set her down on the ground.

“Hey! What was that about? It’s usually Grim saying stuff that gets us in trouble, not you,” Ace comments.

“Don’t tell me…Now she acts like a little kid too?” Deuce wonders.

Adventure 2: Stranger Danger

“Oh? Ramshackle prefect, you seem to be caught in quite the predicament.” MC glares at the Octavinelle dorm leader in return. Ace and Deuce are in the midst of calling Cater and Trey to ask for advice, giving Azul the perfect opportunity to approach her.

“I have an offer for you,” the second year begins.

“No.” MC is firm in her answer and has no intention of making any deals.

“Are you sure? I treat children well,” Azul adds but it only results in her frowning. There’s suddenly a glimmer in her eyes but before Azul can deduce what it means, MC begins shouting.

“STRANGER DANGER! STRANGER DANGER!”

“Stop that!” Azul insists but his wide eyes give away his flustered state. With a smile that looks a little too much like Chenya’s, MC continues her call for help. Soon enough, Deuce and Ace rush to her side.

“Stranger? That’s Prefect Azul! Have you forgotten him?” Deuce inquires with a look of concern. MC decides this is the perfect time to practice her puppy eyes and simply looks up at Deuce, wide eyes and with a pout.

Azul silently admits defeat as he forms a tight-lipped smile accompanied by some false pleasantries before exiting the area. 

“I’m hungry!” she announces before anyone can question her further. 

“Yes! Let’s go eat!” Grim agrees.

Adventure 3: Sweet Dreams

Getting lunch is a surprisingly painless affair. Though Night Raven College students could be quite self-centred, even they balked at harming a little girl. MC easily orders her favourites before sitting with her friends, though she has to sit on her knees to be at a comfortable height compared to the table.

“Wow! It’s true!~” Cater chimes while taking a seat at the table.

“How are you feeling?” Trey asks.

“Okay! It’s kinda weird but at least it was easy to get lunch,” she replies while taking a bite of her food.

“Now you really look like my minion!” Grim declares. MC shoots the monster a glare but doesn’t give him a response.

“You’re actually a little kid, huh? So, what do you wanna do when you grow up?” Ace teases.

“I want to control all the ghosts and have an army,” MC answers nonchalantly as if she had been discussing the weather.

“What?” Trey asks, slightly taken aback. Wasn’t this the person who was gullible enough to think that oyster sauce went in tarts?

“A ghost army,” she repeats confidently.

“Anyway! Aren’t you lucky? You get all these handsome guys to help you today!” Cater interjects, not wanting to unpack why the prefect wanted an army of the dead. 

Her gaze scans the table before looking up at Cater, eyes wide and expression void of malice, and asks, “Where?”

Grim howls with laughter while the four Heartslabyul students try to recover from the blow to their ego. It’s definitely going to be a long day for them.

Adventure 4: Smiles and stares

“Hey wait!” MC whines. One disadvantage of becoming short is that her stride decreased accordingly, thus her struggles to keep up with her classmate’s pace.

“Just walk faster or we’ll be late for class!” Ace retorts, glancing up ahead to see how far away the next building is. 

“AHH!” Ace turns around to see MC a couple of meters behind him face-first in a patch of grass. 

“Uwah! Are you okay?” Grim asks while flying above the fallen girl. Ace groans at the predicament. Deuce ran ahead to warn the other teachers of MC’s unfortunate condition so the redhead was the only babysitter at the moment.

The situation only worsens when MC begins to sit up, knees scraped, eyes glistening with tears, brows furrowed, and lips pressed tightly together. Ace’s eyes widen at the sight.

“Please don’t cry,” he mutters under his breath before trying to think about how to soothe kids.

“Oh my, that was quite a fall. You’re okay now though, right?” Jade asks while extending a gloved hand. His face is calm, showing no signs of concerns or worry with only a placid smile to demonstrate any emotion. MC stares at his face, analyzing his expression for a few moments. After finding the answer to her unsaid question, she accepts his hand and quickly sniffles before nodding. 

Ace watches in amazement as all signs of pain and panic vanish from her expression. He decides not to question her mood change before ushering the prefect to their next class.

Adventure 5: What came first? The egg or the chicken?

“You have to!” Deuce insists.

“NO!” MC shouts back, sitting firmly on the ground. Deuce is startled by the force of her words but stands his ground.

“It’s for your own good! Kids need exercise!” Or at least that’s what Cater told him before going to light music club.

“You can’t move me an inch!” MC retorts.

“I’m older, you should respect your seniors,” Deuce adds, doing his best to retain some level of patience.

“At least I know where chickens come from!” she rebuttals and Deuce feels at a loss for words. It is certainly not honour student behaviour to yell at a young girl but the first year is at his limits. He came to NRC to learn about magic, not dealing with children!

“Let’s play tag,” Jack suggests. Being the only one with little siblings, he is quickly enlisted to help. While disappointed in Deuce and Ace’s carelessness, he didn’t want to risk MC’s safety by leaving her in their care. Thus making him a reluctant member of the babysitting team.

“Tag?” MC echoes before a bright smile forms on her face. “Can it be teams?”

“Sure,” Jack agrees nonchalantly. 

“Jack and I are on the same team! We get to chase Deuce and Ace!” she declares gleefully.

“Huh? I didn’t agree to this,” Ace interjects.

“We need even teams!” MC responds with puffed cheeks.

“Too bad, so sad!” Ace replies without remorse.

“This is our fault Ace. Plus we promised the headmaster to take care of her. As Heartslabyul students and men, we can’t go back on our words!” Deuce declares. Jack’s firm gaze and Deuce’s blazing spirit give little room for negotiation and Ace sighs in defeat. Ace really does hate alchemy class from the bottom of his heart.

Adventure 6: Idiots, all of them

MC closes her eyes and enjoys the breeze while resting. Deuce and Jack had gone to the cafeteria to get drinks for everyone after several rounds of tag while Ace lay on the ground to catch his breath. It was quite entertaining to see the fastest first years engage in a game of tag and even more fun to watch Ace try to avoid his inevitable fate. Agile as he was, Ace couldn’t run fast enough to outdo Jack with his insane stamina and speed. She giggles at the memory.

“Bonjour petite princesse!” Rook looks down at the little girl with a shining smile. Her eyes snap open and follow the source of the cheerful voice. 

“Isn’t it delightful to see a new side to your friends? Like escorting someone on their first dance, like watching a lazy lion transform into a beast for the sake of the hunt, like observing night flox bloom under a full moon!” Rook beams but MC merely shrugs in response.

“Yeah but I’ve also seen Ace fall off his broom, Deuce compliment plants, and Jack mistake onions for a chemical leak.” 

“Oh? Is it not like having several princes tend to you?” he inquires. 

She scrunches her nose in thought before replying, “If my prince got stuck in a tree and I had to go save him.”

“Dear me, and I thought you were une petite princesse mignonne [1]! Perhaps that was a misunderstanding,” Rook remarks though he doesn’t seem displeased with the discovery.

Adventure 7: Mandatory nap

“Let’s go to the infirmary,” Ace suggests, “MC needs a nap and it’s the closest building with beds.”

“I’m the one that needs a nap?” she asks while side-eyeing her tired friend.

“She hasn’t even run for 3 hours,” Jack comments.

“Kids need naps! Plus, who knows what the side-effects of the potion are?” Ace adds, “We shouldn’t take any chances with her health.”

“You do need proper sleep to grow strong!” Deuce concurs.

“Sure, sure,” she concedes. When they arrive at the infirmary, there is no staff in sight. Ace guides her to a bed with an expectant smile.

“Well, go to sleep now!” Ace announces.

“It doesn’t work like that. I’m not sleepy,” she responds.

“Just lie in bed and close your eyes!” Ace insists with a huff.

“Shut up. You’re so noisy,” a voice growls. Leona appears on the other side of a room divider. Jack lets out a sigh, disappointed but not surprised by his dorm leader.

“I was having such a nice nap and now I’m… hah?” His sentence trails off as he eyes the little girl before him.

“Well,” you launch into an explanation of what happened, Leona shooting a judgemental look towards Deuce and Ace midway, before concluding, “It should wear off by the end of the day.”

“Tch, what an annoyance. I’m going back to sleep, don’t be loud,” Leona warns before flopping back onto the bed.

“How do you fall asleep so fast?” MC inquires. Leona glares at her, lips pressed together to form a thin line, but he lets any threats die in his throat.

“It’s nap time. Count sheep like a good herbivore until you fall asleep,” he instructs before turning his back towards the group. More than she’d like to admit, her small body requires rest and what better excuse than this? Besides, it’s not like magical history homework was particularly appealing, so she plops onto the bed to rest.

“I’m exhausted. Taking care of kids is tiring,” Ace says before falling onto another bed.

“It’s been a long day. I’m glad MC is okay, though. Haaah…I’m sleepy,” Deuce murmurs before resting on a different bed. Jack doesn’t comment but quietly begins his homework while keeping watchful eye on the little girl, not that he’d admit it if asked.

Adventure 8: The End. For now, anyway

She stretches after waking up, pleased to find her body back to its normal size. Ace snores lightly, Deuce’s mouth is agape, and Leona is nowhere to be found.

“Are you feeling okay?” Jack asks.

“Yeah, I actually feel pretty good!” Their conversation awakens their friends.

“You’re finally back to normal! I’m relieved,” Deuce interjects.

“You’re a lot of work for a minion, ya know? You’re lucky I’m so great,” Grim comments.

“That was a pain! You owe me big time!” Ace adds. MC shakes her head and wonders if she has the greatest or most chaotic friends.

[1] une petite princesse mignonne = a cute little princess

[wordsdrippinginink]

Hello, this is my first time doing a prompt and it feels like ordering at a drive-thru. Could you please write something with Marco trying to court Ace like a bird? I really like your work and enjoy anything you write. I hope you have a good day.

Ace tips his head to the side, studying the array of stones left at the door to his room, each one carefully polished and set to compliment both it and the ones next to it. Each one is sparkling and attention catching, some of them nothing more than Fool’s Gold and others sparkling Rubies with veins of something else creeping over the surface.

“Those look like a lot of money this time,” Deuce states, arching a brow at the stones and stepping over them into Ace’s room without a thought. “You got an admirer here?”

“Are stones something that you give to someone to tell them that you like them?” Ace asks curiously, picking up the stones carefully, tracing a thumb over the sharp edge of the ruby before setting it aside for the soft blue stone with golden webbing.

“Normally only when you want to marry them.”

Ace frowns, setting his new stones carefully onto his desk besides the others, “You give stones to someone to get married?”

“Sometimes I forget you grew up as a feral forest child and then you say something like that and it comes rushing back to me,” Deuce states shaking his head. “You make a ring and have a stone, something fancy or expensive, and use it to ask someone to marry you.”

“Why?”

“If I knew why people did things, I would be a historian instead of a pirate and a doctor.”

“They’re nice,” Ace says softly, running his thumb over the blue stone again. “Do you know what this one is?”

“Turquoise. My,” Deuce pauses, looking uncomfortable for a moment. “Ma used to have some, she liked the color. The shiny shit is gold. But I think you know that. Since you’re a pirate.”

“It’s pretty,” Ace says frowning at his friend as he trades it for the blue stone in his pocket. “This one?”

“Aquamarine, give me a challenge here, Ace.”

“Why am I getting them?”

Deuce barks out a laugh, collapsing onto Ace’s bed and pushing his mask up off his face to press the heels of his palms against his eyes, “If I knew that, I would be teasing you more. You’re the weirdo getting stones.”

“They’re nice,” Ace says defensively. “I, they’re a gift.”

He knows that Deuce has caught the inflection on the word when he sighs and rolls onto his side, silent for a long minute. The silence is loud enough that Ace’s ears are starting to ringing.

“You like gifts, don’t you?”

“I haven’t gotten many.”

Deuce sighs, forcing himself upright, “Alright, I’ll ask around. See if I can find out anything about stones and shit for you. Since I can be subtle, unlike you.”

“I’m subtle!”

“No you aren’t,” Deuce says grinning, even when Ace launches three of his Hotarubi across the space between them. “Ace, you know that it could mean anything.”

Ace nods and his chest aches, the Blues are vast and the customs even more so. The stones could be a gift or a curse or a warning. They might mean nothing or mean someone knows who his father is and plan to kill him, even if it sounds crazy. Ace doesn’t know what to think, but he hopes they’re gifts.

“You’re,” Deuce pauses, watching Ace for a moment, something unreadable in his expression. “We would still do anything for you, if you need us. Even if it means turning our backs on the Whitebeard Pirates. You still have us, no matter what.”

Ace watches the door close behind him and lets his shoulders fall, the lump in his throat heavy and painful as he tries to breathe through it.

---

“Here,” Deuce states three days later, looking more uncomfortable than the time he had been propositioned by a marine on Waters Seven. “It took a lot of work to find this out for you, so you best read this whole fucking thing.”

“This is a book on flightless sea birds,” Ace says slowly, recognizing the species on the cover. Gramps had said that they didn’t have enough meat on them to be satisfying and were too fast to be worth it. “Why do you even have this?”

“Because it will answer your stone questions,” Deuce says forcefully, refusing to meet Ace’s eye. “You have no idea what I did to get your answers and I feel like I’ve sold my soul, so you are going to read that cover to cover, with special focus on the stone thing.”

Ace frowns after him, even when the door to his room slams closed, before shrugging it off and opening it. It’s only the work of a few minutes to skim the book for what he wants, leaving him frowning at the mention of courtship and gifts, because he doesn’t know what that means. Courtship sounds like something nobles do or the romance novels that Makino didn’t keep in her house. But there’s no definition for it.

“You know,” Ace tells Kotatsu, frowning as he reads over the information again. “I think I’m more confused than I was before Deuce got me information.”

Kotatsu murrs, stretching over the bed to try and claim the whole thing for himself. Ace reaches over to scratch under his chin, trying to remember if there was a dictionary in the library that Thatch had shown him after he had joined the crew. He can’t remember and he’s not sure the definition won’t include words that he doesn’t know too. Just like the time that he had finally looked up some of the words that Sabo had used.

Ace takes a quick breath, clearing his mind before he can remember more, picking up the book and leaving his door open enough to let Kotatsu come and go as he pleased. Marco’s door is open, thankfully, so Ace doesn’t bother stopping to knock.

“Is something wrong,” Marco asks, looking at Ace over the tops of his glasses. There’s something in his eyes that makes Ace’s stomach feel too warm and cold in equal measures. “You look upset.”

“I found a word that I don’t know. Several words,” Ace admits, because Marco doesn’t treat Ace differently when he doesn’t know things. “Could you help me understand them?”

“I might need context for them.”

Ace nods, holding up his book, “They said that the birds used stones for courtship and mating. What does that mean?”

“For birds it means trying to attract a mate, to get another of their species interested in them.”

“Mating?”

“Sex or having children. Mate is similar to husband or wife.”

Ace frowns thoughtfully, “So they use stones to make other birds be attracted to them.”

“Birds all have rituals to convince, usually, females of their species to mate with them. Some dance or have bright colors, others give gifts.”

“Like stones.”

“Like stones.”

“This doesn’t really explain anything,” Ace mutters to himself. “Why would birds giving stones to other birds relate to someone giving them to me?”

Marco’s cheeks look red, like he’s gonna blush, “Perhaps they’re using the same method.”

“Oh,” Ace wrinkles his nose. “How do I respond? The penguins build nests with them, but I don’t think I can do that. And if I don’t know who to talk to about it, doesn’t that mean that I can’t answer?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out. I have a meeting with Pops, so I have to go, but if you need more help in a little while, I could come around?”

“No thanks. Thank you for the answers, Marco!”

---

“Marco is a bird sometimes,” Ace says two days later, watching Deuce to see what his reaction will be. He decides he’s right when Deuce spills the bottle of ink he was using. “So the stones are from him.”

“How are you this smart yet so stupid at the same time,” Deuce hisses over his ruined report. “This was about Pops’ health, couldn’t you have waited ten minutes?”

“No,” Ace answers, because he couldn’t have. The question has been there for days now, waiting for him to connect something and now he has his answer. “Marco is courting me. Like a penguin.”

Deuce sighs, leaving the report to ruin on his desk to face Ace, “Phoenix is weird. All zoan has habits and carry over from their animistic side but there’s never been much stated about the Phoenix Zoan, it’s mythical,” he pauses, looking for his words. “Izou mentioned it to me when I started probing for you. He had a funny story about Marco tripping over his own feet while dancing.”

“Marco likes me.”

“You like him.”

Ace doesn’t deny it, it wouldn’t work even if he tried. He does like Marco. Marco is nice and makes sure that Ace is comfortable with what happens around him. He isn’t opposed to the courtship, he thinks at least not when it’s Marco. He wouldn’t consider it if Deuce was giving him stones.

“What are you planning on doing?” Deuce asks when Ace says nothing.

“Penguins build nests with their stones,” Ace answers, standing up and rolling his shoulders as he stretches. “I’m not a penguin, but I think I can build something with them.”

“I don’t think you have to respond like a penguin would.”

“Marco started this.”

Ace doesn’t say that it feels wrong to respond to Marco’s attempts with just words, not when there’s a procedure to the courtship that Marco’s started. But he thinks that Deuce understands him anyway, if the look he’s given means anything.

“Should I wish you luck?”

“No, I don’t think I need it.”

Deuce laughs, loud enough to follow Ace out of the room that they had claimed for their work. It echoes in his ears as he opens the door to his room and carefully pulls out his stones, setting them onto the ground. Hopefully this wouldn’t fall apart on him.

---

Marco stares at the circle of stones, only three stacks high and just barely big enough for Ace to lay it, his knees pulled up to his chest as he sleeps. His mouth feels dry and the weight of the newest set of stones in his pocket weigh like lead in his pockets, but the sight of what can only loosely be called a nest makes his heart feel like it will beat out of his chest. 

It feels like hours before he moves into Ace’s room, pushing the door to, like it had been before he had knocked, kneeling down and setting the newest stones in a little line before the wall.

“Not gonna add ‘em?” Ace mutters sleepily, smiling when Marco looks up at him.

“That would be presumptuous of me.”

Ace snorts, yawning as he pushes himself upright, “Thought making them into a nest was an answer.”

“For a bird.”

“You started this like a bird,” he pauses, humming softly at something that Marco can’t see. “I like you.”

Marco swallows, “I like you too.”

“You could have just asked, ya know. Would have been easier.”

“I know.”

Ace nods, like he knows what Marco isn’t saying, “People don’t do courtship, what are we doing?”

“Dating, getting to know each other to know to see if we like each other enough to fall in love.”

“Dating,” Ace pulls a face, like the word is strange to him and perhaps it is. “Does this mean I can kiss you? I’ve been thinking about it, I would like to kiss you.”

“If you like.”

He doesn’t expect the way that Ace moves forward, kissing him. It’s too sudden and Marco’s lip is pushed into his teeth hard enough to cut through the skin, but he still laughs when Ace pulls back.

“Thank you for the stones, I really do like them.”

Marco laughs, leaning in for a second kiss carefully, “I’m glad.”