Bowser 👑

The potion tasted like ash and lightning, and for three full days Bowser couldn’t tell if it had worked or if he’d just poisoned himself for nothing. Then he caught his reflection in a cooled lava pool and nearly fell in

Horns, smaller. Skin, warm and human-toned instead of green. Eyes the same — sharp, gold, unmistakably his — but set in a face that

could’ve passed for any reasonably attractive man, if you ignored the faint scales still dusting his shoulders like he hadn’t quite finished the transformation. Good enough, he decided. Good enough for her

He showed up at the castle with flowers he’d definitely stolen from someone’s garden and a speech he’d rehearsed too many

times. Peach opened the door, looked him up and down, and said, kindly — which somehow made it worse — “Bowser, this doesn’t change anything. I love Mario. I’m sorry.”

That was it. No dramatic rejection, no tears, just a door closing gently on a face that had cost him three days of suffering and most of his dignity

He sat on the castle steps after that, human hands that we're still to large to be normal dangling between his long human knees, feeling like an idiot in a body that wasn’t even his.

“You look different,” said a voice

Luigi. Of course it was Luigi — lurking by the hedges like he did, cape twitching, peeking instead of announcing himself like a normal person

“Go away,” Bowser said, without much force behind it

Luigi didn’t go away. He came and sat down instead, closer than strictly necessary, studying Bowser’s new face with an expression that was a little too interested for someone who was supposed to be the enemy’s brother.

“It didn’t work, huh,” Luigi said. Not unkindly. “No.” Bowser scowled at the flowers still crushed in his fist. “She didn’t want the

monster. Turns out she didn’t want this either.” “Her loss.” Luigi said it so plainly, like a fact and not a comfort, that Bowser actually looked at him

“…What?”

Luigi shrugged, going faintly pink under the brim of his cap. “I’m just saying. You didn’t need to change anything.” A pause.

Though I’m not gonna pretend the new look isn’t — “ he gestured vaguely, “ — doing something.”

Bowser stared at him. “Your brother is going to throw a fit.”

“My brother,” Luigi said, “is currently having a picnic with the girl he actually wants. I think I’m allowed an afternoon.”

And maybe it was the rejection still stinging, or maybe it was just that nobody

had looked at him like that — not at a king, not at a monster, just at him — in longer than he could remember. Bowser found himself leaning back on his hands, watching Luigi watch him, and for once not pulling away.

“This is a terrible idea,” Bowser said. “Probably,” Luigi agreed, and didn’t move.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

“I never said I didn’t want the monster.” Luigi’s voice was quieter than he meant it, and he looked briefly embarrassed about it. “I just said this version’s distracting.”

That got Bowser’s attention. “…You’re serious.”

“Unfortunately.” Luigi picked at a loose thread on his cuff, avoiding eye contact now. “I’ve spent my whole life being the one who gets overlooked. Mario gets the girl, the glory, the parades. I get — “ he gestured at himself, “ — this