It has been years since I've written anything, english or french. I hope I didn't lose my hand and that you'll enjoy.

DISCLAIMER:

this happens in my own lore, my own version of the Super Mario universe. Some things won't be as they usually are depicted, mostly characters' backstories and sometimes behaviours (I try not to alter personality much). Reviews and critics are greatly appreciated.

The brunette felt a strong hand on her shoulder, a warm hand which pulled her closer to the person it belonged to. Emerald green eyes lifted up to look at the woman's friend. A chiseled jawline like it could cut if touched, a long and straight nose as well as slightly pointy. Eyes so bright and in a grayish blue shade like no one ever had. Dark blonde thick eyebrows contrasting the eyes, furrowed in an attempt at looking annoyed.

That face, oh that face, the face of a friend the woman loved most. She could stare at it for hours.

And the hair. A bit past the shoulders, blonde and unkempt, bangs covering the forehead and contouring the face. A little strand sitting right on top of the head and giving her friend a sort of childish touch.

"What are you thinking about, Peach?" started the smaller woman, rubbing the hand on her shoulder.

"Nothing."

"You're not very good at lying, you know that?" The brunette giggled.

Her friend's hand shifted, now resting on her hip and pulling her closer to the tall woman.

"I don't want you wandering around, so I'm keeping you close. You have a habit of disappearing, Daisy, and I know for a fact that I cannot let you go." She finally explained.

"Oh my, you're such a gentlewoman."

"Keep your sarcasm for the others. I'm not even supposed to be here."

"Then why'd you come?"

Peach sighed, looking around for just a second. The place was crowded, so crowded it made her uncomfortable. She wanted to go home, go hide in her bedroom, but her friend's father had asked her for a favor. One she couldn't say no to as it would get her to have some time with a friend she hadn't seen in ages.

"I'm here because your father can't catch a break with you. He can't even get guards qualified enough to keep an eye on you."

"So he asked the regent of another country to keep his daughter in check? Didn't know you liked to play cat and mouse."

"I don't, that's the problem." The queen sighed again.

"Then why accept?"

"I wanted to have some fun with you, we haven't seen each other in two years."

The tall woman slightly blushed in embarrassment, although Daisy couldn't see it with the purple lights of the place. she cocked her head to the side and smiled devilishly, chuckling.

"You missed me THAT much?"

"You're my best friend, you idiotic fuck."

"Now, now, is that how you talk to your supposed best friend?"

"I could insult you in my own language, but I'd rather you understand me. It's not funny otherwise." The blonde one grinned.

"Hija de la puta madre."

"Really? You're going down that path? Two can play at that game."

A game of insults started. Daisy was winning, she had so much up her sleeve, her friend struggling to find what to respond to her mockery. She soon ran out of words, accepting her defeat.

"I give up, you're way smarter than me on this matter." She said.

"I thought the fils de pute was quite funny, actually. It's how you pronounce it, makes all the difference." Purred the brunette, sitting closer to the queen.

"If that was supposed to be some kind of flirting, you should let it go. It's bad."

The two of them softly laughed, Daisy resting her hand on her friend's thigh and making her blush. The blonde woman looked down, her muscled thigh hot under Daisy's hand. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

"What's wrong? Cat got your tongue, sweety?"

The two women stared at each other, their eyes deeply lost in one another and faces reddening. The queen was the first one to speak after she gently pushed her friend aside.

"We should get out before it gets steamy. Some people here are foaming at the mouth and waiting for a scoop."

She pointed at a group of journalists, cameras hidden in their bags, staring at the two royals and ready to take any unruly picture that could come their way. Daisy frowned and got up, grabbing her friend's hand to get out of there.

—-

"I'm sure they can't follow us in your bedroom, stop looking out the window you look stupid."

Peach was lying on the bed, looking at the ceiling while telling her friend to calm down. Daisy had smashed her face against the glass, fogging it up with her breath while staring daggers at the bushes in the garden below her window. She turned to the taller woman.

"I wanted to have a good time without them for once in my life! I had no guards, no dad, nobody to ruin my night and these idiots just…FUCK!"

She mumbled something in her dialect and went to her friend's side. The brunette sat in Peach's lap, putting herself at ease in between her arms. The surprised blonde smiled softly at the sight of a pouting Daisy, securing her in a soft grip. The smaller woman melted like putty in her hands.

"Calm down, Daisy. Calm down. You're always so excited, it's exhausting."

"I want to have fun without anyone crashing the party for me."

"I understand. I truly do. But you need to learn to calm down, ok?"

"Yeah, yeah…"

The girls shared a moment of silence, Peach holding onto her friend tight and her nose in her hair. She was breathing in on the soft flowery smell Daisy had, her eyes closing and her whole being taking in on how good it was. It made her calm, so calm, it heavily contrasted with her friend's personality always having her on edge. But for now, it was perfectly calm. The whole place was silent, even Daisy's usual loud breathing was practically non-existent. Which made Peach realize : she was holding her friend a bit too tight. Daisy was indeed silent, but only because her friend's arms were keeping her from breathing.

"Oh shi-" The tall woman let go of her.

Daisy slipped out of her grasp, taking in deep breaths and staring at the other girl like she saw a ghost. She sat up after a moment of awkward staring from the two of them.

"Are you…are you okay, Daisy?"

"Think so…Damn what happened in that brain of yours to…to try and strangle me?"

"I zoned out, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry I didn't mean to."

"It's fine. And, I have to admit, that was hot."

"I-"

They bursted out laughing, the two women falling off the bed and rolling on the floor.

"Daisy I swear your bad flirting will be the end of you someday!" A bright red Peach managed to say in between laughs.

"Yeah but it made you blush, so I'll accept my death with open arms if it means making you uncomfortable."

"Is that so?"

"You want to try me?"

There it was, the tension between the two of them. This connection they had, the spark which made their whole friendship so ambiguous for the past few years. The two girls got close to each other once again, Peach's eyes daring to glance at the other woman's lips, getting back up in an instant and letting the blonde woman hot and steamy.

She didn't know why it made her feel that way. To have her friend alone with her and in such close and intimate shared space, it made her feel as if she could melt at any given moment. She knew what feelings of love, and even lust, were, obviously, but she couldn't comprehend why it had fallen upon her friend in particular.

"Can I kiss you?"

Daisy had softly asked the question burning on the other's tongue, which made her raise a brow in confusion.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"You heard me, Peach. Can I kiss you? I doubt there'll be another occasion where we'd be left alone without supervision like that. So dare I steal a kiss from you?"

"Daisy you can't, I mean, come on you don't ask your friends that. Je ne te comprendrai donc jamais."

"Hey don't you start getting all bilingual with me. I understood that."

"It's true, though. I'll never understand you. Whether in Koopa, In Sarazin, or in Toad, you have some weird thinking going on there."

"Well you better continue speaking Koopa or I'll start flirting and saying dumb shit in Sarazin."

"You wouldn't dare. I may not speak it, but I still get the idea."

They locked eyes, Daisy now far closer to the blonde than before. Their noses were practically touching and the atmosphere seemed heavier, almost tense.

"Besides you were looking at my lips a few moments ago." Started the brunette, a satisfied grin plastered on her face.

"That's just not true."

"Peach, come on. You think I don't notice how tight and close you keep me in your grip? How you try to have me by your side at all cost, even seeming rude to some as you don't let go of me? I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I can still see when people are feeling a little something for me. You act differently with me than with, let's say, Luigi."

"Luigi's gay."

"Mario?"

"Mario has a girlfriend currently."

"Ugh, help me. Who's single and ready to mingle with you?"

"Don't know, don't care."

The blonde didn't answer any of Daisy's incessant questions, sighing. She broke their physical contact, getting up to stretch for a bit. Peach suddenly noticed a movement in the bushes below them. She looked closer, noticing a flash of light. A camera.

"Really? I'll be back, I have something to do, I'll be quick. Stay here."

"What? Hey don't leave me hanging! I wanted to tease you more!"

The blonde stopped right at the door, her hand on the frame, and turned to the smaller woman. She grinned.

"Well then, your teasing had better be improved when I'm back. I don't sit right with bad flirting, it happens to irritate me a lot, you know?"

Daisy, mouth agape, couldn't find anything to reply to her friend's poking. She sat there silently, arms crossed, pouting, and eyes wandering around Peach's face.

—-

The blonde got out the bedroom satisfied, jogging down the halls. She needed to be quick and not cross paths with any guards. They had a tendency of harassing her with questions whenever she visited her friend, especially since she had been crowned queen. And if any of them found a little paparazzi spying on their dear princess, they'd go crazy. The Sarazins weren't as warm and welcoming as the Toads were and Peach had to admit that Daisy had an advantage when it came to being protected.

She wasn't all muscle, power, and height like Peach, she was an average height and strength woman with a bit of chubbiness who just happened to be a king's daughter. A girl dreaming of roaming free and getting out of what she called a "godforsaken country", while her regent friend prefered her routinely arranged life as a royal. The brunette longed for adventures as simple as being allowed to go downtown and meet people at the market other than bratty aristocrats wandering the palace's walls. But she was average and it gave her father an excuse to never let go of her. And, on top of that, Daisy was human. Peach was not. Peach could take liberties with her surroundings since this world was adapted to her blood heritage, Daisy could not. The brunette could step outside and literally die if not properly prepared, her friend didn't have that problem.

All of this led to a frustrated and restrained princess, and Peach knew what could happen when you'd restrain someone that much. They explode as she had personally done a few years prior. And Daisy was on the verge of it, she could feel it whenever anything didn't go as planned with her friend. She'd slowly but surely burst out in a tantrum, screaming and throwing fists with whomever happened to share a space with her at that moment. Usually it was a guard, some other times it had been the blonde woman, and rarely had it been the girl's own father.

The king was a coward and a deaf man to his daughter's desperate cries for help. As much as Peach appreciated him as a fellow governor when it came to business, she loathed him as a parental figure. She had been envious of Daisy back when she was younger, but had quickly figured that she wouldn't have been blessed if her own father was alive and behaving like the brunette's. The Sarazin king was a gaslighting idiot who just so happened to be docile enough to not go too far, at least with his daughter and friends. But still, he did some damage to the girl and some of it couldn't be solved with just a talk over tea and biscuits.

The train of thought of the regent got cut short when she found herself in front of the bush she saw moving moments ago, posting herself in front of it and dominating it with her height. Being 6'2" did have its benefits when it came to scaring people and the journalist poking their head out the bush wasn't the exception. They looked up at her, a young Toad, camera in trembling hands that they slowly lowered, and smiled, uncertain.

"May I help you?" They asked.

"Get out."

"I'm sorry, your Highness, but I really need to just take a quick picture of the princess or I'll be fir-"

She grabbed them by the collar, lifting them up in the air by a few inches, before they could finish their sentence, Peach's cold piercing gaze on them. The paparazzi gulped audibly.

"Your camera. Hand it over."

They obliged and handed her the device, the queen then smashing it full force on the ground. Horrified, the journalist looked at her with tears in their eyes. They begged for mercy.

"Now get out. And ask your boss to send me a letter if he's not satisfied with your spying. They'll know what to do."

"But I'll get fired! Why'd you do that?! I'm just following orders!"

"You seem to work for the local journal and they broke a rule by stepping into a palace. Didn't they tell you?"

"No! They just told me I needed to be quick and stealthy! I didn't know anything!"

Peach's brows furrowed even more, putting the journalist down. The Toad burst into tears, they really were too young for this job. Awkwardly, she explained herself.

"They cannot fire you over a mistake on their part. They broke a rule by sending you here. I may not like journalists, but I'm not a monster so I'm giving you a chance to flee. Now get out before a guard sees you."

The explanation needed no more details as they bolted right out of the gardens, leaving a relieved Peach. She grabbed the smashed pieces of the camera, dumping them in the first bin she found, and proceeded to make her way back to Daisy's apartments.

—-

Going up the stairs the queen couldn't help herself but to think of what the paparazzi she had busted could've gotten on their camera. Right before she noticed them the two women had been face to face, mere inches away from kissing. Their lips were way too close and from the distance it would have seemed as if they had actually touched. The thought made the blonde blush softly.

"Tu ne peux pas l'imaginer. Tu n'as pas le droit, tu connais les conséquences que cela engendrerait." The little voice in her head had spoken with all the wisdom the woman could gather in herself.

As Peach approached her friend's apartments, she heard a few people yelling out, as in a full blown screaming match. One of them, graver and louder than the other, she knew too well.

"¿Dónde estabas? ¡Se suponía que ibas a volver a casa hace horas y me avisarías!"

"¡Déjame en paz! Estaba con ella. ¡Tú deberías haberlo sabido dado que tú le pediste el favor! ¡Suéltame!"

"¡Tenías un toque de queda! No lo has respetado así que a partir de ahora ¡Te queda prohibido salir!"

"¡Vete a la mierda! ¡Fuera de mi cuarto!"

The king had made his great entrance and was seemingly bothering the semblance of peace in Daisy's evening. Peach stepped into the room, glaring quickly at her friend and placing herself in front of the man. He gave a quick bow.

"Your Majesty, it's a pleasure to see you again."

"Save me your commodities, Anson. We're not in politics here." She cut short to his games.

The king maintained his composure, his head slightly tilted backwards to keep his eyes on hers. The blonde felt a hand on her wrist and an exhausted Daisy speaking in her back.

"Leave it, Peach. You don't belong in the conversation."

"On the contrary. I thought I'd understood that you were arguing about tonight. Correct?"

Anson nodded gravely, urging her to continue by staying silent.

"I didn't get everything, but it seemed like you were making her pay for the wrongdoing of apparently not respecting a curfew, which she didn't have, Anson. I don't recall that your favor had me letting you scream at your daughter like you scream at your guards. Kindly step out of this room or I'll escort you with all the gentleness I can manage while cussing you out."

"Is that a threat?" The king asked.

"It is. As I'm not speaking to you as queen, but as a sane person seeing you blame your daughter for something she did not do. And you're getting on my nerves. I'm tired, I had to keep an eye on a hyperactive woman who acted like she hadn't seen light in years, and I have some problems that I need to attend to when going back home. So yeah, you're the straw that broke the camel's back right now. Out of this room."

Daisy let out a discreet chuckle at the face her father was making. He was as white as a sheet, lowering his gaze and his arms behind him, ashamed. He looked like a shy and shameful kid after getting called out for lying.

"But we had agreed her and I that she'd come back before m-"

"We didn't, father. I haven't seen you all week."

Peach sighed. He had a habit of lying to get out of trouble, but this was simply ridiculous. She grumbled something in Toad, making Daisy snort, and accompanied the man out the door.

"Don't make me lose patience, I gave plenty enough away tonight." She said through gritted teeth.

He must have understood that resisting would only result in his demise, letting her grab his arm and practically throw him across the hall. The king jogged away, letting the two girls catch a break.

Peach turned around, hands on her hips, letting out a deep sigh of relief. Her friend carefully approached her and put her arms around the blonde's waist. Daisy held her tight.

"Thank you. I don't think I would've had that much self-control." She spoke softly.

"No worries. I don't think I would've gotten any if I had a screaming match with him either. Are you okay ?"

The queen, her warm hands cupping her friend's cheeks, checked her to see if she had been harmed in any way. Aside from a small wrinkle on her clothing near the wrist, she seemed fine. Daisy closed her eyes in the maternal embrace, smiling. Even though Peach kept herself covered in piles of clothing most of the time, dresses or else, the warmth of her body transcended them.

"I'm good, I'm good. Just shaken up."

"Glad to hear it. So, about that flirting, did you solve the issue of it being bad?" Peach grinned devilishly, earning a side eyed glance from the brunette.

"Fuck you."

"I thought you wanted to be more romantic by kissing me."

"As if you'd let me."

"Try me."

The flirting was still bad, though the blonde was responsible for it this time. Daisy blushed, her emerald eyes scanning her friend's grayish blue ones in an attempt at discerning the real intentions from the irony she had displayed. Not that there was much there anyway, the girls were literally in each other's arms, face to face again, and their eyes lost wandering in the other's gaze. The brunette could feel her cheeks warming up, and it wasn't thanks to the blonde's hands on them.

"Do you still wish to kiss me, Daisy?"

The question echoed in the entire room, the awkward silence taking its place right after. The smaller woman didn't know what to answer, hesitant. On the one hand, she wanted to die right here right now and never experience such embarrassment ever again, but on the other hand she'd strip the blonde from every layer of clothing she had on and show her all the affection she'd kept buried and simmering in her heart for a few years now.

Daisy opened her mouth, only to close it again. The operation repeated itself a few times, before Peach stopped her by giggling softly.

"I'll take that as a no? You don't seem so sure anymore."

"No! I mean, I don't know. I'm a bit lost."

"Was it all for laughs and giggles before?"

"Half of it, yes. The other half, not so much…"

"At least you're honest, that's that."

"Oh my, that helps me a ton in not feeling stupid either way. Thanks, arse."

"Daisy."

"Sorry, I'm pissed off at myself. I'm a coward. Like father, like daughter they say."

"Will you stop putting my friend down?"

"Your friend is an idiotic coward, that's just the truth."

The blonde sighed for what seemed like the billionth time that night. She planted a soft kiss on Daisy's forehead and smiled at her.

"Come on, let's go to sleep. I'm exhausted and have to catch the first train tomorrow morning." She whispered.

"Wouldn't you rather have my jet?"

"Daisy, you know how much I hate private jets…"

"Oh yeah, right. Sorry. Can I come with you? Please."

Peach hesitated for a bit. She did want to have some company during travel as it would take a few hours to reach the destination, but at the same time she wouldn't be able to babysit her. The brunette would disappear as soon as they'd enter the kingdom and Peach was sure she'd never hear the end of it from the king.

"I don't know, dear. As much as I love being with you I can't play babysitters this time. It's urgent matter and my stay here has already made it critical."

"I'll stay still! I promise."

"Daisy, dear, you always say that and still you manage to get away every time. I can't risk it."

"Mierda."

"You can say that all you want, it won't change a thing. I'm not taking you on the train with me this time. I'm sorry."

"No, I understand."

The room fell silent as the two women went to bed. Nobody dared speak a word, the girls back to back. Peach felt her friend move after a few minutes, Daisy struggling with the bedsheets. The blonde smiled and turned around, holding her close.

"Having a fistfight with it?"

"Damn sheets are glued to my legs, I hate it."

The queen snorted, her friend gawking at her.

"I don't find it funny." The girl grumbled.

"Well too bad I do. You'll have to get over it."

She threw her whole weight on the smaller woman, Daisy now crushed by two and a hundred something pounds. She gasped,

"Peach…you're crushing me. It hurts."

The weight shifted as the brunette found herself held close and tight against her friend's chest. A shy blush came to her cheeks and the petite woman turned around to bury herself against the other one's breasts. Breathing Peach's soft perfume in she closed her eyes and went limp almost instantly. The blonde softly smiled, deposing a soft kiss in between Daisy's eyebrows.

"Good night, Daisy."

"Mmh."

The queen let sleep take her, holding her friend tight and close.