Chapter Text
Chapter One
So Many Ways to be Wicked
Harry’s lips on his were rough and demanding. His hook tugged at the collar of Mal’s shirt, threatening to pop the buttons off. His free hand pressed against his lower back, pulling him flush against his body. Uma was plastered to Mal’s back, her teeth and lips working the juncture of his neck and shoulder, marking him as hers. Mal’s own hands were divided in their attentions. One tangled in Harry’s hair, determined to gain even a sliver of control over the kiss. The other reached back, groping Uma’s thigh and ass, pulling her even closer to his body. They were a tangle of limbs and skin and teeth. They were in love. And they would fight anyone who tried to take it from them.
Mal blinked back to reality as a camera flashed in his face. Paparazzi crowded around him, shoving microphones and cameras in his face and he was hit with a wave of self-consciousness. He tugged awkwardly at his white suit jacket as the reporters threw questions at him about Cotillion. He couldn’t even get a word in edgewise as the questions flew. When one asked about his mom, he finally was rescued.
Ben pushed through the crowd and stepped to his side, effortlessly deflecting the question. “Did you ever think you’d be with a villain kid?” Ben chuckled condescendingly.
“We’re done here.” As Fairy Godmother stepped between the couple and the reporters, Ben turned Mal toward him, gently cupping his cheek in one hand.
The reporters finally were shooed off, and Mal leaned into his chest. “Cockroaches,” he muttered.
Ben laughed and rubbed his back. “You know what we should do? We should go somewhere. Get away. You know?”
“Yeah!” Mal needed that. They had been so busy, doing everything they could to plan for Cotillion, and Ben running the kingdom.
Ben checked his watch, immediately dashing Mal’s hopes. “I have a council meeting. I’m so late!”
“That’s okay!” Mal assured him, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach.
“We’ll do it some time,” Ben promised. “Uh…”
He was cut off by Evie grabbing Mal’s wrist from behind and pulling him around toward her. “If we don’t do the fitting for your suit right this minute, you will be dancing in your bathrobe, okay?” She looked past him at Ben and smiled. “Hi, Ben.” Ben barely had time to acknowledge her greeting before she was dragging Mal away.
Up in their room, Evie stripped Mal down to his underwear and binder and then helped him into his Cotillion suit. It looked very similar to Ben’s suit, but in opposite colors. While Ben’s was blue with military details and yellow accents, Mal’s was yellow with blue accents.
Mal’s mind drifted while Evie worked, pinning materials and measuring lines. He thought about what he would do if he was free to do what he wished at that moment. He would spend some quality time with his partners. In the last couple months, he and Ben had gone on a tour of the kingdom, visiting all the various parts that made up Auradon. Since they’d been traveling, he’d barely had a chance to really be together with all of his partners at the same time. In fact, he’d barely seen Jay or Carlos at all. Everyone was busy with their own things and they hadn’t had a check-in since Ben and Mal had started dating.
His eyes lingered on his leather jacket, the bright colors a stark contrast to his recent wardrobe of pastels. “Evie?” His girlfriend hummed acknowledgement. “Do you ever think about what we’d be doing if we were back on the Isle right now?”
Evie laughed sarcastically. “That’s funny.” Mal’s face fell, but Evie was distracted by a chime on the TV, indicating a new broadcast. “Look who’s on TV!” she chirped, helping Mal down from the platform, and stepping closer to the TV, while Mal turned and plopped down on his bed.
The broadcast mentioned his and Ben’s visit to Aladdin and Jasmine, and then began speculating on his own appointment to Lord of the Court during the upcoming party. Mal winced, and then gasped quietly, realizing he had no time to be sitting here watching TV. He leaned backward on the bed, stretching toward his nightstand where two books sat. The first, a very tedious book of protocol and manners. The second was his spellbook which he quickly flipped open to one of the pages.
“Read it fast at lightning speed. Remember everything I need.” Picking up the manners book, he waved his finger over it, a sensation of paper on his fingertips, then flipped it open, beginning to flip through the pages quickly.
“I know Mal’s secrets to fitting in and Ben wouldn’t like it one bit.” Evie’s voice sounded from the end of the bed. Mal ignored her, continuing to flip pages. “Haven’t you guys had enough secrets between the two of you already?”
“Evie, you remember what I was like before I started using my spell book,” Mal reminded her. “I was a complete disaster!”
“Well, personally, as your girlfriend, I strongly believe that this spell book?” Mal yelped as Evie grabbed the book from his lap. “It belongs in the museum with my mirror.” Mal glared softly. “Don’t give me the Face,” Evie scolded, and Mal tilted his chin and put out his lip. “Put the pout away. You know I’m right.” Mal did know she was right, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He leaned forward, planning to kiss her, but Evie had already stood up and turned back to her work table.
Mal caught himself and sat up. He had barely touched Evie in months! He huffed, “Don’t you ever miss just running wild and breaking all the rules?” he asked, his mind conjuring up images of the four of them owning the streets. But he was distracted from his drifting thoughts of himself with two different people by Evie’s reply.
“Like stealing and lying and fighting?”
“Yeah!”
“No! Why would we?” She came around the bed and pulled him to his feet. “M, come here. Look where we are, we’re in Auradon! And we’re Auradon kids now.” She wrapped her arm around his shoulders, dragging him back to the tv. “This is the land of opportunity. We can be whatever we want to be here. So please,” her voice went quiet. “Let’s just leave the past in the past, okay?”
Mal sighed and leaned into her. “Kay.” Before she could pull away, he reached up and pulled her down for a gentle kiss. And a tiny knot unraveled a bit inside him.
~~~
Later that day, heading to another class, the four ran into Jane. While Carlos tried, and failed, to get up the courage to ask her to be his date for Cotillion, Mal was starting to zone out. Even when they finally had a chance to be together again, the four of them were still so separate. Jay was being his charming, flirty self, Carlos was struggling in a way that Mal wasn’t sure how to help with, and Evie was being her usual, put together self, managing her business and being incredible. Meanwhile all Mal wanted to do was hide away from the rest of the world.
He was broken from his musings by Jane. Holding out her tablet, she began scrolling through options that the Decorating Committee still needed his opinion on. He didn’t know why. Design was Evie’s thing. This was all so stupid. Why did everyone expect him to know everything suddenly? The whole point of being in a group was so that they could lean on each other to help with their weaknesses. So why was he being left alone?
Mal felt the little bubble of anger rising in his chest, but it wasn’t until he caught the look Jane was giving him that he realized his hair was slowly rising off his shoulders, purple flames licking the ends. He took a deep breath, and calmed himself. “Pen toppers sound great,” he said, fishing through his memory for the last thing Jane had mentioned.
Evie returned with Lonnie at her side. “I can hardly wait to see what your wedding will look like!” Lonnie exclaimed.
Mal’s heart jumped into his throat. “What!?”
“The Royal Cotillion is like getting engaged to be engaged to be engaged!” Jane explained.
“I knew it!” Evie exclaimed. Mal stared at her. She was okay with this?
“Everyone knows it!” Lonnie added.
“I didn’t know it!” Mal protested, his voice going higher. “How come nobody told me that? Is my entire life just planned out in front of me?!” He was stopped from spiraling into a full panic attack by a hand on his shoulder. He turned, but wasn’t exactly relaxed by the sight of Ben beside him. Before they could even really speak, Jane pulled Ben away and Mal was left standing alone. Everything was moving too fast. Nothing made sense. As he numbly walked down the stairs after Evie toward their next class, his mind drifted again to a time before. When being alone was never an option. Nor a concern. When cool metal, turquoise hair, and the smell of the sea dominated his every waking, and sleeping, thought.
It didn’t help when, between the next classes, Ben waylaid him again, this time to gift him with a beautiful, purple moped. The bike was gorgeous, and Mal couldn’t help staring at the rich purple color a little enviously. He missed his purple. The only regular evidence of it these days was the slight lavender fade at the ends of his hair. “I didn’t get you anything,” he protested.
“You’re taking me on a picnic with all my favorite foods,” Ben reminded him.
“That’s Thursday.”
“Today is Thursday.”
“No it’s not!” Ben pulled out his phone and showed Mal the date at the top. Mal felt panic clench his stomach again. He’d completely lost track of the days.
“If you don’t have it, it’s fine!” Ben reassured him, but Mal was already planning a solution.
“No! It’s fine! I’ve got it. I just have one more thing I gotta go bake, and then I’m all yours!”
“What about class?”
“He multitasks,” Mal insisted, bracing his hands on his hips as he began waking away.
“He dabbles.”
“He dabbles!” Mal knew exactly the solution to his predicament. He just needed a quick stop by the kitchen first.
~~~
After receiving a mildly frantic text from Carlos requesting a potion, Mal ended up spending significantly more time in the kitchen than he meant to. As such, classes were over by the time he got done, and the press had managed to sneak back onto the grounds.
With visions of lighting them all on fire, drowning them at sea, and just running them over with his new moped dancing in his head, Mal ran to Carlos and Jay’s room, frantically locking the door behind him. The TV was playing the special from earlier again and he frantically switched it off just before he felt his anger rising up in his chest again. Why couldn’t everyone just leave him alone!
A gentle, gloved hand on his face brought him back to reality and his hair fell back down around his shoulders. Carlos had shot up like a weed and was now slightly taller than him. “Easy there, Mal,” he soothed. But Mal wasn’t ready to be soothed. He didn’t want to be handled gently right now. He wanted someone to challenge him! To push him down roughly and make him relax.
“You think this is so easy!” he shouted, gesturing over his shoulder to the closed door he’d just shut in the press’ faces. “You don’t have people taking a photo of you every single time you open your mouth to say ‘boo!’ Not that I exactly want to say that, just, you know what I mean.”
“Sorry. Come sit. Chill.” He led Mal back to his bed and sat down to continue reading something on his laptop. Mal plopped down, leaning his back against Carlos’ trying to let the tension bleed out from his muscles.
“Carlos, don’t you ever miss screaming at people and just making them run away from you?”
Mal felt his boyfriend breathe out a sigh. “You’re thinking of my mother. And I was usually on the other end of that so… no. Not really.”
Mal sighed and leaned his head back against Carlos’ shoulder. No one understood. They had all moved on. They were all happy in this life that they had built. Why was he the only one who felt stifled? Who felt stuck?
“Hey,” Mal heard the laptop shut. “Did you bring it?”
With another sigh, Mal started to open the little container he’d brought. But they were interrupted by the door lock clicking open. Mal barely noticed he’d shot to his feet away from Carlos before the two of them just silently stared as Chad snuck into the room.
He froze when he noticed them staring. “Hi.” He pointed toward the device on the table in the middle of the room. “Just came to use your 3-D printer. Won’t be a sec!”
“How’d you get a key to my room?” Carlos asked, staring pointedly at the key in Chad’s hand.
“Oh, I printed it off the last time I was in here… You guys were sleeping.” Mal blinked. What the fuck? “Look, it’s just that your printer is so much better than mine, and you’ve installed all these hacks, and everything runs so much smoother than mine!”
“Out!” Carlos said firmly. “Now.”
“Now!” Uma’s voice was firm and Mal felt his heart responding as he moved toward her.
“Mal?” He blinked up at Carlos’ expectant face. “My potion.”
Humming distractedly, he opened the little container in his hand and lifted the single red gummy from within.
“So, this will make me say what I really feel to Jane?”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s a truth gummy so, take it or leave it.” Carlos nodded and reached to take it, but Mal pulled it back. “Hold on though. Are you sure that you want to be taking this? Because this is gonna make you say the truth all the time, no matter what. And the only reason I’m asking is because I know that if I took this right now, I would get myself sent back to the Isle. Not that that sounds super unappealing, but, you know…”
“Yeah. I’ll take my chances I guess.”
“Okay.” Mal’s hand dropped in defeat, but before Carlos could take the gummy his dog, Dude, hopped down from the bed and ate it from Mal’s fingers. “Bad dog!” he exclaimed, but it was too late.
Dude jumped back on the bed and shook. “Man, that thing was nasty!” Carlos and Mal stared in shock. The dog was talking! “And you?” he looked at Carlos. “You just gotta swallow your fear and do it!” Mal had no idea the potion could do that! “And while you’re at it, scratch my butt!”
“You heard him,” Mal tapped Carlos’ shoulder. “Scratch his butt.”