A/N: Okay, you guys are officially amazing! I'm so happy you like Lutalica! On another note, I watched Wonder Woman today, and she's absolutely amazing! I feel like I need to go train in martial arts or something.
Please review, favourite, follow, etc.
Whipped Cream & Other Delights,
TheHarleyQueen
Y'know, thought Ben as he lay next to Audrey in the mile-wide bed that he housed in his 'dorm', sex does seem to solve everything. Wouldn't it be so much easier if I could just- he sat up straight, eyes shining with the revelation he'd just undergone. Sex did solve everything. Or, at least, most teen issues. And there was the answer. It made perfect sense. He'd start with… he'd start with Evie. She wasn't easy (God, did he know that. He'd watched her for years, rejecting even the most handsome of men, because of the pettiest of reasons) but she liked things that sparkled, like seashells and Mal's eyes, and blue diamonds, and tiaras.
That morning, Ben went into town. He headed straight into the jewellery shop, walking past every beggar that he'd normally have to support. He was done with this act. He'd didn't care. These people should get jobs. They were a waste of air. He took their most elegant tiara, diamonds woven into thin wires made of dragon fire and stardust. Dwarvencraft, he decided. There was nothing else it could be. Evie would love it even more, knowing it was made by her mother's worst enemies and worth more than most of the Isle. It would be perfect and with two or three more gifts of this calibre (all A's on her report card would make her more agreeable, and a bottle of Snow White's blood {subtle, Ben}) she'd be falling into his bed.
He didn't get to use that tiara for a long time.
He did eventually give her Snow White's blood {it was more than a vial}.
The cookie didn't actually work. A love spell was useless when you were already in love with the subject. It made his desires more, sure. It was all he could do to keep from ripping Mal's clothes off when he saw her, to keep from touching her and touching her. So he acted {it was what he was good at}. Made it look ridiculous, dumped Audrey, and serenaded her. He asked her to go to the coronation with him, put her right there, right at the front, right by the wand. And he knew that all he had to do was wait.
He did a bit more than that, however.
The date wasn't originally part of the plan. He drifted slightly off his script, but seeing Mal in makeup, watching her wander across that bridge, feeling her pressed against his back on the scooter, well, it was worth it. And when she told him her 'middle name' (liar, he thought, it's Morgana. Beautiful, but supremely powerful. Like you.) he felt something flare in his chest. She liked him, and he'd never felt as proud, as accomplished.
She tried to save him, and he nearly broke down crying right there, because she was recognising him, and how he'd longed for that since he was thirteen and he'd first seen her through the spyglass. She wanted to keep him with her.
{She got a glint in her eye, a glint he'd seen before in Evie's eyes.
When she got back to her dorm, she took out one of Evie's velvet ribbons- green, she decided, for his eyes. She spent hours meticulously stitching in golden spirals, attaching a jagged piece of jade (unlike the smooth gems she gave to Evie, Carlos, and Jay, because he was hers, but he wasn't on the 'straight and narrow' he was wild. Or he would be.) to the collar, stitched a clasp into the back, and she set it down on one of Evie's mannequins.
Evie saw this, watched out of the corner of her eye as her lover, her best friend, her confidant, made a new collar for someone new. She hadn't invited anyone into the circle since Carlos and Jay, and Evie couldn't wait. A new friend. Possibly even lover, if she played her cards right.}
In the meantime, darkness was consuming Ben. It grew within his heart, and on the Saturday before Family Day, he even risked a trip to the moors, filled as they were with wild, untamed magics, as they had been since Auradon had locked away their queen. Soon, he promised himself. Soon, this would all be Mal's, and she'd love it.
Okay, so Family Day was a mess. And he nearly killed those who'd insulted his people like that, nearly broke every bone in Chad Charming's body. And when he watched Mal's face darken, her eyes flicking between Evie and Jay and Carlos, he knew she'd nearly done the exact same thing, and he was so proud to be like her.
And then came Judgement Day. His coronation.
Mal was stunning, of course. She'd be stunning if she wore rags. But so were Evie and Jay and Carlos. All three of them had their collars on proud display. Silently showing the world that they were Mal's, that she loved them and that any of them would die for the others. She was beautiful when she admitted she'd given him a love potion, even if she'd lied about her reasons {he'd given her an out. Of course, she'd lie, half her beauty was the deceit and darkness that writhed within her}.
He was waiting, waiting throughout his coronation, the tiara in his pocket, waiting for his queen to take what was rightfully hers, waiting for her reign to begin, waiting to become hers. She didn't and she didn't and then- someone else did. Jane, and God, he hadn't expected that, and she tried so hard but Mal just turned and calmly took it from her, a radiant smile spread across her face, cool and stunning and in her element. And she smiled at Evie, Jay and Carlos, and then at him, and he knew he was hers with every fibre in his body.
Maleficent came, and Mal, his gorgeous, ethereal, Mal didn't even hesitate, she killed her mother with a spell so fast Maleficent would never have seen in coming, and then. Then.
Mal had the staff and the wand and she stood at the centre of the room, magick swirling around her, a force to be reckoned with, all fire and ice. The other VKs watched from a distance, happy to commit the spectacle to memory from the background, but Ben was pulled to her, to the magick, to the crystal he could feel in her pocket.
He threw his crown at her feet and crowned her with the tiara he's originally meant for Evie (he'd get her her own, in time. This was Mal's moment). He knelt at her feet and swore fealty. He kissed her when she told him to rise and locked the necklace around his throat.
'You're beautiful, Ben. Beautiful and evil, just like us. And you're ours now. All ours and we're yours, and it will be this way forever.'
He kissed her again.
