DISCLAIMER: Most definitely not mine.

A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviews, favorites, and follows! They all make me so happy; you have no idea!

Note: If even just talking about lice makes you squeamish, I suggest skipping most of the second half of this chapter.

As she watches Freddie and Chad do an interview on the news about their upcoming wedding, not only does she have flashbacks to doing that with Ben, but she also can't stop thinking about what an odd couple they are.

The first time Freddie and Chad met, he was left completely speechless solely based on the words that came out of her mouth, which mostly consisted of what a dick he was. Well, and maybe Freddie's finger that wandered across his figure.

(She's not going to lie, she and Evie both high fived her for that.)

Then came the Junior Year From Hell, which Freddie was instrumental in until she'd had a change of heart after Ryder's kidnapping and was the reason that Audrey, Mal, and their rescue team knew where to go. Freddie had apologized for days and had even packed to return to the Isle. Chad had been the only one able to calm her down.

Throughout senior year, Freddie and Chad wouldn't stop flirting, though Freddie basically flirts with everything to cross her path. It was one of the main reasons Chad had had a lot of difficulties admitting to anyone- especially her- that he liked her, because he wasn't sure she felt the same. It wasn't until late in college that she and Chad got together.

It's so weird for Mal to see them together, but she can't deny that they just seem to work. With Freddie, he'd dropped his jerk persona that had been making Kit go prematurely gray for years. It's strange yet endearing, but they're happy, and after Chad's slight panic a few weeks earlier, Mal's just glad things seem to be okay with them.

"Mail's here," Ben announces as he walks into the room, passing over an envelope written in Freddie's scrawled handwriting. Knowing what it is, she grins and carefully opens it.

"His Grace King Christopher August Otto Ferdinand Charming and Her Majesty Queen Eleanor Charming of Charmington, Auradon, cordially invite you to the wedding of their son, Prince Chad Henry Thomas Charming, to Freddie Facilier on December the twenty-fourth, two-thousand and twenty-seven,'" she read. "I'd forgotten how many names Chad has."

"His family considers it commonplace, which I think explains why Kit calls himself what he does, to set him apart. The same way Chad was a jerk in high school and almost killed his parents in the process." She laughs at that, though she can't deny that Ella and Kit definitely seemed less stressed and anxious once Chad had stopped being a huge jerk.

"As if marrying a commoner wasn't enough."

"Ella's ancestors were nobility, actually. Chad probably would be getting more flack for marrying Freddie than Kit got for marrying Ella if Kit's father was still in charge," Ben replies. "So, chicken or steak? Wait, no, it's Christmas themed. Ham or turkey."

Mal laughs and pulls out the reply card, saying as she does so, "You do know that his entire family are vegetarians, right? Even if dead animals are right up Freddie's alley."

"I have faith in him."

"You're in luck. This says you can choose between the chicken parmesan and the fettuccini alfredo."

"Faith destroyed."

"C'mon, grumpy. It says they'll be from Tony's." He cracks a small smile as she puts them both down for the chicken parmesan and the girls down for the fettuccini alfredo and writes down that all four of them will be in attendance.

Mal's cell phone begins to ring and she frowns, not recognizing the number, but she answers regardless.

"Mal Adams," she answers, expecting the other person to apologize and hang up for calling the wrong number.

"Queen Adams, this is Ms. Waters at Sunnyside Daycare. I'm calling concerning Aria Adams?"

"Is Aria okay?" Mal says immediately, her fingers tightening around Ben's arm. He's watching her with fear shining in his eyes, both of her reaction and for what she said.

"She's fine, Queen Adams. We were doing a lice check and it looks like Aria might have some. We can't keep her at school with knits in her hair."

"Of course. Me or my husband will be right down to get her."

"Oh, Queen Adams, before you hang up."

"Yes?"

"I recommend you take her and probably her sister to a lice treatment company. I'll give you or King Adams the number when you pick her up."

"Thank you, Ms. Waters. One of us will be there within the hour." She hangs up and takes a deep breath, but she's still holding onto Ben's arm for dear life.

"Mal, you're scaring me. Is Aria okay?"

"She's fine. She just has lice, or so they say," Mal replies, pulling on a sweatshirt and fur boots. If the queen can't go pick up her daughter in leggings and a sweatshirt, than who the hell can? "I'm going to go get her, and then we're supposed to get her and probably Clara to a treatment company. We should probably be checked, too."

"Do you want me to? Aren't you having a spa day with Lonnie in like fifteen minutes?"

"Shit," Mal says, standing up and running a hand through her purple hair. "Maybe you should. But what about Clara?"

"She needs to be checked too, right?"

"Yeah, but she's only been napping for," Mal checks her phone, "Ten minutes. Someone needs to stay with her, and your parents are busy."

"We do have a full staff at our disposal."

"You know how that makes me feel when we unload our children onto someone out of the family. And I didn't tell her that someone else would be here when she woke up. If it was your parents or Evie or somebody, she wouldn't panic as much, but staff, even Chip-"

"Mal, breathe," he tells her, standing up to hold her shoulders. She complies, but only because he's purposefully trying to be intimidating but is failing and she finds it adorable. "I will go get Aria and then we will come back here. You purposefully scheduled this appointment to coincide with Clara's nap, so you should be back in time for her to wake up, and then we will all go to this place together, okay?"

"Are they going to think I'm a terrible mother for my daughter getting lice?"

"No one will ever think that."

"Ben. I know there's still people in Auradon who don't support this."

"They're idiots. Every single one." He kisses the top of her head and she sighs, leaning against his chest and wrapping her arms around his midsection. "Now, go have your fun with Lonnie. Go. Forget all about this lice stuff."

"You're sure we've got this?"

"Go, Mal." She kisses him quickly on the lips before grabbing her purse and heading out to the front of the castle, where Lonnie stands, grinning, in front of a limo.

A/N: Do you ever just have ideas kind of fall on top of you and hit you in the head as if they were a cinderblock? That's what this chapter was. A cinderblock dropped from the sky that gave me the much-needed direction for this chapter.

I know this chapter is cliffhanger-esque, but it will be resolved next chapter.

Also, in media, Prince Charming has no official first name (The 2015 movie strongly implies that 'Kit' is nothing more than a nickname), and there's confusion if Charming is a nickname or a last name. Descendants canon presents "Charming" as being the last name, and since royalty normally have multiple names (Aside from this fic's Clara and Aria), I divided the names between him and Chad: Thomas, from ABC's Once Upon A Time; Christopher, from a 1997 movie based off of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical; Henry, according to a French TV commercial for the DVD of the original movie; and then Otto August Ferdinand from a 1971 episode of The Wonderful World of Disney (Sources: Disney Wiki)