Ben
Seventeen. Junior Year.
"Hey, Benji." Mal sang, swinging onto the wall next to him outside the art classroom.
Ben groaned at the nickname, wondering how on earth Mal had found a name more annoying than Bennyboo. But then he saw her grin, and promptly forgot why he hated it so much. Instead, he fought to keep his face straight as he countered, "Hey, Marshmallow."
The look of complete shock that crossed Mal's face more than made up for the punch to his arm she delivered when he started laughing at her.
"Prick," Mal muttered under her breath as he kept laughing, a small smile betraying her amusement. It was happening more often these days, especially since he'd got her to join the art club. The VKs were settling in. Finding their place. Putting down roots. The whole thing made him stupidly happy. "Anyway," Mal changed the subject, tucking her hair behind her ear, "we have an English assignment due, and you have like a dozen engagements coming up, so when are we going to fit this in?"
Ben tried to keep the bemusement off his face as he watched Mal pull out her notebook - bound in black and purple of course - and click her pen expectantly at him.
If anything highlighted the success of the VK programme it was this. The daughter of Maleficent, lowkey threatening him with a pen over an English assignment. If they could achieve this in eight weeks, who knew what was possible for the other children. "Let me get this straight. Mal of the Isle wants to get her homework done early?"
"No." Mal rolled her eyes and scoffed at the thought, glaring at him when he laughed. Clicking her pen at him again, she chided, "Mal of the Isle doesn't want to be carrying your dead weight three weeks from now because she didn't get in your diary fast enough."
And now she was talking about herself in third person. He should probably curtail that particular villain trait before someone overheard.
Conceding with a shrug, he leaned back, looking over the empty grounds. This part of the school was always deserted after class. That's why he liked it so much. He actually got to be alone with his thoughts.
Although Mal was a decent alternative.
"So what are your thoughts on our assignment?"
It was a book report. Their job was to pick a book each and compare. They could be as similar or as different as they wanted. The word favourite had been thrown around a few times, but nothing was concrete. The only requirement was it had to be an actual book and not a picture book. That comment had been aimed at Chad, not the VKs in the class.
"Well I had a favourite book before we came here. So we could compare." Mal studied her notes from that afternoon curiously, as if she was learning an entirely new language.
Ben knew what she was doing. She was deflecting. Any mention of her past, of before, she got twitchy. Mal was focused on there here and now.
Whatever the VKs were doing to help themselves feel comfortable, it was working. His last meeting with Fairy Godmother showed that Mal and Evie were in the top five of the year, along with himself, Doug and Lonnie.
The first few weeks had been a bit rocky, but then something changed, something clicked, and it was like they all found their feet. Jay and Carlos were now embedded into the tourney team. Doug had convinced Evie to join the Chemistry Club. And Mal...Mal was definitely his friend now.
It was a better start to the programme than he'd ever dreamed of.
He'd expected at least one attempt at evil. Baking spiked cookies and then throwing them in the trash didn't count.
"Sure. Mine would be one of the Sherlock Holmes novels. Yous?" Ben had to admit he was curious. He didn't think there had been a lot of books on the Isle. So anything she had read either had to come from her mother's private collection (the one that was never recovered from her lair) or had to end up there by accident.
"The Prince." Mal shrugged nonchalantly, as if it was nothing. The name didn't ring any bells to begin with. Definitely had to be one from her mother's collection.
Please don't be a guide on how to steal a kingdom, please don't be a guide on how to steal a kingdom...
"As in….the Prince and the Pauper?" He tried, knowing it was the wrong answer, but it was the best he could come up with on the spot.
"...as in Il Principe." Mal frowned at him as she answered. She spoke slowly, as if she thought he was playing her. When he didn't answer, she expanded, "Machiavelli."
And that did make sense. His eyebrows shot into his hairline, and he tried to control his shocked expression.
Oh god, it's a guide on how to take over a kingdom legally...
He watched as Mal's expression shuttered and felt instantly guilty. He tried to say something - anything - to make the situation better, but she beat him to it.
"I know it's weird. Mom's idea of a bedtime story was The Art of War. And Dad always made sure I'd read the originals as well to avoid anything being lost in translation." She wouldn't meet his eye, and Ben knew he was on the verge of losing her. She'd just opened up, she'd trusted him, and he was blowing it.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. You knew Maleficent was probably training her.
"Il Principe is in Renaissance era Italian." Ben grasped on the one part of the story that he thought was least likely to cause her to storm off. Pointing out Machiavelli and Sun Tzu were required reading for future rulers? Bad idea. Pointing out that she should have had more age appropriate reading material? Bad idea. Pointing out that he hadn't even gotten close to those books yet? Bad idea. But asking how she read the original? Kinda safe.
"And The Art of War is in Classical Chinese." Mal shrugged, completely nonplussed by the question. As if it was normal to read scholarly level texts in ancient languages for some light bedtime reading.
"How many languages do you know?" Ben asked, leaning back in, curious now. She wasn't running, but he didn't think he was totally out of the woods yet. And he genuinely wanted to know. They'd always thought of the Isle as a pit of depravity. Maybe they'd underestimated the society the villains had built.
"Are we talking about reading or speaking? And are we including dead ones?" Mal shrugged, still not meeting his eye.
Ben couldn't even formulate a response to that. He'd expected something like 'just those and French' (because of her mother's Moorish heritage) or maybe even 'well, you know, so many spells are in Latin'.
Mal seemed taken off guard by his lack of response, chancing a glance around to meet his blank stare. She looked back to the front sharply, closing the notepad quickly and dropping it to her lap. She stopped, started, stopped again, then let out an irritated huff. He got the impression it was more at the reason why than his reaction. "I can read any language. Family trick."
She chanced another look at him, as if she was expecting him to up and run. When she saw he was still there, she continued, "I can speak eleven, but that includes Latin because you need it for spellwork. Get one pronunciation wrong and oops there's a demon in the kitchen. And I suppose the Attic, Koine and Modern versions of Greek really only count as on-"
Ben didn't know what had come over him.
He knew he liked Mal. In the safety of his own head, he could admit to himself that he had a bit of a crush. That the bad girl vibe and the leather really did it for him.
But there was a difference between teasing her with nicknames one minute, and leaning forward to capture her lips the next.
Whisper-soft, his lips barely brushed hers to begin with. Mal squeaked in surprise - he'd made her squeak - before she leaned into the kiss, and Ben took that as an invitation to continue. Reaching up, he cupped her face in one hand as he pressed his lips to hers, setting the pace at slow and languid. There was no rush. They were all alone. They had all the time in the world to explore...whatever this was.
Were those fireworks? Those were definitely fireworks.
He wasn't sure what he'd expected to happen. Maybe she'd pull back and slap him. Maybe he'd come to his senses, jump up and run off because this was not how a future king behaves.
Future kings didn't just go around kissing pretty girls who got themselves all worked up, just to shut them up and save them from themselves.
Future kings were steady and tempered and - and now she was grabbing his shirt and nipping his bottom lip.
Nope, those were definitely fireworks.
Ben wasn't sure where the sound he made in response came from. It was somewhere between a moan and a growl, and it made Mal smile into the kiss and scoot closer.
He wasn't complaining, and took the opportunity to deepen the kiss, tasting her the way he'd been dreaming about for longer than he cared to admit.
The banging of a locker somewhere made them jump apart, searching for the source of the sound. For who might have spotted them.
Checking the hallway behind them, Ben couldn't see anyone. It must have been the next corridor round. Sure enough, Doug wandered into view a moment later, barely looking up from his phone as he wandered off in the opposite direction.
Letting out a breath he didn't know he was holding, he turned back to Mal. The moment their eyes met, they burst into nervous laughter.
After a long moment, Ben gathered himself and offered her a reassuring smile, "I probably shouldn't have done that."
He didn't want to come off as a creep. Or an opportunist. Or as a spoilt little rich boy who was happy to abuse his power on the scholarship kids.
He'd done it because he'd wanted to.
It was the first thing he'd done for that reason in a long time.
"Audrey will be furious if she finds out," Mal whispered back, still making no effort to move. They were still sitting too close to one another to be classed as innocent. This was risky. So risky. They were out in the open. Anyone could see them. Doug almost had. Anyone could tell Audrey.
The thought hit Ben like a bucket of ice water and he suddenly found it much easier to put some space between them. His girlfriend. His girlfriend.
He was pretty sure he should feel a lot guiltier right now.
It had never felt like that with Audrey.
With a Herculean effort, Ben stood and began to gather his things. Mal's lipgloss was smudged, and her cheeks just a little flushed. He wanted nothing more than to lean back in for a second taste.
He had a girlfriend.
"Let's do your plan. I've read both those books." He hadn't, but they were required reading for future leaders. He'd just need a few all nighters to catch up. He didn't look up as he kept stuffing things in his bag. If he did, he might lose his resolution to not lean in for round two. "We can compare strategy versus philosophy and how it applies to our leadership styles. I'll sort some time for this weekend."
This weekend. That gave him a few days to get his head back on straight.
With a quick nod in Mal's direction - he noticed her smirk and the fact that she was far, far more relaxed about this than he was - he took off in the direction Doug had gone. Maybe he could catch up with him before he reached the canteen. Maybe it would be wise to drag his best friend back to his room to deconstruct the whole thing and how he could possibly salvage this.
"Hey, Ben," he was already halfway across the grass when Mal called after him. He turned instinctively, it would have been rude not to he told himself, and found Mal standing with her hip cocked and her arms folded. She looked smug. He didn't want to read into that can of worms, "I'm going to want a repeat of that."
All Ben could do was nod mutely. He couldn't say he disagreed.
He had to break up with Audrey. Yesterday.