Happy new year guys! Daikon and Queen Risa are currently binge-reviewing through these kisses and it made me so happy I felt like posting one of the bonus kisses lol.

This one is one of the "doubles" I wrote and then didn't post. Meaning, when I wrote a prompt twice. This one because it didn't quite fit my other ones, and so it flew out.

Anyway, the reason this one doesn't quite fit is because this fic can be read in pretty much almost direct continuation of my fic 'Harmless' in the Little Moments Series, which is in my Catalyst universe (and you know, same as almost pretty much all my silmil). (For those who don't remember it: It's the one with the bonfire and the language barrier where Serenity snuck onto Earth during a festival to see some RL.) So yeah, it still goes in harmony with all my silmil here, but yeah… anyway! I hope you have fun with this!

A Second Kiss In Danger

Endymion was the one who convinced her; the one who tempted her, the one who made this all spiral out of control so frighteningly fast.

She'd touched fire – and the fire had come back to claim her.

She'd never stood a chance.

It froze her and it boiled her, and nothing would be the same after her foolery the night before.

The state visit had been promised to be a dire, uncomfortable affair from the start. These golden halls reflected nothing of the bonfires and dancing bodies sweating delightfully around it that she hadn't been allowed a glimpse of the night before but snuck off to see anyway. The tight ball gowns and crinolines and stiff collars a mockery of the loose and lively way of life she'd seen the night before. This whole political spiel between hardened fronts a farce she was forced to carry out with proper smiles and the exact right angle of curtsies paraded in front of her as to not be offending and yet not held in too high regard.

Even without her taste of unreachable freedom the night before, she would have hated this event, and now it kind of broke her heart.

The Crown Prince was late and the room treated it as if it were a declaration of war – and she had to bite the inside of her cheeks and clench her fists to keep from rolling her eyes because this was just all so, so...

They'd been expecting her mother, and yet the Moon sent her instead and it was regarded as a slight and it all made her so tired.

And then he walked in, ink-black hair falling into bluest eyes and lips that soft, soft curve, and she drew in a breath so startled it alarmed Mercury beside her, but she couldn't–

Oh god.

Fast stride in through the golden double wing doors, heavy armor around his hips, heavy boots on his feet, the stride of someone absolutely irritated.

He swept in with a glum expression and his brow in fierce frustration reflecting everything she'd felt and her heart stopped, then started, then tried to kill her from her chest outward.

Oh no–

Oh no. What was he doing here? Why was he–

Was he one of the lords? Oh god, was he one of the Shitennou? Would he expose her? Would he–

(And… deep down, the traitorous oh yes — the traitorous leaps her heart made at the memory of his lips on hers, his wide, surprised eyes when she'd kissed him, the taste of him still in her mouth, and Oh–)

And then it all got so much worse.

"His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince Endymion of Elysion, Heir to the Golden Kingdom".

No.

No. No. No.

That didn't happen. That couldn't… But her heart started hammering in a way she'd never felt before, the shock so deep, so panicked, so…

It was him. The taste still on her lips was his. The harmless man she'd kissed had never been harmless at all. The man she'd come to visit and had no interest in meeting at all was the man she'd stolen a kiss from the night before.

The boy with the caged eyes and the velvet voice was the Crown Prince of the Golden Kingdom and she'd tasted his tongue as she snuck out and pretended to be someone she was not, and apparently, he'd done the same.

They stood on equal grounds, she wasn't raised above him. Another slight, and yet she wanted to step up and make it even worse.

Wanted to take his hand and dance like they'd danced the night before. Wanted to hear that voice.

She froze, wide-eyed. Everything around her she perceived as if walking through molasses, time stilling, time waiting, time beating. She was both terrified to meet his eyes and find the recognition and terrified he wouldn't look at all, and when his eyelashes blinked up to her she saw the second that shock claimed him, too, as if it were happening in slow motion.

"Her Royal Highness, the Crown Princess Serenity of the Moon, Heir to the Silver Millennium Empire."

His expression would have been priceless, would have been–

But there was nothing at all funny about this situation.

He stood paralyzed. Eyes wide and growing wider and bugging out his head until they broke into a craze and rove over her form, her hair, her dress, her lips – and then fell onto the unhidden insignia on her forehead and rested there.

He didn't bow. He didn't take her hand to kiss it as would be the custom. He stood frozen and people around them started to murmur and oh no–

Of all the people.

Of all the people he might have been.

Of all the people to fall in— no. She couldn't even think it. He had to have been the most forbidden of them all.

The murmur grew louder, agitated, nervous and skittish and she could feel it – she could feel the way her Senshi's stance widened and his guards so suddenly stood more alert and the lords' and ladies' looks to each other that grew in fear and—

He broke out of it. His voice broke but it was the same velvet – except now it spoke to her in fluent, High Lunarian with a thick, beautiful accent and she could suddenly understand him, and it shuddered and shot through her.

"A— a pleasure to meet you, Your Royal Highness," he croaked, polite and with the right bow and under the intense eyes of the most important people in the kingdom in a too brightly lit hall and it broke the tension in the room even when it sky-rocketed hers.

His hand trembled when he lifted her palm a little higher to kiss it, and it coursed through her and strangled her.

She wanted him to speak in tongues she couldn't understand again. So she could pretend some more...

Even though that was exactly what they did. Pretend. Not to be free, mind you.

But they pretended. They started pretending in a way they would always have to pretend, from this day on.

There were no dances around bonfires in their future. There shouldn't have been in their past.

"I hope your stay has been pleasant, Your Highness," he said, even when his eyes were screaming at her.

She licked her lips. "It has," she rasped out, and his eyes reacted to her words perhaps much like hers had to his - that mix of wonder and regret, the loss of last night's magic when they only had their hands and feet and lips to speak but not a single word. "Your world has been most interesting so far," she trailed off.

His eyes reacted again, but he nodded curtly, and they flicked out around the crowd. "Has Your Royal Highness been shown the palace gardens, yet?" he asked, stilted and performed. "They're most pleasant this time of year."

Small talk for the eyes. Torturous, painful.

"I… haven't had the pleasure yet, no," she squeaked. "But I'm sure I will."

His inhales were harsh. His exhales harsher. And somehow, they made it.

When she was dismissed, he fled from her, yet the masses were sated. No war had been started over their words, and he conversed with her Senshi in equally stiff manners, introduced them to his Shitennou, then spoke to the lords and ladies in her attendance and they in turn to the lords and ladies of his.

It was excruciating and it didn't end and he stayed as far away from her as possible as he could and all she could see across the room were those lush lips that had tasted of honey wine and freedom when in reality he was just as caged as her.

It was later, when she was being shown the art of their ancestors and one of the dukes of the High Lands to the North that lulled her in with stories of almost comical grandeur that she had trouble following, trouble not getting distracted from, that he appeared out of nowhere from the shadows.

He reached out a hand, and pulled her behind a statue and down a hallway hidden from direct view, past thick deep red velvet curtains and golden brocade that turned steadily darker and barer and simpler and her heart hammered in her chest because she would follow him everywhere even if he were to kidnap her right now and never give her back.

Her heartbeat picked up. He'd stolen her mid-sentence. His duke would wonder where she'd disappeared to, might come after them to investigate, might follow the maze he'd walked into what she supposed were now the servant's wings.

He was tall.

She had to look up when he stepped right into her personal space, closer than would ever have been appropriate for the Crown Prince of Earth and the Crown Princess of the Moon, and his hair fell into his eyes when he stooped down to search hers.

"You're not Venusian," he breathed at her, that accent wrapping around every word and pulling at her.

"I'm not," she managed, wide-eyed.

"You kissed me," he said, and it was an accusation, and also full of wonder, and his eyes moved closer to her still.

She licked her lips as if she could still taste him, she couldn't help it, and her eyes flew to his own lips and she couldn't help but notice the way they moved under her attention. "I did," she murmured like a confession to a crime, and she supposed it had been.

"Why?" he asked, and she frowned.

She tilted her head up in confusion. "Because I wanted to…"

His eyes grew a little harder. "Did you know who I am?"

And with that her eyes widened. Did he think—

Did he think this was all a scheme? That she was playing him? That this was some intricate plan to… to what?

"No," she said harshly, hurt lacing her words. "I… I wouldn't have if I'd… if I'd known."

And then his eyes flashed again. Really, even though his features were such a trained mask, his eyes were incredibly expressive. Honest and fierce and like a boy's who hoped too much.

They danced at her in calculation, in hurt, … and in want.

He was staring at her lips, again. Was still standing way too close, his hand hovering near her hip and yet not touching.

She could do nothing but stare helplessly back.

"Do you still want to?"

His words rung between them, instigation to a crime, and they made her shiver and yearn and stare at him and–

She stood on her tiptoes, her hands curling against his tunic, around his neck, into the softest of hair she'd ever touched, and his lips still tasted like honey wine.

Treason tasted way too sweet.

"I really do," she whispered into his mouth as fire claimed her.

Obvious Setting Tag: Silver Millennium. (Specifically: a directsequel to "Harmless" in the Little Moments Series)