01:49 am - Jay and Carlos' dorm room
Lonnie had secured the group some dinner and had left shortly after nine to go and complete some last minute homework. Jane had also left with her roommate and bid the boys goodnight, checking on the three sleeping VKs once more.
"Come and get me if anything else happens, but they should all be fine by the morning," she had assured the trio, leaving a bottle of medicine with Jay just in case.
Gil had left for his own bed and Carlos had taken up the offer of Harry's bed so the two boys had left before the lights went out in the wing at eleven. Jay was taking Carlos' bed to keep an eye on the other three as nobody had dared move them. Doug had passed out on the sofa and was dead asleep, and knowing Doug, Jay knew he wouldn't wake up until breakfast the next morning so he had simply played a blanket over him and tugged off his shoes and folding his glasses up on the coffee table.
Jay had fallen asleep around midnight after checking on his friends for a final time, making sure the medicine bottle was within his reach in case he woke up to something going wrong.
In fact, Jay didn't take up at all, the stress of the day and the adrenaline that had been pumping through his veins had gotten the better of him and he slept deeply, meaning he didn't hear Mal wake up.
She was in the middle of Evie and Harry and whilst the four poster beds were larger than an average twin and could easily accommodate two, Mal felt a little squashed and claustrophobic. She had woke up with her nose pressed against Evie's shoulder blade and it had made her jump slightly. She took a second to realise her surroundings. She could feel somebody pressed up against her back and she presumed it was Jay as it looked like his room.
Mal shifted under the heavy covers and turned over a smoothly as she could, attempting to not wake the people either side of her. Unfortunately, when she had fully rolled over, Harry's piercing blue eyes met her's in the low light of the room.
"If ya don't stop fidgeting you're gonna regret it," he breathed quietly.
"What do you mean? Whose bed is this?" Mal whispered back, confused at the threat and his appearance.
"We're in Jay's room," he said in a way of answering. Harry's hand then found hers under the covers and brought it lower, guiding it to his crotch. He smirked as Mal jerked her hand back with a gasp.
"You're disgusting, Evie is asleep right next to me," Mal hissed and Harry's quiet laughter shook the mattress.
"It's a normal human reaction to a half naked woman shimmin' up against ya," Harry replied, reminding Mal that she was still in the bikini as nobody had redressed her.
"It's still gross," she retorted with a pout, feeling herself blush.
"Ya never thought it were gross before," he teased, propping himself up on an elbow so that he could look down into her eyes.
"Well, you seem healed after this afternoon, thanks by the way," Mal changed the topic but she didn't bother to move from underneath Harry, partly because Evie was taking up the majority of the mattress and partly because she had missed this connection.
"Well, gotta blend in an' all, ya know, become a hero and all that," Harry replied, running his nose along Mal's hairline.
Mal placed one hand on his shoulder and the other on his cheek, forcing him to look her in the eye. "I mean it Harry, thank you."
Harry gulped at how sincere Mal looked. "Couldn't let you drown could I," he whispered. "What were you doing so close to the edge, ya know you can't swim?" he asked, a finger running along Mal's jaw and tracing the outline of her bottom lip.
"I just wanted to see the reef and the fish I guess," she breathed, the hand on his cheek running up to thread through his hair. "I honestly thankful Harry. I don't know how to truly mean it." Mal knew that there were still some major issues between the two of them but it felt so easy, so natural to revert back to the kind of relationship they had shared not a year before.
Nine months earlier, on the Isle of the Lost
Mal and Harry were notorious. They came as a pair, a solid unit and so if you were being ambushed or scammed by one, then the other was not far behind. Many found out the hard way when they would try and fight, but the other, either Mal with a sword or Harry with his hook, would emerge from the cracks and shadows and see that the other was not harmed.
They had worked the same person over, that was how they had truly met. An old merchant man who had made a deal with both of the villainous kids without the other realising. What the merchant hadn't banked on was that he would lose the deal, and the pair had decided the cash in the payment at the same time.
From then on, a spark had been lit and like a wheel in motion, the two became an inferno. They ruled twice as stronger, with an unquestionable loyalty that was hard to break. They were private but their relationship in all of its forms was never hidden. Mal enjoyed waving their romance around in the faces of the girls who had pinned after the pirate, and Harry used Mal's name to make bigger deals and stakes.
It seemed perfect until the King had requested the four original Villain Kids for schooling at Auradon Prep. Mal had obviously been chosen as she was notorious and possibly the worst, but Harry hadn't. They didn't cry and mope about being separated, they simply locked themselves away for a day at the hideout, with the eyewitness accounts varying in great deals.
Some claimed to have seen Mal shove Harry's own hook through his heart and leave without a backwards glance. Some swore they had made love all night and then simply left, as if cutting ties was that clean. A few would preach that they had married in secret, or cast an ancient and dark spell so that they could never be separate. The claims would all end with the same message. They had died in someway when the King had demanded Mal's presence on the Mainland. The part of each of them, the part that loved each other had shrivelled and died, polluting them to be hollow and black.
For the week between King Ben's announcement and the arrival of the limousine to collect the VKs, Mal and Harry's crimes became dark and cruel, but they never spoke or saw each other in public. Some rejoiced at the fact but most saw it as an ominous sign. A love as strong and turbulent as theirs should not have been separated. Harry's further actions proved that. As Mal became reformed, Harry's morality and sense of compassion disappeared.
"What do you want me to say Mal, that its fine?" Harry hissed. "You could have died!" Evie shifted in her sleep as Harry's voice rose and his temper became wild at the thought of being unable to rescue Mal. Images of her body under the water, so peaceful and weightless as it drifted to the seabed and barely made an impact on the sand made his muscles tense.
Mal could sense this loss of control, recognise this spiralling into something darker and she did the only thing she knew would help. She angled her chin higher and pressed her lips to the pirates, ever so softly kissing him until he kissed her back. The frustration and anger he had converted into passion as he kissed her harder and more urgently.
Mal groaned in the back of her throat, remembering her best friend was asleep besides her. "We can't," she huffed, pulling away and trying to ignore Harry as he kissed his way down the column of her neck, laying fully on top of her so she could feel every inch of her skin.
Harry returned to kissing her full lips, revelling in the way Mal's fingers tightened in his hair and her thighs fell apart so he could settle himself between them. Harry's tongue licked her lower lip and she opened her mouth readily for him, the chemistry rushing back between them.
Jay's snore broke Mal's concentration and she sighed, pulling away again with a huff as he went back to attacking her neck, alternating between sucking and nibbling with a precise skill that made her head cloud over.
"We should talk about this before anything happens and I am not doing this whilst Evie and Jay are asleep in the room," Mal said with finality and Harry finally stopped, using his elbows to balance above Mal.
"I don't wanna talk about anything with you Mal because it always ends with me heart bleeding all over the floor," he said into the crook of her neck before he rolled off of her and got out of the bed, leaving the dorm room with a quiet thud of the door.
Mal shivered and wrapped the blanket more tightly around her. They had so much to talk about. Not only did they need to address what that had talked about before she had left, they needed to clear up the time around Ben's kidnapping and more importantly, Ben himself.
"Shit," Mal swore, falling back against the pillows and trying fitfully to sleep again.
02:07 am - Mal and Evie's dorm room
Harry on the other hand, had walked around the dorm rooms, letting himself into Mal and Evie's room with the spare key he now knew Evie kept on the top of the door frame.
He was pissed and aroused but more importantly, Harry was on the verge of tears. He had hated himself when he saw Mal under the waves. Even more so when the images taunted him despite the fact she was laying practically in his arms.
Harry pressed his fingers into his eyes as he crossed the room to the bed he knew was hers. It smelt like her, an overwhelming scent of jasmine and something earthier, like pine. It filled him and reminded him of the Isle, of his home.
Harry could recall every moment he spent with Mal. Even times when they had simply laid together in a bed, tracing shapes into the others skin to fight off sleep. He had watched her smile and laugh, celebrated a scheme ending successfully and held her as she cried over a dirty crime, a murder or a robbery she had been forced to do for her mother.
There were aspects of Mal that Harry feared, her ruthless ability to shut off her emotions in order to do something, or they was she could so easily manipulate the things around her, be that people or magic. She had a chemistry and magnetism that meant both bent easily to her will.
Harry peeled back the cover and slipped into the bed, pounding his fists on the pillow, imagining her face until he cried in frustration and sunk into the mattress.
Sure, Harry Hook no longer had a heart, but he still felt pain and emotion.
When the letters from King Ben had been delivered, Mal had asked him to go to her loft space, a place they would spend hours locked away in. He knew something had been wrong the moment he saw her. Instead of a kiss and a smile, she had said nothing as she had handed him the letter and crossed the room to the makeshift bed.
Harry could remember scanning the words and dropping it, leaning against the wall with a faux coolness. They had not spoken for a while before Mal had began to cry and Harry's facade cracked a little.
"What are we supposed to do? I don't want to leave you but I can't turn it down and my mother wants the wand," Mal has sobbed and Harry had finally joined her on the bed and wrapped her in his arms.
"I love you." Three simple words whispered into her hair had made Mal stiffen with shock and Harry felt lighter for saying it. He did truly love her and he would do anything for the girl in his arms.
"I... I love you too," Mal had told him after she had recovered from the surprise. Instead of worrying about the future, Harry had kissed her and they had peeled each others clothes off, making use of the bed several times throughout the night until the sun had began to to rise the next morning.
"We can't keep going on like this, or my mother will use you to make sure I get the wand," Mal had said, laying half over him as they watched the dawn break over the sea through the window from their spot on the bed. "I couldn't live with myself if you got hurt."
"We will have to wait it out, but secretly," Harry had told her, running his fingers up her spine. Mal had kissed his chest, her fingers dancing lightly over the chalice tattoo on his right side. Harry's fingers did the same at the identical tattoo on her lower back."We will wait this out until you lift the curse, or you come home or we find a way to get out of here, off this fucking Island."
"Like on a boat?" Mal had wondered.
"I'll get my own boat and I will sail us away from here Mal. We will start a new life where we aren't just the kids of our parents. A place where we aren't villains, I promise you," Harry had told her, kissing her soundly. "One day I will marry you and we will be just Mal and Harry, not the daughter and son of two evil villains."
"I will wait for you. I love you," she had promised him and that was how they had separated. Both hurt and crying and tired but cleanly, with a kiss and the promise. Unsure as to whether they would ever be together again, but for the sake of pretences, and to keep both safe from the others parent, they had been bitter and nasty to each other in public, but it had worked. It had killed them both to hurt the other but it had worked. Maleficent never went near the pirate and Captain Hook didn't try to harm Mal.
Harry could still remember the months he had spent, working and grafting for a ship of his own, and when he had finally succeeded, he would climb to the crows nest and watch the sun set on the Isle and Auradon and hope that Mal had been watching too, but he could still remember the feeling of being told she was engaged to the King. A King had stolen his girl and he couldn't do anything about it.
When Harry had joined Uma's crew, it had been a way for him to keep himself occupied as he worked towards his own ship. The work at Ursula's was less than the dirty work he and Gil did for James Hook, but it meant a lot less blood on their hands and they could mess around and be teens with each other.
When Mal had arrived back on the Island, she had acted as though she barely knew Harry and his anger got the better of him. Deep down, he had never meant to harm the King, nor be involved with his kidnapping but the dark emotions he had been feeling for the numerous months prior had festered and it wad difficult for the young pirate to remember anything but hurting other people. It had become the norm.
When Mal had fought for her boyfriend and ignored Harry, the pirate had seen a red mist descend and hadn't been able to help himself. He had been so angry that the girl he loved had moved in on someone else, and the fact that Ben was not only there on the Isle with him, but the fucking King had been the final straw.
Harry became the man to go to for punishment of an enemy, and he had liked behind known as ruthless and heartless, efficient in delivering pain to another. Everything he did to those people, had had wanted to do to the King. But never her. When the letter for his request at Auradon Prep had arrived, Harry had forgotten he was only seventeen, barely old enough to be called a man, but he had missed so much of his childhood to doing unspeakable things that it was only by Gil's persuasion had he agreed to go and experience a normal childhood.
Now, the pirate was regretting allowing his friend to make him come to Auradon. He was still in love with Mal and seeing her almost die that afternoon had made him realise. She needed to tell him the truth about everything, why she had broken her promise, why she was with Ben and why her magic seemed to all but left her. She would do it tomorrow, tell him everything and depending on her answers, he would either stay or he would release the Sailing Grace and he would leave, make his name somewhere new, where they didn't know of Captain James Hook or Maleficent or of any of the villains or heroes.
Harry fell asleep in her bed, angry tears drying on his cheeks as he slept lightly and roughly. He would not stand by as she lied to him, ignored him and treated him like shit, all for nothing after everything he had done for her. But still Harry couldn't bring himself to hate her, no matter how much he tried, and it was then he began to hate himself, but most of all, the King.
author's note: okay, sobby little chapter, a bit more angst but a bit more physical kissing and a throwback to the Isle so yay! Also sorry for being a bit MIA, its been hard to find time to write.
Buttttttt, Ben's back next so it will be a showdown between everyones favourite pirate, Mal and the King!
Also, to the keen eyed reviewer, yes, those names were from OUAT!
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