Chapter 1 – The Plan
NOTES: Guess who's back with more of their nonsense? Anyway, this is one of the more absurd smexy-time-centric fics. As always, there will also be character development and angst and comedy and all that jazz, but at it's core, this fic is just a big 'ole pile of dumb smut. You have been warned ;)
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"What's the damage?" Audrey asked, pacing a respectable route up and down the length of Jane's room, her hands tucked behind her back and shoulders straight because even in private she had to be perfect, lest she get in the habit of presenting herself as anything other than the poised and polished heir to two kingdoms.
Jane and Doug looked up from where they were analyzing the cookie Mal had offered Ben at Jane's desk, Jane funneling her magic into Doug's carved dwarven runes that fed into a different set of runes to give the chemical and magical breakdown of the baked good. They, or at least Doug, likely thought Audrey was overreacting, but Audrey hadn't gotten as far as she had by not playing it safe. It was fortunate that she and Chad had managed to intercept this particular gift Mal had tried to offer Ben before the big Tourney game before Audrey's boyfriend was successfully goaded into eating it. That alone should have been a red flag, but Ben was Ben and wanted to see the best in people, so it was up to Audrey to look for the worst in them as a sort of counter. Someone always wanted something, and with Ben as one of the most important people in Auradon, his protection and safekeeping was of utmost importance.
So Chad had babbled on about Ben's pre-Tourney game tradition of not eating before a match and Audrey had been given a safe excuse to 'hold' onto the thing so Ben could eat it after the fact. Naturally, she'd handed off the real cookie to Lonnie and had her assistant pick up a copycat from a respected bakery off Ben's beaten track so he got the comfort of perceivably enjoying Mal's gift with none of the risks and Audrey got to see what Mal was playing at.
Doug cleared his throat. "Based on the chemical breakdown and what information I've gathered from Fae texts, I suspect it has a love potion of some kind baked into the dough. At the very least there's something to create a strong attachment to Mal, though this particular array of ingredients leads me to believe an amorous attachment was intended."
"Huh," Chad mused from where he was splayed across the window seat in a seemingly lazy sprawl while he kept watch. "Guess that answers the question of whether they're evil or not."
"I wouldn't say evil so much as practical," Lonnie spoke up from where she was perched on the edge of her own bed, her gaze shifting over to where Aziz was leaning against the wall, an unreadable expression on his face. "Having the most powerful guy in the land firmly in your corner guarantees a level of protection for them."
"Let's not pretend she would do something benign with this power," Audrey said, her voice as tense as her shoulders.
Lonnie quirked a brow at her, always one to stir the pot. "We can't assume her intentions are entirely evil either since we don't actually know what her plan is."
Aziz cleared his throat before Audrey could dive back into things, which was likely for the best. "Her intentions are irrelevant," he began quietly, seeming lost in thought. "The point is she was willing to hijack Ben's free will and that is unquestionably evil."
"Thank you," Audrey huffed, making a mental note to find a suitable way to reward Aziz later.
"Great," Chad drawled. "She did an evil thing. Let's report the evil thing and be done with it. Mal will get sent back to the Isle-"
"All of them were in the kitchens," Lonnie interrupted, touching base on what she'd witnessed the night before. "Therefore all of them were in on it."
"Aw, man," Chad sighed. "I was beginning to think I could maybe like Jay. He seems the closest to being happy with just like, basic necessities."
"We're not turning them in," Audrey declared before Aziz could make some kind of comment about Chad potentially liking the son of the dude that almost killed his father. "This is Ben's first decree. Was it a stupid one? Apparently yes, but the fact remains that it's his first one, and if his first one fails, that sets the tone for the rest of his rule."
"So what are we supposed to do?" Aziz asked, pressing away from the wall with a worried look. "Mal's going to try again when she realizes you switched the cookies."
"We need to distract them," Lonnie mused, her eyes narrowed in thought. "They could just be defaulting to bad behavior because that's all they know, but if Jay's willing to play nice just to have constant food and a roof over his head, what's to say the others won't fall in line if they're given more time? We just need to pull their focus from whatever their mission is until that happens."
"I might have an idea," Jane spoke up, flushing when they turned their combined focus on her. "There's a potion in one of my mom's old books." The ones Jane wasn't supposed to read. "It seems to me that the transfer students have a lot of self-inflicted conditioning to allow themselves to stay guarded. This potion will… well, it doesn't act like mind control, it doesn't force in anything that isn't wanted because they're still in complete control, but it manifests things that they might be actively suppressing and forces them to fixate on them. It was used as a form of old Fae therapy, sort of, back in the day. For those brave enough to face fears they might have wiped from their memories, except it isn't specific to just things they're afraid of."
"It could be literally anything?" Audrey asked. "So long as they've suppressed it?"
"Exactly," Jane said. "I figure if they're putting in the effort to ignore it, suddenly having to deal with it should be suitably distracting."
Audrey considered this. It seemed like a good bet. The question was, how would they get the VKs to take the potion?
"I can get Evie," Chad volunteered as though reading Audrey's mind. "If she commits to good, Queen Snow will make her the heir to Hanover for sure, which would make Evie the princess I could date to keep my grandpa happy." He turned his attention to Jane. "Can I put that potion into some chocolates or something? She'd eat them if they were from me."
Chad had been keeping Evie's focus since she'd arrived at the school, Queen Grimhilde's daughter obviously having her eye on a prince. Audrey played under the strategy of 'keeping your friends close and your enemies closer', which was why Chad had been more or less leading Evie along with small tidbits of attention in order to keep her focus from straying to princes that might not have the forethought to keep their eyes peeled for love potions.
"I can do that," Jane confirmed, sharing a look with Doug that indicated the half-dwarf was already thinking through the logistics of such a thing.
"That's one down," Lonnie said. "What about the other three? Mal's not exactly going to jump at the chance to eat anything from us."
"Mal will be easy," Audrey declared, a smile pulling at her lips. "We'll use the same tactic she already tried."
Chad, who knew Audrey best, let out a laugh when he put the pieces together first. "You're going to have Ben give her a cookie, aren't you? Maybe a 'thanks for making me a present' return present or something that he did himself. Mal won't be able to say no to that, and she won't suspect it if it's from Ben."
Because Ben was beautifully, frustratingly naïve.
"That takes care of the ladies," Lonnie declared, clapping her hands together in thought. "What about our paranoid boys?"
"I'll challenge Jay to a hot pepper eating contest or something," Aziz declared, startling all of them. He'd been doing his best to avoid Jay for the most part, though they were both on the Tourney team. The prince had managed a nice enough repartee with Jay to play it safe, and now he could feed into that. "I'll take a bite out of all of them for good measure if he's worried about it."
"And I'll be on standby with a vial of Enchanted Lake water," Lonnie chirped, earning a few smiles.
"That just leaves Carlos," Audrey said, which was a problem, as Carlos was the most paranoid of all the transfer students.
They were quiet for a moment, attempting to determine how to tackle the problem of the youngest De Ville.
And then Doug cleared his throat. "According to his records, he tested up into honors classes. Fairy Godmother's going to call him into her office about it on Monday. If um- we manage to arrange for that to happen during Jane's student aide period…"
"The candies she keeps on her desk," Jane declared, putting the pieces together. "I could dose one of them. Take one for me and give the other to him."
"He does have a soft spot for you," Lonnie said, and Audrey didn't ask how she knew that considering that Carlos seemed afraid of everyone. It was just a Lonnie intuition thing.
"Okay, we have a plan," Audrey declared. "Let's get this potion made and get them dosed. We need to mitigate the potential for future hijinks."
In truth, she was still furious about the prospect of almost losing Ben to Mal. As it was, she was going to have to play up being a better girlfriend to him. She knew they were mostly together for political purposes, because Audrey could handle the stress of being Ben's girlfriend in a way few others could, but that didn't mean they couldn't have their own romance. She had some rare novels she'd been saving as gifts for a rainy day, she may as well bust out some of those, and maybe suggest baking cookies together? May as well make part of that cover story real. It certainly couldn't hurt.
"I'll keep an eye on Evie," Chad said. "Who's getting the others?"
"I suppose I'll stick with Mal," Lonnie said. "Doug and Jane – you got Carlos?"
"Why are you sticking me with Jay?" Aziz asked, looking annoyed.
"Because it's you or me and I've already got Evie," Chad said. "But hey, you'll get to monitor him having some immense inner struggles, so that will be something, right?"
"We'll meet back here Tuesday and see how everything went," Audrey said. "I want constant, coded communications, everyone – now's not the time to be sloppy. Jane, you'll let us know when the potion's ready?"
"We'll get started on it right away," Jane confirmed, deftly whisking away the remains of the enchanted cookie with a flick of her hand, Doug moving to collect his runes so they could make the room look perfectly harmless and not at all like a den of scheming political future leaders.
No, it looked just like the rest of Auradon – harmless, clean, and friendly, which while being the facets of themselves they mostly projected, were hardly the entirety of their personalities. Mal would figure that out soon enough, but as she was the one who had started this, Audrey had little pity for her.
At least they weren't hijacking her freewill.
It was a distinction they could use to comfort themselves, but honestly, they'd do whatever was necessary to protect Auradon. Sometimes that required them to be a bit mean and resourceful, but if it protected Ben, if it protected their citizens…
Well, it needed to be done, and that was that.
-:-:-
Carlos didn't know why Mal was staring at him.
To be honest, he didn't even know why she was in the room he shared with Jay. The Agraben was out flirting, trying to collect information and do what networking he could with the more open-minded Auradon students, which was something Mal knew about. Hell, it was something she'd ordered him to do, so if she was here, she'd come for Carlos.
Carlos had already told her he would need a few more days before he might have any kind of results for her. He was good, but the coding languages he was used to on the Isle were archaic at best compared to the stuff they implemented in Auradon. Combine that with the hybrid magic technology that was being used to protect Fairy Godmother's wand in the museum, and Carlos had a big enough problem on his hands to make barely any progress even if he was devoted to it twenty-four seven, and with school and Tourney eating up his extra time, he was even worse off. The only bright side was that the Auradon kids weren't allowed to attack them during class. In between seemed to be a bit sketchier, though most of the students were too afraid of them to consider approaching close enough to be labeled threats.
Carlos didn't mind it so much himself. He wasn't Evie or Jay whose jobs required them to be charming and engaging. He was the tech guy, the sneaky one, the guy who was purposefully overlooked. It benefitted him to be ignored.
It was why he wasn't upset to see so little of Jay and Evie nowadays. He knew they had important jobs, and when they weren't engaged in following Mal's orders they were exploring their latent magical abilities they'd recently discovered upon exiting the barrier. They needed to be ready for anything when they got the wand and they were pulling their weight – now Carlos needed to pull his.
That was why he'd been typing furiously away, speed running through different online classes and scouring dozens of different coding books he had to download online because it was easier to hide his digital trail than it was for him to manually check books out from the library. On top of familiarizing himself with the Auradon curriculum and dealing with the hours of what seemed to essentially be boring busywork he had to teach himself the updated form of coding they used here, though at the very least it was a topic in which he was greatly interested. He'd actually been having a little fun with it, which made him feel guilty because he wasn't supposed to have fun, he was supposed to get results, and now Mal was here and he didn't have anything for her.
There was no point in putting it off. Even if she'd come before the next requested update, Carlos had only gotten this far in the crew by being almost entirely honest with Mal. Granted, he lied to just about everyone else, even Evie, but with Mal he was mostly honest with because she'd turned a blind eye to the protection Jay had offered him before Carlos was officially incorporated into the crew. True, he did lie about his feelings to her, but feelings were a distinctly un-evil thing, and he wasn't going to ruin what he had by being that forthright.
He'd learned a lot from living with his mom, including the strategies that best increased his chances of survival. Silence was golden, after all.
Normally Carlos would wait for Mal to make the first move, not wanting to stir the waters unnecessarily, but she'd been staring at him in that creepily intense way of hers, and if she was going to punish him for his inefficiency, he'd like for her to do it sooner rather than later.
"Hey, Mal," he greeted, like they'd hadn't been occupying the same space for five minutes now. "I'm slowly discerning the root programming languages they used for the museum security, but I don't have anything substantial for us to um- exploit yet." After a beat, he added a belated, "Sorry."
Mal took this information in with an unblinking stare before she crossed the room to him, propping one hand against his desk before she leaned into his space, like she needed to do that kind of power move on him.
And then she said something that didn't make sense.
"You don't have to apologize for that," she murmured, which was confusing enough until she reached up with her free hand and cupped his cheek, which was-
That wasn't a thing they did. It was something she did on occasion with Evie, but Carlos and Mal didn't do casual affection. Jay got head rubs sometimes and the privilege of curling up on Mal's legs from time to time, Evie got brushed hair and an arm around the waist on occasion, but Carlos wasn't pretty or cool like the other two and he normally didn't warrant this kind of attention. His mom didn't really touch him like this either, not even when she was hurting him, and he didn't really know how to respond to the attention.
"I know you're doing your best," Mal continued, her thumb rubbing random patterns against his cheek. "I haven't been checking in with you," she declared suddenly, her hand slipping up to card through his hair, nudging gentle patterns against his scalp like Jay got, things that made Carlos' breath catch in his throat.
"Y-Yes you have," Carlos said, even though he knew better than to disagree with his boss by this point. "We had a meeting yesterday-"
"I meant with you," Mal elaborated, which didn't really make any sense until- "About how you were doing." There was a pause while she considered him, seeming content to pet her hand through his hair, and it was so bizarre and nice that Carlos wanted to lean into it, only he didn't know what he'd done to deserve it. "Auradon's a big change for all of us and I'm asking for a lot from you, so tell me-" She dropped her hand to his shoulder to give it a gentle squeeze, and Carlos immediately found himself mourning the loss even if she didn't shift away. "How are you going?"
She kept rubbing small circles with her thumb. That and her close position was enough to throw Carlos terribly off balance, but he tried to lie to the best of his ability, tried to give her the same answer he always did because he was only protected if he was useful and he didn't want Jay to regret his decision to vouch for him.
"I'm fine," Carlos assured Mal, cursing the heat building in his cheeks. "I'm managing the Auradon busywork well. Tourney is more difficult, but I mostly use that as an opportunity to build a rapport with our classmates, establish enough toleration so they'll be willing to ignore me-"
"Carlos," Mal interrupted with a huff, sounding annoyed. "That's not what I'm asking. How are you feeling about all this?"
Carlos froze because they didn't talk about feelings. Mal hated feelings, she thought they were useless for the most part, unless they were satisfaction or something.
As though reading his mind, Mal sighed. "I realized that as stupid as I think feelings are, that's not going to stop them from happening, so…" She pulled her hand away from her shoulder to motion to him. "Spill."
"I-" Carlos felt trapped. "I don't-"
Mal sighed again, and then Carlos found himself getting pulled to his feet in an effortless motion, Mal busting out her enhanced Fae strength to tug him over to the couch, away from his work.
"Would you like me to tell you what I think you feel?" Mal asked, and then she was sitting down on the couch, and Carlos would have moved to sit on the far end if she hadn't still been holding his hand.
Unfortunately, she was, and that was how he found himself tugged down. He thought he'd end up next to her, but then Carlos was in Mal's lap, her arm wrapping around his waist, the half-Fae urging his head against her shoulder and it was nice but it was also so very strange.
"I think you feel adrift," Mal said, nuzzling his curls. "I think you feel sad because you're not getting to see as much of Evie and Jay as you're used to, and I think you're tired from being constantly on guard all the time because Evil knows I am and people are substantially more afraid of me than they are of you. So." She pulled back to look at him. "Am I close?"
Carlos' heart was pounding frantically in his chest, and he couldn't make himself relax even if he enjoyed this, because he couldn't help but feel like the other shoe was about to drop somehow.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, trying to do damage control. "I promise I won't let it distract me-"
"Carlos," Mal interrupted with a huff, making Carlos' mouth snap shut on reflex. His mom never liked excuses and he'd never tried to offer them to Mal. He shouldn't have tried to do it now. "It's okay. I'm not upset at you for being human. I'm mad at myself more than anything for neglecting you."
Carlos paused, the words seeming entirely too good to be true. "You are?"
"Yeah," Mal hummed, running her free hand up the outside of Carlos' thigh in a sort of aimless pet. "You're mine. I'm supposed to take care of you but I've been letting you struggle instead when you've done nothing but amazing work for me."
That was- that was everything Carlos had ever wanted to hear, validation from Mal he'd given up on getting before he'd ever thought to hope for it, and he was terrified that this was a joke somehow.
"So, I'm going to do a better job going forward," Mal declared. "Because I care about you and you deserve it. So first thing's first, you're taking a break." Carlos paused, because he was used to constantly working all the time, and usually taking a break for him implied just working on a project he maybe liked a little bit more than the others. "What do you want in addition to that?"
"Um." Carlos felt himself flush despite himself, because he was pretty happy with what they were doing even though he knew he shouldn't ask for it.
"Want me to guess?" Mal asked, squeezing him close. "Would you like me to give you a bath or a massage?"
"Mal," Carlos croaked, because as much as he liked both of those suggestions, she couldn't be serious. That wasn't something a boss did with her lowest henchman.
"You deserve something nice," Mal insisted, and then her free hand was slipping beneath his shirt, stroking his stomach and that was- no one did that, but Mal did, willingly, petting aimless patterns, uncaring of the burn marks his mother had left behind with her cigarette butts. "Would you like to do both?" she pressed, like she wanted to kill him. "Or would you like a different sort of stress relief activity?"
She slid her hand down, Carlos tensing in disbelief as he followed the line of her hand until it slipped between his legs, giving his groin a careful squeeze that couldn't hide the mild swell of heat that'd been building there.
"I'm sorry," Carlos gasped, humiliated. "I didn't mean to-"
"Carlos," Mal huffed. "I get it, we're teenagers, and also, I offered." She continued to squeeze him, careful strokes that seemed entirely unreal, because people weren't supposed to want to touch Carlos, who was scrawny and small and so very unimpressive. He wasn't a henchman that was worthy of those kinds of benefits – stuff like that was reserved for Harry Hook, who was insanely loyal and strong and had dashing good looks to offer Uma as a form of compensation.
Carlos wasn't like that.
"And if you don't mind," Mal continued, reaching for his fly. "I'd like to make you feel good as hell."
"Mal," Carlos whined, all of this seeming unfair. He'd never been one to dabble with things of a sensual nature – on the Isle he'd never had enough security to consider it, but in Auradon there was a sort of inherent safety that snuck into his subconscious, leaving him embarrassingly hard at the least convenient moments. Now would have been one of them, only Mal was eager and willing, popping his shorts open and gladly reaching in to tease him through the fabric of his underwear.
"This good?" Mal asked, tilting her forehead against his so he was forced to look at her. "Come on, De Ville, you can say no. I could go get Jay if you want-"
"No," Carlos gasped, horrified that he'd denied his boss but that was nothing compared to the terror of Jay discovering the long-buried crush Carlos had on him. "No, this is good, this is- I'm just um- struggling to believe you'd want this."
Mal seemed to take that information with an unhappy look, something that made her eyes narrow until she was reaching low to toy with his sack.
"You are lovely, Carlos," she hissed, her eyes shining bright. "You are one of mine, and you are worthy of my touch, my attention."
A deft move and she shoved his underwear low, exposing his length in front of someone else for the first time ever. He knew in comparison to their classmates he didn't measure up, not compared to the princes they played Tourney with who had no shame for their bodies and didn't hesitate to strut their stuff, uncaring for who saw them. Carlos was small compared to them but Mal looked at him like he was amazing, her hand making direct contact with him in a dangerous slide that left him writhing in her lap.
"Mal," he croaked as she started easing her hand up and down, working him at a steady pace. "M-Mal-"
"That's it," Mal cooed, her eyes narrowed in concentration before she seemed to magically summon some kind of warm goo she happily slathered onto Carlos' length, a shining, purple substance that made everything feel superheated, that immediately left him pulsing nonstop beads of slick, something that left him gasping helplessly. "Sing for me, Pup."
"It's so hot," Carlos moaned as she worked that lubricant into the head of his length, which had him twitching helplessly between her pretty, calloused fingers.
"You're hot," Mal hummed. "So that works out."
The thing was she seemed to mean it, and Carlos could tell that even though he was half lost to his pleasure, to the overwhelming idea that Mal was willingly touching him. Touching and staring at him, letting out these rumbled purrs as his moans got louder and louder.
"Come on, Pup," she murmured, her lips pressing against the curve of his neck. "Come for me. Make a nice, pretty mess."
"Mal!" Carlos was always one to follow orders and he immediately fell apart, Mal coaxing him into the waiting arms of ecstasy as pleasure surged through his body. He was caught off guard by how good his release felt, better than anything he'd ever achieved on his own and Mal didn't stop there, eagerly pumping him through things until he had nothing left to offer. When he came back down, he felt lax and loose in the best way, his entire body seeming to buzz with a state of lowkey happiness. He stared dazedly at the mess he'd made of his shirt, feeling a distant sort of guilt for ruining Evie's handiwork until Mal cleaned it up with a magic sweep of her hand.
"Good job," Mal hummed, pressing a kiss to his curls. "Come on, I think it's time to clean up."
Before Carlos could ask for clarification his boss simply picked him up, not bothering to tuck him back into his clothes before she marched him to the bathroom where she filled the tub with clear, steaming water with a wave of her hand.
"Yes," Mal said as she splayed him out on the chaise lounge that Carlos and Jay had been mostly confused by up to this point. "I think I'm going to have to ensure you take a lot of breaks."
With that she slowly started guiding him out of his clothes, something that left Carlos helplessly flushed despite the fact that Mal had literally just jerked him off. Just- he had so many more scars in comparison, and they were all stupidly acquired. Jay had battle wounds and Carlos had cigarette burns and bottle cuts from the crazy lady of the Isle who just happened to be one of Maleficent's greatest sources of amusement. He didn't compare.
And yet, with each wound that was revealed Mal would pause to kiss it, like she could make it better in that dumb Auradon way they talked about, and she never seemed to judge him or shy away, eagerly kissing his hands, his knuckles, his stomach. She dropped low and worked her way up his legs, until she was kissing up his inner thighs, making him swell up with warmth again-
"Don't worry," Mal hummed against his pelvis, staring at his twitching length with a small smile. "We'll take care of that in the bath. In fact…" She pulled away and started stripping out of her own clothes, making Carlos' heart stop. "I think I'll join you, if that's okay?"
"That's- yeah," Carlos said, mostly in disbelief because Mal was- she was his boss. She, who usually covered up so much all the time, who wasn't interested in sex, and yet-
She exposed herself happily for Carlos, she picked him up easily and held him in her lap and his naked body was touching hers and her only response was to giggle in amusement.
It seemed like Auradon really had changed all of them.
Not that Carlos could dwell on that, because shortly after Mal started to 'clean' between his legs, and he had um, other things to focus on.
-:-:-
Endnotes:
So I think I was inspired by the idea of Audrey being the political mastermind behind the duo that is her and Ben, with her quietly taking care of things while he blissfully goes about his life with all the plausible deniability in the world. What started as them attempting to distract the VKs from causing mischief quickly spirals into something else entirely, because of course it does. What else would happen in my fics? ;)
This story will consist of twelve chapters of story content plus an additional epilogue that will be posted with the final chapter. I update once a week, generally on Sundays, but because things have been so crazy lately, I decided to make an effort to update twice a week. So there will be one update on Sunday and one update on Wednesday/Thursday for now :D
Until next time
