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wickedlybitter · 9 months

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“You’re a – an actual –” Lance stammers.

Prince Keith growls, low in his throat.

“A beast.”

— — —

The Beast is bent so close that Lance feels the heat of every exhale flutter along the back of his neck, hears the silent whoosh of it rush through his ears. It makes his hairs stand on end. He circles Lance, slowly, clawed feet silent on the marble floors, yellow eyes scanning him up and down, analyzing him. Lance feels as if he is a tiny deer, separated from the rest of the herd, circled and scrutinized by a giant, hungry wolf. His heart pounds. His mouth is dry. Fear lights up every nerve in his body, forcing him on high alert.

He is in danger. Real danger, possibly, because the Prince is a beast, not simply beast-ly.

As suddenly as before, the rippling fury boils up in his belly, ramping up his heartbeat for a different reason, clearing his vision, setting his jaw.

He has come here, to this stupid fucking castle on results of a lottery ordered by decree, he has travelled days on horseback in stony silence with his brother through the predator-heavy forest, he is the only person putting himself out right now. He is the only person ripped from his home.

And Prince Loser over here has the audacity to be a dick?

“You’re an actual asshole,” Lance snaps, finishing his earlier sentence. Vaguely, behind him, he hears a muttered “Stars a-fucking-bove”, but he is too busy relishing in the blatant shock on the Prince’s face to give much of a shit. “Yeah, bet your prince-y prance-y ass hasn’t heard that one before, huh? Too busy huffing and puffing around this stupid place?” He jabs his finger in the Beast’s chest, all fear completely gone, riding the high of being the one who has the upper hand in the situation, against a prince. “And speaking of this stupid place! Clean up every fucking once in a while, will you? You have hands, do you fucking not? Pick up a broom! Fucksake! The dust here is so thick I can hardly see through it, and I’m meant to live here! It’s nasty! And maybe have one of your servants — holy shit, you’re such a douchebag, who has servants — put some fucking hay in the stables! Maybe your rich person horses can fucntion on…fucking…unicorn dick and gold flake crack, or whatever, but my horse needs fucking hay! Fuck!”

His chest heaves as he gulps in as much breath as he can, slightly lightheaded, glaring bloody murder at the Beast. “Oh, and another thing —”

“Do you have any who I am?” The Beast interrupts. His voice is barely above a whisper, deeper than before, carefully controlled. Dangerous.

Lance screws up his face. “A be-east,” he mocks, rolling his eyes. He hears rapidly cut-off, shocked laughter, poorly disguised as a coughing fit. It bolsters Lance greatly, and he smirks. “I can fucking see that, Prince Charming. I thought the nickname referred to the attitude and temper, but obviously not.”

The Beast snarls. “You are going to be the worst one yet. I cannot wait for you to go running.”

“Well, you can fucking get used to me now, shitbrain. I’m going nowhere. Pucker the fuck up, because we are getting married, and you are going to live with it, even though I cannot fucking stand you.”

The Beast scoffs, taking a step backwards. Some of the animalistic fury has faded from his posture, and his expression appears human-like in its huffy stubbornness. It’s the same expression Lance has seen every single time he went to school and someone was forced to partner with him at a desk. “Marriage. You are my last choice for that, that’s for certain.”

Lance rears back as if hit. His breathing picks back up, slightly, and his hands begin to shake.

He has no right to feel the pierce to his heart as deeply as he does. He has started the vitriol, after all. The Prince is being no crueller than he is. In fact there is objectively no cruelty to his sentence at all — of course Lance isn’t his first choice. He has had dozens of engagements before Lance. Hundreds, even. Lance isn’t even sure how many engagements he’s really had, as he’s had then as long as Lance can remember. Lance is not his first choice; not even his second or third and ninth or twentieth or two hundredth. Lance would never have even crossed his royal mind, in terms of a romantic partner.

But to be the last choice? That is explicit. That is a choice in itself. That is there are countless people on Earth, some vile some evil some irredeemable, and still they are a better choice than you. That is you are everything I despise just by virtue of who you are. That is you are my worst possible nightmare.

To be the last choice is to be so unthinkable that your inferiority is marked. To be the last choice, again and again, everywhere you go, is to be simply inferior. The worst option. The opposite of a hail mary.

Lance is always the last choice. The only time he has ever been chosen first was when he was chosen to leave.

Something in his face must give him away, because a kind of shuttered look clouds Keith expression, like he realizes he’s gone too far. Lance hates it, more than he hates the Prince himself, because he doesn’t know him, no one does, no one chooses to know the worst option, and it stings terribly and it’s worse that a stranger can burn him so badly. It’s worse that this prince, who for all intents and purposes is no one to Lance, can dig so deeply into him.

“Hey,” the Beast says, an awkward tone to his voice, “I didn’t mean —”

“Save it,” Lance chokes out, and flees. He runs randomly in the vague direction Adam and Shiro had been guiding him into before everything went to shit, ignoring their cries for him to wait, praying that no one follows. As he turns down hallways and ducks through corridors the sounds of their voices fade to nothing, and eventually he slows, chest heaving, hiccuping, face wet with tears.

Mortified that someone may see him, human or not, he opens the nearest door, barely checking to see if it’s a bedroom before collapsing on the small, rickety bed, twisting the worn quilt in his hands, and truly begins to sob. He lets out loud, wailing cries, louder than he’s ever been in his life, even when he’d run out into the woods and climb the tallest tree he could. They tear themselves out of him, the sobs, and leave him shaking in their wake, the pain of being the only one left waiting, this pain he’s carried locked up inside him since he was born, too late, too early, too nothing to be noticed. He lets the snot and tears run down his face and into the pillow and forgets for a moment to watch for a red nose and swollen eyes. He has no home to return to. There are no other people, really, in this castle to see him. His husband-to-be couldn’t care less if he flayed himself open and bled out on the marble entryway. He can let himself break, here, and not worry about keeping the pieces held closely together, because no one wanted him when he was whole, anyway.

“That’s it, honey. You let it out.”

Lance screams.

A voice screams back.

Lance screams louder. He screams until his voice cracks, actually, wrenching himself up from the mattress and scrambling backwards until his back presses to the wall, frantically sweeping the room to see who had spoken.

“Who the fuck is in here?!” he shouts, fist half-extended in front of him like it will do anything. There’s nothing in this tiny-ass room except the bed he’s sitting on an a faded yellow wardrobe.

“Yeah! Show yourself, intruder!”

“No! No intruder!” Lance turns wide eyes to face the wardrobe, which just moved. “It’s you!”

Oh, fuck this stupid weirdo castle.

“Well, of course it’s me,” says the wardrobe incredulously. “But what was all the screaming about?”

Lance stares at it. Him. Them. He’s not sure yet. He blinks rapidly, as if he can communicate the fried mush of thoughts in his brain into the sturdy wood. It, as expected, fails to work.

“I forgot,” he says slowly, “that non-living things are living, in this godforsaken place.”

The wardrobe hums. “Ah, that would do it.” It inclines the decorative carving on the top of it, which Lance can now see is a face, in his direction, smiling wryly. “Sorry for freaking you out, man. I’m Hunk. I’d shake your hand, but I don’t have arms.”

Lance smiles slightly, sniffling. “Hi, Hunk. I’m Lance.”

“It’s good to meet you, Lance.” He rocks side to side slightly. “So, uh, why are you here? Not that I’m not happy, or anything! Man, no one’s been to the servant’s quarters in ages, on account of no one needing them anymore. It’s nice to have visitors. And human ones, especially, that’s crazy —”

“I’m, uh, the fiancé,” Lance interrupts quietly. He tries for the same smile he had earlier, when he was bantering with Shiro. “Mail order bride, at your service.”

Hunk laughs loudly, shaking the floors with it, bent in an unnatural way that wood doesn’t bend but in a way that makes Lance think of a young man, smartly dressed, helping lift and fix clothes and gadgets alike in the castle. What Hunk could be if he was human, at least in Lance’s imagination.

“Aw, this is great! We’re gonna be friends, man. I can tell already. You don’t take any shit, huh?”

Lance’s eyes go wide.

That was so…casual.

“Yeah,” Lance says hastily, before Hunk can change his mind. He quickly swipes his face to get rid of the tears and look marginally less like a goober. “Sounds good, Hunk.”

Hunk nods to himself, satisfied. “Nice. Oh, hey, you must be hungry. It’s a pretty long journey up here! Want me to see if I can get you some food?”

“That’d be great,” Lance says gratefully. Wasting no time, Hunk-the-wardrobe clanks twice against the wall he’s leaning on. He waits a moment, and then there’s a three-clank response, and he smiles.

“Tea is on the way,” he promises.

Lance frowns, trying to puzzle that one out — tea? From where? How was ‘yeah there’s a guy sobbing on the bed in my room and I think we could probably get him some grub’ communicated in two wall slams? And, just for good measure, why is this castle so fucking weird? — but no sooner does he open his mouth to ask these questions does the door slam open, startling him, and quick as a horse a tea cart races in, door slamming again behind it.

“Hello, hello, darling,” says a tall, slim teapot on the cart. “I’m Colleen.”

Well.

Honestly, that’s par for the course.

“Hi,” Lance says hesitantly.

The teacup smiles gently. “I heard you had a bit of a rough start, here. Hopefully I can help smooth things over. Would you like a spot of tea?” She taps her spout on the side of the cart and a little teacup hops up. It has a face just like the teapot and every other enchanted thing here, only around its eyes is painted the largest set of spectacles Lance has ever seen, and Veronica is legally blind. “My daughter and I can get you a nice, refreshing cup, right, Katie?”

The little teacup shrugs. “Sure, I guess.”

Lance opens his mouth. He closes it again. He thinks about how he feels about drinking out of a teacup that is alive, somehow, and considers how he may phrase this, as delicately as possible.

“That’s a tad too weird for me,” he says politely. “Do we have any teacups that aren’t anthropomorphic?”

———

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