Title: Driven Outside and Driven In -- Engagement
Fandom: Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Mia Thermopolis/Nicholas Devereaux
Word Count: 2165
Summary: Nicholas had pretty much moved in, or rather, never left. (
AO3)
Notes: For
lama_mama, who requested on the ficmas post "a bit more princess diaries fic" aaaaand this is what she got! If you haven't, you should probably read
Driven Outside and Driven In for insight on Mia and Nicholas's relationship.
Nicholas had pretty much moved in, or rather, never left. (Yeah, that whole “well, I’ll be leaving now” thing never actually happened, go figure.)
After the coronation and after her grandmother had moved with Joe to the small summer palace just outside the capital, Mia listened patiently to her PR staff of one regarding The Nicholas Situation, but kicking him out until something about their relationship was Settled in a manner worthy of publicizing just -- hadn’t happened.
“You’re going to make me wait -- how long did Joe wait for your grandmother?” Nicholas asks one night, his head on her stomach as she stroked his hair, tugging it when he got too comfortable.
“Decades,” she replies. “Maybe I’ll be Genovia’s Virgin Queen.”
“Let me know when tickets for that spectacle go on sale,” he says, and she tries not to squirm as his laughter tickles that spot just below her navel. “I will personally camp out weeks beforehand, just to ensure I don’t miss it.”
“Genovia’s Bachelor Queen, then,” she says. “I like the sound of that.”
She didn’t mention to him just how damn often Parliament and everyone and their mother brought up the topic of Nicholas and when they were going to give the country something resembling traditional stability -- which was when she sharply (but sweetly) reminded whoever thatshe was the queen and if they had a complaint, they could go ahead and file one with their local government office and it would reach her through proper channels, but her personal life was personal, thanks.
“Kind of isn’t,” Nicholas points out.
“I swore to govern the country, and to cause law and justice and mercy to be executed in all judgments,” she reminds him. “There’s nothing anywhere in there that gives anyone the right to challenge my personal decisions in my individual life.”
He shrugs and offers a souffle, and she accepts it begrudgingly, because the boy is a souffle-making wonder and she’s more than once thought about adding it to the royal seal of the country, or if he’d be willing to have that shit exported because damn, Genovia’s GDP would skyrocket.
But all of it just feels like she’s still in some kind of limbo -- that she’s not making progress as much as she’s juggling, or. She kind of wants to think in sports metaphors (guess who keeps ESPN on as background noise when she brings her laptop into his suite, gross, what) -- it feels like she’s running defense all the time and can’t see an opportunity to begin an offensive until people shut the hell up about who she might or might not marry.
“You’d give in to them?” Nicholas asks. “Hold on, I need my glasses to complete the picture.” He grabs the glasses off the night stand and places them on the edge of his nose so he can look over the frame at her. “You would give them what they want?”
“I mean, if that’s --”
“You’ve given me the bare minimum of what I want,” he says. “Being here with you. Listening to you be intelligent and patient and a complete bitch to me day in and day out. Has that shut me up?”
“Hm, I like the way you turn the microcosm of our not-relationship into a metaphor for the rest of the country and world,” she muses. “But you see how I can’t, without seriously compromising my Bachelor Queen thing, pin down each member of Parliament and the national press and fuck them with my strap-on of choice, right?”
“You’re so literal,” he sighs. “Mia: just do what you have to do, and if they complain, tell them to shut up because you really do have an appointment with Prince William in the morning to mock his male pattern baldness and explain why you’re not sending any troops to this clusterfuck in the Middle East, so you literally don’t have the time for a slow, leisurely fuck tonight.”
“You need to go back to being just a stupid playboy,” she notes. “Try and crash a car or two while I’m in London. At least get an outrageous parking ticket or visit the local orphanage completely drunk, would you?”
“I’ll do all those things,” he agrees, “And burn down the convent while I’m in the neighborhood.”
*
It’s a PR nightmare and she is going to choke the living shit out of him, so fucking help him because she is going to kill him. It’s all she can think of after she smiles for the cameras, pulls him up from his place on one knee, hugs him tightly, and leads him away to a private little ready room in the Austrian palace she’s visiting on some tour or another.
There, in the room where Mozart gave concerts, where other important historical stuff happened that she didn’t learn about in high school due to the whole sad outcast/princess thing, there she arrives with Nicholas in tow and she shoves him inside and slams the gigantic door behind her. She hears the guards outside shuffle in front of the door and turns back to Nicholas, walking up to him and shoving him hard in the shoulder.
“No,” she hisses with as much anger as she’s ever felt for him, like, ever. More than the stable, more than the fountain, more than the post-lake scene with the paparazzo, dammit she is pissed. “You do not do this,” she says.
“I can’t propose to --”
“You can, yes, technically propose, you are physically able to make an offer of marriage to me; as a human being, you are able to form the words ‘will you marry me’ with your mouth and expel them so the sound waves reach my ears.” Mia hates that, even with her heels on, she has to look up an inch into his eyes, so she grabs the knot of his tie and says through her teeth, “Kneel.”
“Kinky,” he manages.
“Zip it,” she snaps as he kneels in front of her, sitting back on his haunches and looking up at her. “How dare you think I’m just some bimbo you picked up in a bar or at your stupid college debate club, brought home to Mom, and then just casually asked to marry you in front of the international press?”
“My mother’s dead, so that would be a little weird -- did you mean your --?”
She tightens her grip on the knot a little, bringing it against his Adam’s apple.
“You may suggest, you may hint, you may even discuss with me the possibility of one day marrying me -- as we have before, how silly of me to think you were listening! -- but you will not ask. I ask. I ask. And I will ask you in private, not in front of those leeches where you couldn’t refuse me without humiliating me.”
“Mia,” he chokes out, “I’d never --”
“Damn right you’d never,” she replies, “Because I am a catch, not a Rhodes scholar like Mrs. Andrew Whatever Duke of Fuckall, but impressive in my own right. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the right to refuse.”
On ‘refuse’, she shoves him and knocks him off balance so he’s sitting on what’s probably an ancient, hallowed rug to the Austrians, looking like a little boy who’s just fallen and skinned his knee, except he’s so stupidly cheeky, because that’s who Nicholas is, the little shit. She straddles his legs and pulls on his hair to tilt his head back, treasuring his apprehensive look as her lips trace the curve of his jaw from the hollow just below his ear to his chin, letting her teeth press against the sensitive skin until she feels him shallowly exhale against her hair.
“You’re a jerk,” she whispers, “Always have been, always will be.”
“I’m your jerk,” he replies. “Always have been, always will be.”
“Remember that,” Mia says, “You’re my jerk, and you act when I tell you.” She loosens his tie and unbuttons the first couple of buttons, and lowers her mouth to the smooth skin near his shoulder joint so she can mark him, thoroughly. He leans back, supporting himself on his hands, Mia clenching her thighs around him to feel him and relish how stupidly hard he’s getting just from watching her lower her head and suck his skin red and wet.
When her hair falls into her face, she pulls off him and lets it fall away without a touch. Nicholas’s lips are red, probably as red as hers, because he probably licked them, bit them so he wouldn’t moan, pressed them together to stifle himself, did everything in his power to make himself look as fucking wanton as he could manage without actually doing anything to her.
“Finger me,” she decides. She rushes in to cover his mouth with hers and presses her chest against him as he struggles to keep his balance, one hand behind him and one hand slipping under her dress and past her panties. She wraps her arms around his neck and tilts his head back, tongue-fucking him while two fingers rush into her to the hilt, just a little too much and too wide for her. She clenches around him so he can’t move and he pushes against her deeper, his finger working her clit just a little until she releases him and focuses on his mouth and pulling his hair as she kisses him, using her teeth and gripping just a little too much -- it’s just how they are with each other, just a little too much, so an engagement happens in Austria, a declaration of mutual loathing happens in a fountain, and she dreads to think what next and where. She pushes down against his hand, taking his fingers in so deep it hurts a little and hurts amazingly, that ache of being fucked too hard and too quickly.
It’s a quick build up and release, probably because she’s still so upset and what is she even going to tell all those reporters outside, and she’s still mad at him, so the minute she feels herself coming, she pulls away from him and walks to the bathroom just off to the side, leaving him on the floor with what she knows is a hilarious erection he’ll have to take care of before they go outside again. She doesn’t care if she’s a little shaky still, if they’ll have to fuck on a creaky, uncomfortable (and likely creepy) bed in whatever ancient and revered palace is hosting them tonight -- it’s left her wanting more and she can handle being slightly on edge for the rest of the day if it means Nicholas’s moans will add to the rumors of a palace being haunted or something.
As she checks herself in the full-length mirror, he pauses in the doorway and narrows his eyes at her before walking over to the toilet, some ancient toilet Churchill probably shit in during a summit, and jacks off into it quickly, silently. Nicholas then walks around her, excuses himself so he can reach the sink, and that’s when Mia catches his tired, bemused eyes in the mirror above the sink.
“Will you marry me, Lord Deveraux?” she asks his flushed reflection, unbuttoned shirt, the bright red mark on his chest, his slightly wrinkled pants that hadn’t been pressed and starched enough to withstand her hips grinding against his. “It’ll be a very long enga --”
“I accept,” he replies, meeting her eyes evenly.
“You won’t be king,” she says.
“I could have staged a coup of Luxembourg by now if I really wanted to be king,” he says.
“Well, yeah, Fat Louis could stage a coup of Luxembourg between his post-lunch and pre-dinner naps, it’s not hard.”
“Fine then,” he says. “I’ll get you Luxembourg for your birthday.” Content with her appearance, she leaves the bathroom but he calls out, “Also!”
She turns around and he holds up a small black box, which he tosses to her and she, magically, manages to catch. “Since I accepted your offer of an engagement,” he explains as she pops the box open and smiles at it.
“You did, didn’t you,” she muses, and then reaches into her cleavage, just between her breast and the underwire, to pull out a silver ring that might just be in Nicholas’s size. “I was a little worried you would grope me while I slept on the plane and find it, but luckily, Transformers was more exciting than my breasts.”
“They transform into robots,” he explains as she slips the ring on his finger. “It’s already warm, Mia.”
“Cry me a river,” she sighs as he slips onto her finger the ring he raided from his family heirlooms. “So. We have rings now.”
“Very sharp,” Nicholas comments. “Those Austrians won’t pull one over on you, will they?”
“Shut. Up.”
Mia makes sure to take his hand in hers before she opens the door, to squeeze it quickly and press their hands together so the rings clink so low only they can hear it, and that’s all the positive reinforcement he’ll get on the matter until she has to stifle her yells against his shoulder tonight, where ever they are.