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Omg... my origin ship for this fandom and what started it all, can yall believe ive been in this fandom for over 6 years...

This is a secret Santa gift for thelavendernarwhal on tumblr, who wanted keefex hurt/comfort, and an au of some sorts, so I decided on a fantasy au, because turns out despite me writing like 80 things (btwn kotlc and other fandoms), I've never done one before?

So here we go! Not actually that much hurt/comfort and its more fluffy, but !!! Just a bit of commoner dex and prince keefe <3

warnings: none

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"For all of the rumors of your stealth, you're not exactly subtle," Dex said, carefully pouring an elixir in a flask to store for later, not bothering to turn around. "Put that one down, that's for one of my dad's customers."

"You can't possibly know it's me," Keefe said with a whine, probably pouting.

"I can recognize your footsteps, you know."

"What?"

"You walk pretty quiet, since you sneak around a lot. But there's there's a sense of order in your footsteps, your princely gait or whatever." He put a lid on the flask and set it down, turning to Keefe. As expected, he was pouting. "What are you doing here?"

Keefe seemed to take his empty hands as a cue to approach, wrapping his hands around his waist and nuzzling his shoulder. "Can't I come visit my favourite alchemist?"

"You've been visiting a lot recently," Dex replied, hugging him back. "Isn't your coronation in less than a week?"

"Mhm," Keefe hummed, squeezing him tighter.

"Shouldn't you be preparing for it?"

Surprisingly, he pulled back, an odd look on his face. "Is my 'princely gait' really that obvious?"

"Eh, probably not," he replied, pulling away. Keefe pouted again, but Dex ruffled his hair, ignoring the protesting squawk. "I'm probably one of the few commoners who would keep track of that kind of thing. I learned to differentiate between each of the triplets' footsteps so I could know which one of them was sneaking into my room in the middle of the night. Plus, I've known you long enough to know your steps."

"Ah," Keefe grinned, and Dex immediately had regrets. "You pay that much attention to me, hm?"

"Shh," Dex said very creatively. He leaned in, quickly stunning him with a peck on the cheek, buying himself enough to recover. He went back to his flasks, placing them in their transport container, then handed it to Keefe to carry. "Hey, why'd you ask that, anyway?"

"You think anyone else would recognize I'm royalty?"

"You've been visiting me for—how many months now?" Dex asked, loading up another transport container. "Told you, I know you. You should get to your point."

"I was thinking—of running away. And living with you. Forever."

Dex nearly dropped the flasks. 'Get to your point', damn, he needed to watch his words next time. He should've known Keefe would pull something this dramatic, with all the lead-up.

Forever...

He cleared his throat, rushing to the exit, beckoning Keefe to follow. "Well—first of all, if you want to live with me, you'd have to be approved by my family. They like you, yeah, but they don't actually know that—"

"I told them, already."

He nearly stumbled on a rock. "Oh." Well, totally his fault for starting this conversation while carrying elixirs. "You told them? How'd they react?"

"Well, obviously, they adore me." Dex rolled his eyes, despite the fact that Keefe wasn't able to see his face. Well, he wasn't wrong, his parents did adore him. "But they already knew."

"...they what?"

"They knew," Keefe repeated.

Dex tried to scan his memories for any signs that his any of his family members had known. His parents had been a bit giggly, but he'd assumed it was because of the fact that Keefe was the first one he'd really fallen in love with, and so they tried to give the talk to him, as if he was thirteen and not eighteen. (Plus—hearing about men's anatomy gave way too much insight into his parents' life which. Gross. He really could have gone without knowing).

"And the triplets?" Dex asked, deciding that it wasn't that unreasonable that his parents knew that Keefe had been a prince all along.

"They knew too. Or, well, suspected. They had a bet going on, or something like that."

He opened his mouth, but then shut it. "Well, my family's approval is hardly an issue. The bigger issue is you running away. What about the throne?"

"As if Mommy and Daddy Dearest would ever let me actually rule fairly," Keefe snorted. "I'm pretty sure my mom plans to have him assassinated after I get crowned as king, and she'll try and control me from the shadows or whatever creepy stuff she plans."

"That doesn't sound like the thing you'd let stop you," Dex hummed.

"Well, I always go after what I want," he replied. "I think I planned to be king to lessen their influence, but honestly, ruling is hardly my thing. Too much work. Foster and Fitz would do a much better job anyway, and they're both already in high enough positions that it wouldn't be unfair if they either ruled themselves or changed this whole thing up."

Dex opened the back door to the apothecary, placing the container he'd been carrying down, Keefe placing the other one down too.

"...you're serious about this?" Dex asked, turning to Keefe.

Keefe was already staring at him. He took a step closer, and Dex sucked in a breath. "I'm always serious about what I want. And I'll say it again—I want to live with you. Forever. In this tiny apothecary, even if the sheets aren't to my standards, even if I'll have to work hard every day." He took one of Dex's hands in his, planting a kiss against callused fingertips.

"This sounds like a marriage proposal," Dex mumbled, looking away.

"It sorta is. But more than that, it's me saying that this is what I really want, that I want us to finally act on our feelings."

Dex felt his heart thumping. He'd been wanting the same thing too—he'd been aching for it, tired of the fact that they'd been walking a fine line of acknowledging their mutual feelings for each other but never really acting on them. A line that had grown thinner over the months as even he couldn't help but initiate affection. He knew that he was the one who had said to wait, but even he couldn't stay in this grey area anymore.

"You're really planning to leave your royal status?" Dex asked. "I mean, if you wait a bit more, my inventions would take more notice and my own status would rise and—"

"Shh," Keefe hummed, planting a finger over his lips. "You think I care about status, really? You don't have anything you need to prove. Not to the world, and not to me either. While your inventions are super cool, you don't need them to keep my attention, y'know."

Dex didn't say anything. He looked away, embarrassed to hear those words directed at him.

"Ah ah ah, none of that," Keefe chided, tapping his chin, and Dex reluctantly raised his gaze to ice blue eyes. "Eyes on me. You're always forcing good self-esteem on me, taking care of me and all that, so that means that you're not allowed to go all self-doubt on me. I'm madly in love with you. You know that, right?"

"You've only professed it at least once per visit since you first confessed."

"Hm, only that much? Gotta step up my game... But again, my point is that you already captured my poor heart by being nothing but yourself. So you don't need to do any weird stuff like try and prove you're worthy of me by making contributions to the world. I mean, if you wanna do that, I'll support you all the way and be your faithful househusband while you work on the outside---"

"I thought you said you were willing to do hard work?" Dex asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Shh. Being a househusband is hard work, don't undermine the commoner's struggles. But again, you don't have to do anything super grand in order to feel good about yourself. I love you anyway."

Dex groaned, pulling him into a hug, burying his face into the crook of his neck. "You are a sap, you know that? I love you so much."

He felt all the tension seep out of him as Keefe hugged him back, and they held each other for a few minutes. Honestly, Dex couldn't believe it sometimes, that he'd somehow stolen Keefe's heart. It still felt so unreal. He still remembered being twelve and lonely. But Keefe was here, had been here for a year and a half, he loved Dex, and this was everything that he had ever wanted.

"I love you," Keefe repeated, pulling back a bit, cradling his cheeks. "Can I?"

"Yeah," Dex whispered, and for the first time, let their lips meet.