love is thicker than forget
He tries to stay.
He /wants/ to stay, curled up with Rapunzel in a contentment that steals his breathe away. A quilt covers them both and Jack skims Rapunzel's hair as it falls over her shoulder and spills down and around them both to the bedroom floor. He watches his hand curl over her sleeping face and trace small circles and loops over and over in her hair. Jack can almost see the patterns left behind as his fingers play down her back- come and go, come and go.
Jack can hear the winds whistling in the rafters under the crack of melting snow sliding off the roof. Spring is stalking him and he /doesn't/ want to go but the need for winter and wide open spaces hustles through his head in a constant thum— come and go, go and come back.
He will tell her when she wakes up, Jack decides his fingertips tracing the outline of her jaw and cheek. Rapunzel moves incoherently into his touch nuzzling his hand sleepily
Tomorrow, Jack thinks, I'll tell her tomorrow.
%%%"I was waiting for the longest time," she said. "I thought you forgot me."
"It is hard to forget," Jack said, reaching down to pull Rapunzel up into his arms, "when there is such an empty space besides me."
"Much better now," he murmurs and buries his face in her shoulder.