"Ninety-eight... Ninety-nine... One hundred." Rapunzel sighed and flopped down onto the bed, the piles and piles of parchment and other materials fluttering up for a moment as she lazily huffed some hair out of her face and stared at them all in pure exhaustion.
For days and days and days she had been suffering the hugest, most obnoxiously large art block in the history of ALL TIME! Or so she would often put it when asked what was wrong by her parents or the staff.
She had just been counting how many half finished sketches she had accumulated in the dreaded weeks leading up to now and was thoroughly impressed, and also de-pressed at the sheer quantity of it all. She had run out of charcoal and her watercolor paints had sat in the open for too long that no amount of water was going to revive them...
All her drawing implements were worn to stubs that were hard to hold and work with, which is why she had switched to using the bigger charcoals which she now had no more of anyway, and the parchment that she had left to use was nothing but a tiny little stack of maybe four or five inches thick, and some empty scrolls to the side.
She rolled over and grabbed a random picture and then instantly her face flushed. It was one of her many Eugene-pictures.
Ah yes... Eugene, the devilishly handsome, cunning, sticky-fingered smartass who somehow managed to plague her mind...and pretty much her entire imagination.
It was relatively safe to assume that pretty much ALL of these one hundred pictures either had him IN them or were basically pertaining TOWARDS him. She had done everything from redone-wanted posters (nose correct and in tact) to observational studies, and spontaneous portraits and even a few top-secret-fantasy-element-sexy-time pictures which NO ONE EVER would be allowed to see.
She snorted and shook her head. She was losing her touch if something as silly as her wayward husband was actually getting to her THAT much. She prided herself on being a strong and independent woman who didn't need acceptance or attention from a member of the opposite sex.
Then again, that didn't mean it was totally against the rules to ADMIRE him, or think he looked freakishly hot, but it was her inability to recover from or get over it that bothered her.
She even drew him in the background of a scale-for-scale portrait of Pascal eating a fly that she had witnessed. Normally her ideas and imaginings came from her immediate surroundings or desires of things to be surrounded by though, so maybe it was a little normal.
But really? One hundred pictures? Oh boy the cocky, smug little look on his face should he ever find out!
She sat up finally and gathered them all up as best as she could, ready to place them with the sixty-seven NON-Eugene pictures on the other side of the room.
She figured that one day she'd finish the pictures, but for whatever reason, no matter how great or seemingly complete the pictures were, it just wasn't enough. There was something missing and she just couldn't pick it.
Standing up and dropping them neatly next to her other piles she sighed again and stretched, ready to pretty much fall asleep.
A pair of arms captured her, taking her startled form hostage against a certain muse-busting husband's body.
"Hey blondie, whatcha doing?" He asked casually.
"Eugene, seriously? Why do you still call me that exactly?" She giggled and wiggled her way around in his arms to face him.
He shrugged and was about to say something more when his eyes dilated a little and his jaw went slack just a fraction. His focus was far away and a red color was creeping up his face and tinting his ears.
"Rapunzel.. What is that...?" he wheezed gesturing his head over to the right, and she could feel...no, she could HEAR the rate at which his heart was beating, the fabric of his shirt visibly moving from the tension.
She felt her heart sink and her own face felt hot as she realised what picture he was probably looking at.
She whipped her head around to the right, behind her and winced as she took note of the rather... "playful" pose and choice of expression used in THAT particular sketch.
"Uh... Its... Unfinished." She managed to choke out, suddenly unable to look him in the eye.
She pulled herself from his very heated body and shivered a little, her legs were wobbling in a way that she wasn't accustomed to and she locked them in an attempt to ease the sensation.
His eyes lingered on the picture for one moment longer before his shocked and rather terrified expression morphed, fluidly into a classic-Flynn-Rider smirk and eyebrows combo, and his eyes flicked to the side, regarding her for a moment.
"Oh, blondie," he used that nickname again...she both loved it AND hated it. She felt goosebumps erupt along her arms and chest, and she hoped that the latter sensation want too obvious from beneath her lace embellished bodice.
"You seriously shouldn't have..." He chuckled and rubbed his face for a moment, hugging his torso with an arm, his eyes closed.
She had mixed emotions in response to that comment, but she decided that whatever happened from here on out did NOT have to happen with THAT picture being out in the open.
Eugene stopped rubbing his face for a moment, just in time to see her craftily shift the top picture underneath about twenty others, and his eyes bugged again at the one that now lay on top.
It wasn't that kind of picture but the quality of it was undeniably stunning. He'd never seen her draw or paint quite like this ever before.
He slowly walked over and pushed her aside for a moment, much to her apparent dismay. He vaguely registered her voice, raising a little in protest as he began to shuffle through the odd shaped and slightly mussed up parchment pieces and other materials and as he did he suddenly felt...
Flattered? Embarrassed? No... the word for what he was feeling was more along the line of, "Inadequate".
Rapunzel finally got his attention as a sudden, ominous frying pan waved its way gently before his face.
He blinked rapidly and leaned back to avoid any possible contact with the brutal weapon. He glanced at her and then back to the many, many pictures and drawings and sketches that he was just DYING to sift through, but she certainly looked upset with his intentions.
He huffed, and pouted like a child might and folded his arms, looking away and hunching over.
"Well, gee, sorry I'm interested..." he muttered, fighting the urge to add 'sorry you're the one who has about a million pictures of me that I feel I physically pale in comparison to'
She smiled softy and embraced him, forgiving as ever and replied, "I'm sorry, Eugene, that you had to see...that... but it's just..." She nuzzled his neck and he wrapped his arms around her again, their stance now back to where it had begun,
"I'm just not finished with them yet." she said. "I just can't seem to find what it is that I'm missing."
He pulled away once more and picked up the top one; a simple sketch of him, lying up against a tree with a wreath of flowers adorning his hair, his face soft and relaxed as though in sleep.
"What do you mean? How could there be anything missing? They're perfect... All of them!" He silently exclaimed. He wasn't an artist, so he had no right to be saying so, but as far as he was concerned, this type of work could be deemed flawless in practically every sense. He didn't even stop to look at any of the art he had seen or stolen in all his years of thieving, but that was perhaps because he had no connection to those pieces. He wasn't IN them... they weren't made FOR him...
"Y-you really think so?" Rapunzel asked, a little reluctant to believe such words of praise.
"yes, of course! What on earth could you ADD?" He placed the picture in his fingers down on the dressing table and then looked up into the mirror, partly to see if he really looked like that, and partly to see if that was what she meant by 'there's something missing'...
He half expected to find that his nose was wrong or something, which would have been a perfect way to both ruin and improve the atmosphere, but all thoughts of joking around came to a halt when he noticed their reflection.
He looked over at her, and then turned around beckoning her to stand by his side. She complied without hesitation and then he took a moment to study their reflection again.
He grinned at her in the reflection and said, "Well, I suppose there is one thing missing from all these pictures," He admitted.
Her eyes widened and she looked back up at him expectantly, her eyes and face turned away from the reflection.
He shook his head and faced her around to look into the mirror again.
"None of them have you in them." He declared, looking pretty proud of himself, having made such a brilliant deduction.
That classic Flynn-Rider look returned to his face and she groaned and rolled her eyes, forcing him into a huge, smooch before pushing him away and flopping down on the bed.
"Well," he asked, "Am I right?"
She hummed in agreement, but then added after a beat or two, "But I'll wait a few weeks before I even bother trying to finish those things up. I've got exactly 100 pictures of YOU, and that was tiring enough as it is..." she stated, still exhausted.
He snorted and then flopped down next to her, "Well, that's fine by me."
They remained silent for a little while, but finally the tension began to rise up again, and He couldn't help but sneak up next o her, taking her into his arms, and grazing the lobe of her ear with his lips as he whispered,
"But how about before you do that, we try out reenacting that nice little number I first saw up on the top of the stack?"
She raised a brow and tightened her grip on him, the chills of desire attacking her once more, and laughed, "we'll see what we can do about it..."