All the Books

by Starbrow

Summary: Step one: take Rapunzel to the bookshop. Step two: take Rapunzel EVERYWHERE. Step three: keep Pascal's tongue out of your ear...maybe that's step one. (One-shot, set during the Kingdom Dance, fluffy.)

Author's Note: While watching Tangled, I noticed there's a two-second glimpse of Rapunzel and Eugene in a bookshop, in between all the dancing and buying delicious fair food and drawing sidewalk art. They're looking at a map. Why are they looking at a map? How did they end up in a bookstore in the first place? Why do they have books about basset hounds and fish and castles open all around them scattered over the floor like two little kids let loose in a library? And why does Rapunzel only have three books - count em, THREE - in the Tower?

Clearly, fic was the answer to these pressing questions.

Dedicated to pencildragon11, whose goal in life it is to read ALL THE BOOKS.

"OH! Eugene, over there! No, wait, we haven't tried that game yet...oh, and we should buy Maximus some apples, he told me he loves apples, I think I saw a stall that way...and I'd love to get some of those bellflowers, did you know its scientific name is Campanula rapunculus?... oh look, Eugene, those girls are waving at me, do you think they want me to join their game and oh what if I can't figure out how to play it?"

Pausing for a moment from her dizzying quest to see all of the town of Regna all at once, Rapunzel turned to him with those big green eyes of hers; they seemed to have a voice of their own sometimes. And right now they were saying, Make it all stop.

Eugene put a steadying hand on her shoulder to keep her from whirling about again. "You're going to explode with excitement if you don't settle down."

Her eyes were wide, almost manic. "But there's just so much to see and do and what if I never get the chance to do any of it again?"

Eighteen years. Eighteen years in that tower. No wonder Blondie was so messed up. "We'll see and do all it, eventually. I promise."

Simple words, and in another time and place they might have meant nothing to Flynn Rider, but to Eugene, saying them to Rapunzel, they meant something.

Her eyebrows shot up. "Really, Flynn? We will?"

"Sure. There's no rush." He had no idea what her plan was after tonight...would she still want to go back to the tower? Eugene found himself very much hoping she would change her mind on this point. Still, they would need the money from the crown – or else he would have to start another heist – and at the moment the latter seemed a much better alternative than leading Rapunzel back to that place.

"Would you..." Rapunzel chewed her bottom lip, and her face scrunched up in that cute little expression she got when she was thinking hard. "Would you take me to see other cities too? Not just Regna? Could we ride to other places and explore? How far does the road even go? What happens at the end of it?"

"Whoa whoa, Goldie, slow down." She was doing strange things to his brain. A pleasant little picture of life on the road with Rapunzel began to spin itself seemingly of its own accord – showing her the wonderful strange places around Europe...walking with her to the ocean, watching her dive headlong into the first wave on the beach...taking her to one of those fancy concert halls, how her face would look when she heard an orchestra for the first time...

Yep. Brain definitely broken. "Let's finish Corona, then we can give the other countries a go."

"Other countries?" Her eyes got even bigger. "What other countries? Where? What are they called? How do we get there?"

He shouldn't be shocked by now at how much that mother of hers had kept from her. Didn't mean he didn't still need a second before blurting out the first thing that came to his head. Eugene fished around for something besides you're kidding, right? But Rapunzel's desperate thirst for any information he could give her made his chest ache strangely. "Didn't have much reading material in that tower of yours?"

Rapunzel gave him a sheepish look. "I had three. Books, you know. I always asked Mother for more and she always said next year, when I was ready for them. But I guess I was never ready for them...So I memorized the ones I had. Botany, Geology, and Cooking."

The ache in his chest rose up to his throat. Eugene tried to imagine his own childhood without books. Thieved from the bookstore, yes...in his teens, he was particularly fond of Machiavelli...but he could get them whenever he wanted at least. Rapunzel, on the other hand...

That was it. She needed to see what she was missing, and she needed to get away from all this commotion for a little bit. Eugene put a hand on her elbow. "Come on. There's something I want to show you..."

Rapunzel, not surprisingly, loved surprises. Her eyes were dancing. "Ooo, can I have a hint?"

"Nope."

He loved when she pouted. She had the cutest lips for pouting. He bet they'd be good for kissing too...and by good he meant delicious...

Pascal was swiveling a weather eye at him. That lizard always knew the moment Eugene started thinking about her that way.

He gave the lemon-tinted shoulder-hanger his best "who, me?" look while successfully steering Rapunzel around several food carts, a fat pony tied to the hitching post of an inn, and several ne'er-do-wells milling outside said inn who stared at Rapunzel and the massive lengths of braid and flowers that flowed behind her. Stop staring, lugheads, Eugene gritted under his teeth. Yes, she was the most gorgeous thing to ever tread the streets of Corona, but she was a lot more than that – the most free-spirited, life-loving person he had ever known. And a mean hand with a frying pan, too.

She was full of guesses as to where they were going. They passed Sunburst Square and her street chalk drawings, which Rapunzel quickly ruled out as the surprise ("We've already done that, and besides, there's not much room left for anything else on the street!"), then turned down a little alley filled with shops, and the end of it, opening up to another main street, a tall spired turret with a sign hung over the door bearing just the emblem of a book.

Please be open. The door opened easily, and a bell tinkled. Oh, this was going to be good. "After you, Goldie."

Rapunzel hopped inside. "What's this–oooooooooh." He had never seen her eyes that big. Eugene thought they might pop right out of her head. He grinned.

The walls of the shop's first floor were covered floor to ceiling with books. There were even a couple shelves in the middle of the room, with a little seat and desk in one corner; otherwise, every square inch was lined with all sorts of books, some plain, some colorful, and some with beautiful expensive bindings and ornaments.

Eugene's fingers itched. He repressed the urge to filch a volume or two. The look on Rapunzel's face was way better than kleptomania, anyways. She looked like a kid on Christmas morning with a huge stack of presents to open. Her lips were moving but nothing was coming out.

So for about a minute, she just stroked the spines of the books and wandered with a dazed look around the shelves, Eugene right behind her. Then the shopkeeper emerged from the stairs, a stout balding fellow with spectacles and a shabby greatcoat. "Ah, welcome! Can I help you find anything?"

"Everything," whispered Rapunzel. "I want to read everything."

The shopkeeper peered over his spectacles at her. "Oh, you're the miss with the hair!" Now Eugene remembered him - he was at the gate, book in hand and in the oblivious path of Rapunzel and her unbound hair. "What have you read before?"

"Botany, Geology, and Cooking," she said very seriously.

The bookseller blinked. "Er...well, you won't be able to read everything today, but why don't you start with these..." He began pulling books from the shelves and piling them into Eugene's arms. The Iliad, The Divine Comedy, Canterbury Tales...

Eugene coughed and said confidentially to the fellow – although he hardly needed to bother with secrecy, since Rapunzel was still drinking in the sight of so many books – "A few general knowledge books would not be the worst idea in the world."

"Ah," said the bookseller, nodding and selecting a few more volumes: an encyclopedia, an atlas, a history book, Art through the Ages (Rapunzel would love that one, Eugene thought). "There's more upstairs, along with chairs and good light for reading. Why don't you..."

Arms full of books, Eugene tramped upstairs with Rapunzel beside him craning her neck to peer at the titles. "I don't even know where to start!" She bounded up the last three steps and practically pulled Eugene up with her. "Let's just spread them all over the floor and open them up all at once!"

This was exactly the opposite of how Eugene usually read things. He always took one book at a time (usually under his doublet, where it just added to the effect of hard muscle, naturally), tucked himself away to a quiet place where he wasn't likely to be disturbed, and then buried himself for hours in its covers till he had finished the whole thing. (Most of the time, he put it back too.)

But this was Rapunzel. She wanted to gobble life up like a starving squirrel over the last nut on earth. So she read six books at once.

As weird as it sounded, being surrounded by two dozen open books was not so bad once you got used to it. (Rapunzel kept pulling down more from the second floor shelves, whenever she had a question that neither Eugene nor the current volume could explain. Or just whenever she got curious about what that book was about.)

At first, it was just nice to be away from all the people and noises. And then Eugene realized that it was more than that. The small confined space seemed to have a calming effect on her – like the tower, he supposed glumly. But she hummed happily, lying on her stomach and kicking her legs in the air as she perused the Z volume of the encyclopedia.

It was easiest, Eugene found, to start with concrete things. Like fish. Fish were easy to explain. Or basset hounds. Rapunzel marvelled over how many animal species there were, but it was very much like her Botany book, only more interesting.

Even so, there were moments when they had to pause and take a breather. Like when Rapunzel was reading over the pages on wolves (she liked to start at the back of the book and work her way to the front, another difference in their approaches to books). "Mother wolves do not leave the den for the first few weeks, relying on the fathers to provide food for them and their young," she read aloud. A puzzled expression crossed her face. (Eugene had already explained that a den was like a kind of cave or tower that animals dug for themselves.) "Fathers? What's that?"

Rapunzel had not blinked at the frank descriptions of how males and females mated, but this was different. This was something Eugene had no idea how to explain. He turned to the picture of the wolf. "Well, the male who makes the female pregnant –"

No, that was the wrong answer. That was the technical definition, the barest qualification of fatherhood. Eugene tried again. "The male that takes care of the young, brings them food and protects them from harm – that's a father."

Rapunzel frowned at the illustration of the wolf pair. "Are wolves the only ones with fathers?"

He swallowed hard. "All species have them. Even humans. At the beginning, at least. Not everyone keeps them around."

She thought about this. "I don't have one," she said at last.

"Neither do I," said Eugene. "Lots of people don't."

She nodded, but looked a little relieved when he suggested a snack break. This seemed to boost her spirits for the next round of learning, and happily munching on bread and cheese (careful not to get any crumbs on the pages), they moved on to architecture. Castles, cities, different types of structures and roads. This inevitably led to her asking where all the roads went. Time to pull out the atlas.

He flipped first to the map of Europe. "Okay, see here? That's Corona." He put the tip of his index finger on a tiny spot.

"It's so little," Rapunzel said, squinting at it.

"Oh yeah. Most countries are a lot bigger. Like Germany, here. Or Italy. And France is right there..." Eugene pointed to each one in turn. "Russia's the biggest. We're one of the smallest."

"Have you been to all of them?"

He laughed. "Not all of them. Some of them." He wanted to see all of them. With her. Sweet Corona, she had broken his brain. Thoroughly and utterly. It had probably started with the smolder. That's the problem. He should have never gone with a girl who broke his smolder. Now look where it'd gotten him. Wanting to tramp around Europe with a girl wearing flowers in her five-foot-long braid.

He could think of much worse ways to spend his time.

"What's your favorite place?"

Eugene considered for a moment. "Italy. It's like Corona with thousands of years of backstory. History galore. The food, Blondie. And art too. You'd love it. There's a place with huge paintings all over the ceilings –"

"Like my tower!" broke in Rapunzel.

Eugene tried to remember if he'd seen any paintings in her tower except the one with the lights, and failed miserably. "Ye-es," he said warily. "It's called the Sistine Chapel. Maybe someday I'll show it to you."

"You mean, we'll go there together?" she asked, a huge smile breaking across her face.

He attempted his best debonair arch of the brow. It probably didn't work very well. She was breaking things of his left and right. "Possibly. If I get around to it."

They perused the pages of the different continents until they got to th spread with the whole world on it. "So many places," sighed Rapunzel. Her fingers trailed over the bottom of Asia, into the little sea below China. "I want to see them all."

She leaned against his shoulder as she flipped the large page. What he wanted to do was put his arm around her and settle her against his chest and daydream about seeing these places with her. Instead, like a schoolboy, he nudged her shoulder with his. She might as well break his way with the ladies too. "How about that art book?"

"Where, where?" she said, eyes popping out of her head again. At the subject of Rapunzel, if nothing else, Eugene was getting pretty good.

At least half an hour later, leaving her to exclaim over the Florentine Renaissance paintings ("look at how Fra Angelico used light here, Eugene! Isn't it spectacular?"), Eugene wandered between the different shelves of the second storey. It was much less packed than the first one, with a few select sections for different types of books. There was even a shelf of children's books.

It wasn't very popular anymore. But still...

Yes, there it was. The Tales of Flynnegan Ryder. He couldn't help himself. He picked it up, flipped it open, thumbing the pages like shaking the hand of an old friend...if he had any old friends' hands to shake...

"Find something?" asked Rapunzel, looking up from her prints.

"No," said Eugene automatically, but he couldn't put the book down.

Her curiosity got the better of her. She twisted around to see the title, letting out a little meep of delight. "That's the book! Eugene, let me see!" Before he could protest, she was up and dragging him to the little raised area next to the children's section, complete with rugs and steps, and he was on the ground again, book still in hand. So much for subtlety.

Rapunzel curled up next to him, chin in her hand. "Read it to me?" she asked, big eyes fixed on his.

Eugene took a breath to say nope, no way.

But there she was, pouting again, if you could call drawn brows and hopeful eyes and full lower lips parted beseechingly a pout.

There was no way he could say no to that.

"I...guess," he said, barely even mustering enough reluctance for a grump. "If I must. You have to promise to be an enthusiastic audience."

"The most enthusiastic ever!"

He believed her. "Well then." Eugene settled back against the cupboards behind them and turned to the first page. There was a little chirp as Pascal (who had been basking in the sunlight of the window) joined them and settled in the crook of Rapunzel's arm. 'The Tales of Flynnegan Rider' by Robert Lancelot Brown. Prologue: The Birth of a Rider."

The chapter started, as most did, with an epigraph; in this case a poem. Sometimes the kids in the orphanage didn't go in for the poetry stuff, so Flynn was used to making it sound more dramatic and interesting. He already had a much more captive audience, in any case.

"The white horse turned to cross the river,
But the waters like a wall
Rose and hung dark over all;
And as they fell the river wider
Wider grew, and sky was bare
Save of the sick candle's stare.
Death the divider
Glittered cold and dark and deep
Under banks of fear.
But that rider
Trembling, bright, rode on,
Trembling and bright rode on
Through green lanes of sleep."

"Oh my gosh, Eugene!" breathed Rapunzel, snuggling closer. "Keep going! This is so much fun!"

Eugene shifted a little closer to her too. " 'It was many years ago that our swashbuckling hero was born, on a cold winter's eve in the most humble of places...' "

Rapunzel gave a happy sigh, and did not seem to mind when he snuck the hand that was not holding the book around her shoulders.

Honestly, he wasn't complaining about his current position, not at all - Rapunzel's head tucked against his chest, one hand on his side, the other across his stomach, and her golden braid flowing across his knees like a blanket - and she looked so adorable when she slept, extra kissable, he decided, bending his head over hers...

SLURP!

"AGH!" Eugene squirmed and launched the tongue-happy lizard off his shoulder and out of his ear.

Rapunzel awoke with a start and blinked at him. Her face was scrunched with sleep. "What – oh, was Pascal sticking his tongue in your ear again? He likes to do that, doesn't he?" She yawned and stretched. Before he could reply, she glanced at the window. "OH! What time is it? Are we late for the lights? When do they come out?"

"Don't worry, not for another three hours." Eugene was inclined to sulk at Pascal a little longer for ruining the moment. It wasn't like he was going to kiss Rapunzel while she was still asleep...but no harm thinking about how good it would feel, right? Pascal didn't seem to agree with him, if those furious clacking and chattering noises were any indication.

In any case, Eugene supposed they would have had to get up anyways soon. He had promised Rapunzel they would do everything, and they still had a lot more everything left to fit in before nightfall.

And he knew exactly what they should do next.

"Hey Blondie," he said, grinning devilishly at her, "ever had a cupcake before?"

Finis

A/N: The epigraph is from John Freeman's 1920 poem "The Bright Rider", while the contents of the Tales of our Favorite Rider (and its author) are modeled after a certain 20th century author in this genre. Regna and the exact layout of the town are my own inventions. Hope you enjoyed this bit o' fluff!