Chapter 1
He was still half asleep when he realized she wasn't pressed up against him like she should have been. By now, he was used to having her warm body filling in the gaps his created as he slept on his side with the soft strands of her short locks tucked under the scruff of his goatee. He extended a tattoo sleeved arm across the mattress and blindly felt around for her in what was supposed to be her side of the bed. It never turned out that way. They always started out in the middle when they went to bed, but always ended up on his side instead.
He cracked open his bleary, tired eyes when he didn't feel her small, familiar frame.
"Rapunzel?" he mumbled, he voice thick with sleep. When he didn't hear a response, he figured she'd gotten up to use the bathroom or to get a drink of water. He was about to fall back into another dream when he heard the sound of violent retching.
He responded immediately. He was fully awake, out of bed, and standing outside the closed door of their ensuite bathroom in a matter of seconds. She had a way of making him snap to attention like nothing else could.
"Rapunzel? Are you alright?" He asked as he knocked on the door.
"I'm fine. Don't come in here Eugene." She muffled a sob.
He rolled his eyes as he turned the door knob. "Please," he scoffed, "like I haven't had front row seats to that show before. Remember the night we met?" He asked her as he turned on the faucet, running a clean washcloth under it and wringing out the excess water.
The night they had met had certainly been a memorable one. She had stumbled into his tattoo parlor drunk and he had mistaken her for another one of his groupies. He learned that night that she couldn't hold her liquor. He had learned that lesson the hard way, when he brought her to his apartment to sober up and she proceeded to spew all over him and his couch. That night had ended with both of them in his shower stall taking a fully clothed shower.
It had been five years since that incident and she still had a tendency to empty the contents of her stomach when she had one too many. He thought back to what she had to drink last night. He'd ordered her a glass of Chardonnay with dinner, but he had drunk most of it when she lost interest after a few sips.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the bathroom sink. Yeesh. He looked like hell. His eyes were watery and bloodshot; there was stubble on his face apart from his goatee which he kept neatly trimmed and "bed head" didn't begin the cover the look he was sporting on top of his head. His normally stupendous thick, chestnut hair was sticking up in all sorts of weird angles, and although Rapunzel often referred to his morning hairdo as "cute," it provided him with no reassurances. She referred to a lot of things as cute, the motley crew of surly men who lived in the pub next door came to the forefront of his mind.
About the only thing that looked good on him right now were the tatts on his bare chest and arms that stared back at him in the mirror. They always looked good no matter what condition the other parts of him were in.
He took a deep breath through his nose. He didn't smell bad exactly, but he didn't smell clean either. He smelled like a heady concoction of himself and her and last night's activities. His appearance was that of a man who'd had less than two hours of sleep and while he wasn't complaining that they had stayed up so late last night, he certainly hadn't expected to be up this early the next morning.
He handed the damp washcloth to her as he sat down on the cold tile floor beside her; she was still hugging the rim of the toilet. She didn't look much better than he did. He noticed faint dark circles under her eyes and felt a pang of guilt wondering how long she had been in here by herself before he had woken up and noticed. Her eyes were rimmed red, a color that now matched the tip of her nose and her swollen lips. It was a look he'd seen in her before.
He noted that she'd found her lavender negligee; it's thin straps clinging to her slender shoulders. He, on the other hand, was more comfortable sleeping in his own skin. The frilly, gossamer scrap of fabric with lacy black trim he had so gleefully pulled off of her several hours ago seemed strangely dressy and out of place for the unhappy occasion of hugging porcelain.
Pascal, ever the dutiful companion, was by her side looking mossy, like he was experiencing sympathy symptoms. He wasn't sure when the frog had snuck his way back into their bedroom, but he knew he hadn't been in there when they went to bed last night. Pascal had been a present from Eugene to Rapunzel on her 21st birthday. The chameleon had learned several tricks in the years since, but Eugene's favorite would always be when the frog turned red and scampered away when things between them got heated.
"Are you alright?" He asked again as their eyes met and he tucked a loose chocolate lock behind her ear, not bothering to mask the concern in his voice. He'd been laid bare to her too many times to hide things like that from her anymore.
"It was the fish. . . .," she explained with absolute certainty as she pressed the washcloth against her lips trying to suppress another heave and not quite managing it. He held her short hair back as she expelled what was left inside her into the porcelain bowl and flushed the toilet for her when she was done.
The first time he had taken her to Tony's had been on her 21st birthday. It was definitely the busiest and arguably one of the best restaurants on the island and boasted a rare, five star rating from the local restaurant guide. They had become regulars there and had never gotten so much as an upset stomach from the gastronomical delights that were served there nightly. Tony, the owner, was the kind of finicky, overly sensitive chef who would shriek and threaten a lawsuit for slander if he heard anyone disparaging his food. It wasn't exactly the stuff of food code violations.
Eugene shook his head. "No. That can't be it. I ate the rest of your fish last night and I feel fine," he recalled, furrowing his thick eyebrows. Rapunzel was no match for the large portions they served at Tony's and he always finished whatever she didn't eat.
". . . . Rapunzel . . . . I don't think it's the fish. . . ." He knew it wasn't the wine either. She had barely touched her glass. They stared at each other dumbly for a moment before the implication settled in and he bolted out of the bathroom grabbing the dress pants and Tattersall shirt he'd worn the night before off the bedroom floor. He didn't care that he would look like someone on the walk of shame dressed like that this early in the morning. If his clothes didn't give off that impression, his rumpled hair and unshaven face certainly would.
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He passed through the automatic double glass doors of the drugstore looking like the walking dead from one of the zombie movies he loved so much. By now he was a regular patron here. He even had one of those frequent customer cards you were supposed to clip on to your keychain. Of course, he never did and as a consequence he always forgot his. By now, he had memorized the layout of the store and made a beeline to the aisle he was looking for. The place was a ghost town this early in the morning and he had no trouble finding what he was looking for.
The pharmacist knew him well. She knew him as the overly-worried boyfriend, before he became the overly-worried fiancé and now he was the overly-worried husband. She had a feeling he was going to earn a new title soon as he walked up to the cash register at the pharmacy counter carrying an armful of rectangular, shrink wrapped packages with smiling, happy cherubs on them.
"You only need one box, Mr. Fitzherbert. It's 99 percent accurate," she assured him as she pointed to the label on one of the boxes and gave him a motherly smile. They had done this song and dance many times over the years. Whether it was a cold, a sunburn, an earache, an insect bite, hives or the time Rapunzel petted a skunk she mistook for a stray cat on the sidewalk, his reaction, or rather overreaction, was always the same: buy as much as he could carry of whatever it was she needed.
"Oh and Mr. Fitzherbert, good luck," she called out to him as he left the drugstore.
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When he got back from the store, he found her in much the same position he had left her, looking dazed with an elbow propped up on the toilet seat. He rested the bottle of club soda he had brought back for her upset stomach on the bathroom counter and helped her up off the floor. He must've read the instructions six times, neither one of them had done this before. Minutes later, he took the white plastic stick from her shaky hand and placed the cap on it. He felt unsteady on his feet so he sat down on the tile, his tattooed forearms resting on his bended knees. He set his wristwatch and waited.
She slid down beside him coiling a hand around his arm and resting her head on his bicep. The room was silent as they both stared at the foretelling oracle he tightly gripped between his left thumb and index finger. The object felt strange and foreign in his hand.
As the minutes passed ever so slowly, he tried to calm himself down; he tried not to freak out. He knew this was a possibility, especially now that they had been married a couple of years; they had become lax and didn't always take precautions. The little white pill she was supposed to take every night was not free of side effects and she sometimes skipped them to avoid the unpleasant symptoms. For his part, he wasn't always diligent about using a backup method, preferring to have no barriers between them. Still, up until now they hadn't had so much as a scare and it had lulled both of them into a false sense of security.
He knew it would happen someday. He wanted it to happen someday. It's just that he hadn't expected that someday to be today. They had talked about this. They had planned it out. They had a timeline. There was even a spreadsheet. This was something that was supposed to happen somewhere down the line, like buying a house and getting a dog.
If she said something to him, he didn't hear it. All he heard was the beeping sounds from the alarm on his wristwatch.
He might as well call the realtor now because there were two bright pink lines staring him in this face. A new chapter in their lives was about to begin.
AN1: This story is a companion piece to Inked. It's in response to a review from fictionadict24, who wanted more backstory on Rapunzel. If you haven't read Inked, you can find it in the M section or in my profile. If you don't want to read all 12 chapters, just read the epilogue and you'll have a fairly good idea of what's going on.
AN2: This story won't be as long as the AU it was based on. I'm thinking 4 or 5 chapters, but I haven't mapped it out yet, so I don't know for sure. Please read, review, fave and follow the story. I'd love to hear what you think.