1
"Hey Blondie." Flynn slid up next to his slim, fair haired companion. "How about after this whole festival thing is over we take that crown and use it to buy a nice little castle near the northern border. Something homey, with plenty of walls to paint on and plenty of neighbors to steal from." He received a snort in response, but was undeterred. "I know we've only known each other for a short while, but I like you girly, and I guess what I'm trying to say is…" he knelt down, taking out a twig bent into a ring. "Will you marry me?" There was a silence. He got to his feet. "Well?" Maximus snorted once more, shaking his head in disapproval. "What?" Flynn exclaimed "I thought that was pretty good!" Maximus rolled his eyes.
"Come on Eugene!" Rapunzel grabbed his arm, coming over to the pair with her hair bound up in a series of seemingly impossible braids. "They have honey cakes!" She dragged him away to the booth in question, and he shot a helpless glance back at Maximus, who looked away pointedly. Humans.
2
Flynn was drunk. Rapunzel was too, a lifetime of abstinence from all greater sins making her a featherweight. But at least she knew her limits, stopping as the second glass of wine started to play games with her depth perception. She wasn't like Flynn, all talk and inability to be told what was good for him. He had consumed far more wine, mead, beer (and at the end a sort of winemeadbeerhoneycake slush he 'invented' in a fit of clumsiness and inspiration) and festivity for a man twice his size. Rapunzel had managed to drag him away from the dance floor to a nearby bench in the royal garden, laying down next to him on the wood and trying to make the world stop twirling. Flynn, after a few minutes of complicity, started trying to form words and sit upright.
"Rerp- Repunt- Rufunzefel!" he managed at last, triumphantly knocking himself off of the bench. He attempted to get on his knees and ended up mostly on his face. "Ill oo marvy me?" Rapunzel blinked down at him before bursting into hysterical laughter. "Izagta yesh?"
He wouldn't remember most of that week, but he would remember how much a crown hurts when it gets thrown into your eye.
3
It wasn't until that thug with a big nose who sang that especially sappy verse in the snuggly duckling got married that Flynn gathered enough courage (that wasn't of the Dutch variety) to propose again. After all, if that guy could find a girl and convince her to marry him, it couldn't be that hard. And even further, the guy had only known his now wife for about two weeks. Flynn had known Rapunzel for about two weeks and three days. By all accounts they should have gotten married first.
"Rapunzel." He announced at the reception, getting to his knees and pressing his hand to his heart, the other grasping her fingers "I love you more than all the stars in the sky and gold in the world. Your eyes are like emeralds, your hair is like the finest fur, and your heart is like an ocean. Inside a bigger ocean. Marry me." The nearby guests gasped, all of them looking to Rapunzel, awaiting her response.
"No!" They girl yelped, flushing red. The guests frowned.
"Wonderful! The- wait. What?"
"We've only known each other for a few weeks!" the crowd shot worried glances at each other. Rapunzel wretched her hand from his, her face red, and stalked away to the buffet. He glanced at his hand as if offended by it.
"I don't get it." He glanced over at Maximus. "I you told me that was better!" If a horse could shrug, Maximus shrugged.
4
Rapunzel, once she got over the initial reel of the revelation that she was a princess, settled quite comfortably into her diplomatic duties. Which included, first and foremost, maintaining pleasant relations with neighboring kingdoms. She preferred travelling without the royal escorts, staying in local inns and hiring coaches only when necessary. She liked to walk, to make camp and eat bread and cheese that's spent all day wrapped in a kerchief. Flynn accompanied her on these diplomatic missions. After all, the princess needed more than a frying pan to make sure she's safe in unfamiliar lands. The arrangement was a decidedly pleasant one. Well, except when they visited the southern kingdom.
Rapunzel watched Flynn as he pouted on the opposite seat of the carriage. "Eugene?" Flynn looked away. "Is this about Prince Mendanbar?"
"That-" Flynn summoned every name, every curse, every power of snark he possessed. They proceeded to fail him. ", fop!" he sat back, squaring his jaw "Ha ha!" he laughed defiantly. "No." Rapunzel raised her brow, sitting up. She smiled, leaning across the carriage towards him and poking him rudely in the sternum.
"Eugene Fitzherbert." She emphasized very syllable with another prod. "You are jealous." Flynn snorted.
"No."
"If you weren't jealous why did you propose to me as soon as the meeting was over? In front of the entire court nonetheless."
"You said no." he said moodily.
"It was embarrassing!" she huffed, moving a flyaway hair out of her face. "The Prince was pretty cute though." She said contemplatively. Flynn gave her a look that could burn parchment.
5
Flynn reached his peak at the same moment as Rapunzel, his heaving chest pressed up against hers. He moaned, his arms giving out, exhaustedly collapsing on her. They stayed like that for a few seconds, she allowing her heavy pants to subside into gasps and then normal breathing, he breathing in the scent of her hair. "Marry me." He moaned. Rapunzel stared at him, her nude legs thrown over his shoulders and her hair mussed and pressed against the silk sheets of her bed.
"What?" Flynn blushed.
"Nothing."
6
Eugene looked over at Rapunzel. She held the paper lantern in her hands, and its glow illuminated her cheeks and threw her forehead into shadow. Her hair was tinted with it, the deep brown almost fading into sepia, into gold. She looked out over the water. The sky was black. Her birthday lanterns, still released every year to commemorate her return, had all flown away by now, or else fell to the forest or the sea or the streets, their paraffin exhausted and their radiance gone. She held the last once, bought before her birthday and hidden under her bed until the second anniversary, the darker one, came around. Eugene watched as her fingers uncurled from the frame and the lantern slowly moved upwards, a single man made star. A single star for the woman who might not have been good, might not have been her mother, but nonetheless raised her, and made her soup, and brought her paints to fill her tiny world with color. She bowed her head.
"Rapunzel?' her name seemed to reverberate.
"Yes Eugene?"
"Will you marry me?" Rapunzel looked up at him, her crown glinting in the halo of light the lantern cast down. She launched forward, wrapping her arms around him and burying her cheek in his shoulder.
"Yes."