4. The Pick Up
The Celebrate a Dream Come True parade had just wrapped up, the crowds were thinning, and Flynn was strolling, hands in pockets down Main Street, when he slowed down to inspect the crowd of three highly overdressed women chattering away in front of Exposition Hall. Ball gowns only meant one thing: princesses.
"Hello, ladies."
Three delicate heads turned in unison—black, blonde, and brunette. Quite the trio. All they'd need is a red head to round out the menagerie, but Flynn had already met Ariel, the resident red head, and she was even more of a handful than Rapunzel. It had taken him the better part of one evening to convince Rapunzel that Ariel's notion of using a fork for a hairbrush was probably only workable for those with two—not seventy—feet of hair.
"I think we need to be introduced," he crooned, smiling winningly. He'd quickly learned that the princesses ran the show. Get in good with the princesses and you were golden.
"There's no need: your reputation precedes you," the brunette said with a slight frown.
That was something he wasn't accustomed to seeing: princesses were supposed to smile. All the time. Even when it was hot enough to fry an egg on Main Street. Yeah, this princess seemed feisty, and he didn't mind that one bit.
"Hi, Flynn Rider," he intoned half an octave lower with arched brows. Not quite the full Smolder, because he was saving that for later. "Howyadoin'?"
"Oh, Flynn Rider! How very nice to meet you," the raven haired one chirped, pressing her hands together in delight.
"It's a pleasure," the blonde said sweetly, as she tilted her head to the side.
The brunette, however, merely sighed, as her eyes drifted away towards some distant point. Disinterest, admittedly, was more of a turn on than avid interest. He'd learned that with Rapunzel. Although, this girl seemed to lack the unbridled enthusiasm Flynn had come to secretly appreciate. It didn't matter—he was no longer in the market, but he still liked the idea of winning over people who were averse to liking him at the start. And he still thought becoming indispensible to the park princesses was one hell of an idea.
Maybe he'd end up pulling the sword out of the stone too. They'd put him at the front of the parade.
"I think I can guess who you gals are." He rubbed his chin and acted as if he was doing some mental heavy lifting, but this was too easy.
"Oh a game! What fun!" the dark haired girl said, sweeping her yellow skirts to the side and pressing a finger under her chin. "As long as your chores are finished," she added thoughtfully.
"Chores?" He chuckled. "Isn't that what you have palace staff for?"
"Women, you mean?" the brunette asked with a small huff. "Leave the cooking and cleaning to the women?"
"I do love to cook," the other girl blithely added, sweeping her skirts back as she swayed.
"Yes, but this Flynn Rider character would like to think we can't do anything but cook. There has to be more to life than that. I didn't come all this way to simply cook and clean for a brute."
"Oh, dear! My little friends aren't brutes. They are rather messy though," she twittered. "There was a great deal of work to be done when I first arrived."
He didn't know quite know what to make of that little exchange, so he plowed ahead, pointing at each princess in turn: "Snow White, Cinderella, and…Belle. Am I right?" His cocksure grin indicated he needed very little confirmation of his talents at discovery, but he still eagerly awaited the oncoming awe.
"Well done," Cinderella said with a regal smile, her hand coming up to lightly touch her collar bone.
There is it, Flynn thought, as he crossed his arms over his chest and shifted on his feet, puffed with pride.
"You're very well informed, sir," Cinderella continued. "Have you been here before?" she teased, her head tilting down as she beamed sweetly at him.
"You'll only make him worse," Belle put in, still looking out over his shoulder at something. "He thinks he's handsome."
"He is. He looks very sharp," Cinderella said with a nod. "Doesn't everyone look lovely today?" she asked, holding her hands out, as her gaze flitted over the crowd of tourists in cheesy t-shirts, questionable shorts, and flip flops.
Belle refused to answer, but Cinderella continued, as if she hadn't noticed, "What kingdom are you from?"
"Corona. Rapunzel and I are from Corona."
Cinderella's brows knit together. "I'm not familiar with that kingdom. Was it a very long carriage ride?"
"A horse brought us here." A great, big, petulant horse.
"Oh I am glad to hear it," she said, clasping her hands together. "Those carriages have an unfortunate habit of turning into pumpkins at the most inconvenient times."
Flynn paused, looking from Snow White to Belle, who both seemed untouched by Cinderella's odd comment, which confused him even more. He cleared his throat. "I think I misheard you."
"They turn into a pumpkin," Cinderella said, raising her voice and her hands to her mouth, so that they were poised at the corners of her mouth, as if he might be hard of hearing.
"That's what I thought you said," Flynn mumbled. He leaned in towards Belle, who struck him as the brains of the group, to ask conspiratorially, "Has she taken a blow to the head recently? A frying pan, perhaps?"
Belle leaned away from him, looking decidedly annoyed.
Flynn shrugged. Princesses could be weird. He should know.
The conversation was stalling and he felt his powers of persuasion failing him momentarily. He scrambled for something to entice them. "I'm hungry. Anyone care for a snack?"
"Eating between meals?" Snow White said, sounding a little conflicted. "Well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt just this once, but you must wash your hands first."
Blondie always loved a present. Even apples would do in a pinch, although she tended to give them away again to Maximus. "Live a little," he urged her, as he pulled a shiny, red apple from his pocket and held it out as an offering.
Snow gave a high pitched squeal, jumping back and nearly tripping over a child that was scurrying behind her in her attempt to escape the apple.
"Whoa, sweetheart," he said, reaching out his free hand, but she continued to rush backwards until she was pressed against the wall, palms splayed out against the brick and mortar. He hadn't seen a girl this jumpy since Rapunzel knocked over the toaster oven with a broomstick when it shot out his English muffins in the morning. He went back to just drinking coffee and it ended the drama. "What the heck is wrong with her?"
"You are remarkably insensitive. Typical man," Belle said, snatching the apple from his hand and tossing it into a nearby trashcan. "No apples around Snow, all right, Mister Tough Guy?"
He held his hands up in surrender. "How was I to know?" They should hand out pamphlets when they let you join the cast. Otherwise you could easily stumble into uncomfortable conversations with Cinderella about pumpkins or trigger Snow's paralyzing fruit phobia.
"Read the book and find out," Belle sniffed.
Cinderella was petting Snow and casting little disappointed looks at him, which wasn't exactly the effect he'd been hoping to create here, so he wrote them off as a lost cause—for the moment. He'd attempt to win those two over some other time, when they'd forgotten about the Apple Incident.
He sidestepped a tourist and came to stand by Belle's side, ignoring the fact that she looked rather irritated by his maneuver. It was worth trying to make one last effort here, as she was infinitely more interesting than her companions.
"You like books, do you?"
She cast a sidelong, suspicious glance his way. "Yes, I do."
"I know a good story. I can recommend a great book to you in fact."
She shook her head. "I've read them all. Honestly, you're new here, and I think I should warn you that you're barking up the wrong tree."
"Oh, hey, you've got this all wrong." Yeah, he had a thing for brunettes and this girl was a pretty one, but all the big brown eyes and smarts in the world weren't going to do it for him anymore. Embarrassingly enough, he was a one girl guy. Being the acknowledged handsome leading man in this land of ladies would have been nice, but deep down he just thought making nice with the princesses would make things a little easier on Blondie—the new girl. She looked so sad when someone didn't understand her or looked at her funny. "I'm just trying to make friends, honey."
"I don't think we can ever be friends, Flynn. I know your type."
"You don't know me well enough to know what type I am." Rapunzel could use some smart female friends, but if Belle couldn't stand him, there wasn't much chance she'd be coming around to play Yahtzee with his girl. "We just need to get to know each other is all. Anything I should know about you? Fear of falling? An animal activist? Rose allergy?"
Belle squinted at him, crossed her arms over her chest, and flounced away.
…
"That's it?" the girl asks.
"Looking for something more sordid?" he says, waggling his brows.
"Disney is a bunch of prudes!" she asserts.
"Tell me about it. You should hear Esmeralda's story. Well, you can actually; she's usually on the corner of…"
He doesn't get to finish, because Blondie whacks him in the arm with a surprising amount of force. "Flynn's a jerk," she says, emphasizing the last word.
"Let's get this girl another Discovery Blast," he suggests, because he's not quite finished with this tale, and if she'll just keep quiet, he can get back to the heart of the matter. "Look, Disney wouldn't have liked Flynn fraternizing with the other princesses, but what they couldn't abide was his getting the Beast all worked up. There's nothing worse than an angry Beast."
…
The next day, when they were lined up for the parade, still stuck in the same spot due to his failure to impress anyone, he was entertaining Rapunzel with some tricks—just the sort of sleight of hand that came in handy for a thief—when he was suddenly lifted right up off his feet by the neck of his vest.
"Hey!" he yelled, a little less manfully than he would have liked, struggling to see who it was that had violated his personal space in this humiliating manner.
The growl should have been a clue, but Flynn wasn't exactly used to being manhandled by a beast.
He could just make out Rapunzel scrambling too late to snag his satchel from his side, presumably in the vain hope that he'd packed a frying pan for the day, when he was spun around. Dangling three feet off the ground, he met the Beast face to snout.
"How about putting me down, big guy?" Flynn suggested, waiting to see if the animal would respond to reason or whether the Disney folks would have to bring in a tranq gun.
"I don't like you," the Beast growled.
"So far I don't like you much either."
"Do you always threaten women, little man?" the Beast demanded, giving him a shake that made Flynn's legs dance back and forth like a rag doll.
"Oh, are we getting to the personal part of the interview? Well, let's see. Never made it a practice, although I have been known to make a lady swoon."
"That's not what I meant," the Beast grumbled angrily, exposing more teeth in the process.
"Oh well, now it's your turn: have you always had that tremendous under bite? It's the 21st c., man, I bet they can get you a dentist, orthodontist, breath mints, something."
The last word vibrated with the second shake he received, and Rapunzel squealed, dancing around the Beast's feet and demanding he put Flynn down. Hey, it'd worked once before. Except, the Beast didn't seem impressed.
Then he spotted Belle, hands on hips, watching from afar with a blank face.
"Hey!" he called out to her over the Beast's shoulder. "Hey! Tell your hairy boyfriend that he has it all wrong."
Belle walked a few steps, stared up at the Beast, who looked as softly as he probably could down at her, and said dispassionately, "He might not have been threatening any of us."
"I wasn't!" Flynn squeaked, as his vest began to work its way up his throat and choke him.
"He may have been flirting with us."
Even worse! The Beast's face contorted, Flynn prepared for the feeling of teeth closing over his head—his stupendously handsome face to be marred in death!—and then the Beast laughed. A big, chortling, chest shaking laugh.
"What's so funny about that?" Flynn asked, summoning up as much outrage as he could from his precarious position.
"You're not good enough for any of these women," the Beast said, putting him on the ground and giving him a soft shove on the bottom with his massive paw.
…
"And the parade was ten minutes late that day. Disney folks were none too happy, let me tell you; between soothing the Beast and scurrying to get us out to the parade route before riots broke out. That place works on clockwork, and Flynn got the blame for gumming up the works," he concludes.
"They like the Beast better than they do Flynn," Rapunzel puts in, looking as if at this moment she prefers the furrier one as well.
"That's the one. That's the reason he was kicked out," the guy in the Mickey shirt asserts.
Of course he believes it. The story doesn't make Flynn look brave or heroic or even particularly smooth with the ladies, but that's what makes it a good story, a sellable yarn. Losers love to hear about the good looking guy finishing last.
"I really thought it involved visitors to the park," the girl objects. "We'd have heard if he's been hitting on Disney princesses."
"No way. They'd totally want to keep that under wraps."
"Why are we even listening to this guy again? He looks like a tourist," the Beer Guy says.
He's reminded that he doesn't like Beer Guy much and glares at him.
"I dunno, he does look familiar. Were you Aladdin?" the girl asks.
"I can neither confirm nor deny that." He could be mistaken for worse. Aladdin's a pretty cool guy as far as the princes go. He's a heck of a lot better than Charming with that dorky haircut and his poser uniform. The guy hasn't even seen any real action: he's nothing but a military school graduate.
"Whatever," she says, after titling her head to scrutinize him more closely, "I'm sure it was something about inappropriate behavior with visitors."
Beer Guy shakes his head at her. "You spend too much time on the internet, reading rumors."
This is all really gratifying. He's an international star. He's noted and notable. But, he can't even enjoy the confusion he's created at the table next to them or the fact that people are talking about him online, because his girl is glaring at him. She's looking at him like he's as ugly as some of the preposterous posters suggested.
"Sorry, babe," he shrugs. "Some guys prefer brunettes. Can't win 'em all, you know." He tweaks her nose. He can't see the freckles dotting it, since her face is shaded by her hoodie, but he knows they're there.
She strokes her hair, attempting to tuck more of it inside her hoodie, but it's a losing battle.
"That's not the way it happened," she says to him. "That's not the way it happened," she repeats, leaning forward to address the other table. "I'll tell you the way it happened."
He pushes her back in her chair with his index finger.
"Sorry," he says behind his hand confidentially, "she's had one too many Discovery Blasts."
"My niece is sensitive to sugar too," the girl at the table responds with a sympathetic nod.
He rubs the back of his neck and looks askance at Rapunzel, who is once again happily sipping from her brightly colored drink. In her huge hoodie she does look pretty damn young, and that's probably making him look like a total creeper.
She giggles, stirring the straw of her frozen concoction. Her foot, which has somehow come free of her slip on Converse sneakers, is stealing up the calf of his leg, as she grins wickedly into her drink.
Young and dangerous.
Maybe he should check into that sugar sensitivity thing.