One night, Rapunzel didn't show up at the bar. He didn't want to admit it to himself, but Flynn was a little worried.
She'd come to the bar every night for weeks, their banter becoming more comfortable, and then more uncomfortable again as something started to grow between them. He looked forward to her appearance, even though it meant being slightly awkward for the rest of the night. He wanted to stare at her, but he didn't want her to catch him staring because it made her kind of smug. She used to hate being stared at, used cower down into her hood. Now when she caught him looking at her she smirked in such a self-satisfied way that he once caught himself thinking he'd like to kiss that smirk right off her face.
And that had been the end of that train of thought.
Usually, his taste in women was pretty typical. He liked the same women most guys liked, the difference was that he had them whereas most guys could only look. Maybe that's why Rapunzel was getting under his skin now - he'd done the whole tall, curvy, feline model thing. Rapunzel was different. Humans crave variety right?
But still, she was different in that she was eighteen and everything that came with being eighteen. She was all wide eyes and willowy body and lopsided grins. She was too young. She was too new. If he laid a hand on her, he'd probably break her. Physically and emotionally. She just wasn't the kind of girl he could touch.
Which was really a shame for her because he was rather good at touching and she obviously needed some affection.
He just couldn't go there. They should just stay strange friends. He'd missed the exact moment he had accepted that they were even that much.
Flynn tried to think back to when he was eighteen. He'd been running from orphanages and foster homes for ages, but it was still bizarre when his eighteenth birthday came and they stopped trying to catch him. One day, he was hiding from the law like a dog running from the pound, and the next, they didn't give a shit. He was a free man. Finally a man, and finally free. It was weird how the sun rising that day changed his identity completely.
He'd been with some older women when he was eighteen... a few of them quite a bit older than twenty-six. But it was different with guys, wasn't it? And his brand of eighteen was a peculiar one, having lived mostly on his own for years.
To be fair, her brand of eighteen was a lot more than peculiar. She wasn't really eighteen. She'd never really be eighteen. She was so much younger and so much older at the same time.
She should find some nice guy her own age. Some nice eighteen year old guy. Some shy, bumbling idiot to fumble around with. That would be great for her. Really, it was what she needed.
As for what Flynn needed, and why he kept finding himself looking to Rapunzel for whatever it was - that was beyond his contemplation. He didn't have needs. They were not even on the table.
Neither was thinking about how her breath felt on his neck, or how he had felt her heart beat, too, against his back, that night she'd stayed over. Hell no.
But the awkwardness and the undeniable stress these thoughts caused him (and he didn't often get stressed, as a rule) didn't stop him from looking forward to seeing her. His night still got better when she walked in. She'd sketch or play with the bar nuts (how was she not bored of those things yet?) and they'd talk about totally random things when bar traffic was quiet. She was obsessed with reading - she always had the maximum number of books out from the library, and she liked to regale him with her favorite parts. She even got him talking sometimes - he'd actually read a lot as a kid, and a lot more in prison. He liked to tell her stories, even ones he didn't find particularly interesting, because her eyes would sparkle in this certain way and she'd clasp her hands together in front of her and scooch forward on her stool, like he was the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen, and his words were the most amazing she'd ever heard. She was good for his ego.
When he thought about it, they had lengthy conversations every night for hours and hours, and this had been going on for weeks. She probably knew more about him than anyone else. She was probably closer to him than anyone had ever been in his entire life.
Not that they were particularly close, or anything like that. Really, so she knew what snacks he liked in the middle of the night and what movies made him laugh the most when he was a kid. So what?
So he was worried when she didn't show up, that's what. He was worried about another person. About someone other than himself. It was like there was a really angry rodent clawing at the inside of his chest. He kept watching the door, kept checking the clock. He took two breaks without any sign of her - he hadn't taken a break alone in weeks. She always followed him up onto the roof, chiding him about smoking even as she continued to marvel at his 'tricks.'
Three A.M. came with no sign of her, and his shift ended. She probably got caught up in her novel and passed out early. Or maybe she went to go eat an entire chicken at Freddy's again and ended up eating four instead and was in a food coma. Or maybe she'd seen a funny shaped rock on her way to the bar and was sitting on a bench somewhere studying it with the absurd focus only she had.
As he walked home from the bar, his phone rang - a local number he didn't recognize. Not the captain - he always checked in on the same day at the same time, from the same number. It could be any of a million girls who had his number. He didn't usually answer - if he felt like spending time with a woman, he'd call her, and otherwise he didn't want to hear from her. Especially at 3 A.M., which was inevitably some drunken clingy sob story.
Still, curiosity got the better of him and he answered with a neutral "hello?"
There was a sniffle on the other end of the line, and then "Flynn?" Rapunzel's voice.
"Hey," he said, wincing at the concern in his voice. It was an unnatural sound. "You okay?"
More sniffling. "N-no," she said, wavering on the edge of tears. "I'm in t-trouble. Will you come get me?"
Flynn stopped walking, instantly anxious. "What kind of trouble? Where are you?"
"I'm in jail," she said pitifully. "I've been arrested."
Flynn almost laughed, and would have if she didn't sound so upset. What was Rapunzel doing in jail? "What did you do? No, never mind, don't tell me on the phone. What jail are you in?" He'd been to them all. Many times.
"I don't know what it's called," she said, misery soaking through her words. "It's uptown near the big fountain and the dog park. I need someone to bail me out, and..."
"Don't worry about it, I know the one. Hang on, I'll come get you."
He hung up before she could blubber her thanks and headed down into the subway.
Of all jails for Rapunzel to be trapped in, she chose the right one. Uptown didn't see a lot of crime, mostly privileged teens caught with booze or caught making out after hours in the park. Flynn stopped by an ATM and nearly cleaned out his account for the bail money. Even the ATMs were nice.
He didn't recognize the officer on duty at the desk of the tiny jail. Luckily this wasn't the captain's precinct, or he'd get a really annoying lecture.
He had to fill out a lot of paperwork, and it gave him the creeps to sign his name on National Corrections documents, even if he was actually happy to be helping Rapunzel. The guard studied his signature for a minute before glancing up at Flynn suspiciously.
"What?" Flynn snapped.
The guard shrugged, nodding for his lackey to head back into the holding area and retrieve a sniffling, red-faced Rapunzel, who launched herself immediately into Flynn's arms.
It was really awkward at first. She was so small, pushing her face into his chest and taking big shuddering breaths as she babbled incomprehensibly, something about poor taste mixed with apologies. He just stood there for a few seconds, not sure what to do with his hands. Her arms snaked around his waist, holding him tightly, as if she could bind them together out of sheer strength of will.
He patted her head slightly with one hand, swallowing. He didn't really comfort people. He didn't know how. After a minute of this in which his patting began to match the rhythm of her hiccuped crying, she looked up at him like he was a really slow learner and reached up to pull his arms right around her, one around her waist, one around her shoulders, before retreating back into his shirt.
It felt... oddly natural, actually, and he adjusted his hold, pulling her in a little closer, tilting his head to nuzzle just slightly into her hair. She smelled like honeysuckle. Not like flowery shampoo, but like she'd literally been running through honeysuckle bushes. She probably had. Her heart beat frantically against his chest, like the wings of a caged bird, and her fingers balled into the back of his shirt. The muscles of his arms flexed involuntarily as she cried, like they'd waited to hold her longer than was right, like he'd done all of those pullups in prison for just this moment to shelter her. She curved against his body so easily, everything that was usually quick and agile about her now soft and yielding.
After a while a long, shuddering sigh rattled out of her tiny frame, and she slumped against his chest, totally spent.
It was almost impossible to let go of her , every instinct urging him to gather her up and then... and then what? Exactly?
He released her, stuffing his hands into his pockets hastily, ignoring the sudden chill of emptiness prickling along his skin where she'd been touching. "So, uh... let's get out of here."
She nodded, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands, her nose red from crying. She followed him out of the jail, out onto the cool, clear night.
She paused for a moment, sucking in huge breaths of fresh air, shaking her head as if to clear it as she tugged on the ends of her hair. "Okay okay okay," she said under her breath, like a whisper. "It's okay."
"Of course it's okay," he said gently, placing an uncertain hand on her shoulder. "Everything is going to be fine. What happened?"
She groaned, tilting her head back in frustration as they started walking again. "I was decorating out by the old mill," she said, "When a police officer saw me and started shouting."
Flynn raised an eyebrow. Wasn't she just the sly one. "Decorating?"
She raised an eyebrow right back, pursing her lips. "Yeah. With spray paint. Whatever. It was still decorating. The old mill is kind of ugly. It looked better with some of my drawings on it."
"The officer disagreed?"
"He said it was illegal and vandalism and that I had to go with him. So I did. And he..." her sass faded back into distress. "He locked me up."
Oh.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
She shook her head, though she started talking anyway. "It just... I don't like it when people lock doors. Or when I feel like I can't get out of somewhere. I just... I like knowing I can leave, if I want. You know? When he shut that big door and it clicked, I..." she trailed off, her frown carving deep worry lines into her face.
"I feel that way sometimes too," he said, though he didn't even like to admit it to himself. "They used to lock us into the dormitory at night. It wasn't like there was anything terrible in there, I just didn't like not being able to leave if I wanted to. Of course, that didn't stop me for long." He smiled, though bragging mode didn't last. "Prison locks are a little different, though. Never did manage to get out of there."
She looked at him with wide, scared eyes. "Is prison like jail?" Clearly, she thought jail was bad enough.
"Not really. The people are a lot worse and you stay a lot longer. I don't recommend it."
"Did you ever get to go outside?"
"Sometimes," Flynn said. "For a little while, we'd go out into the yard. There wasn't much to see out there, though. Not much room to do anything worth doing. Still, it was better than being inside."
She nodded, and he asked, without thinking, "did you ever get to go outside?"
He wasn't talking about jail, and she knew it. She said nothing for a long time, just looking down at her feet, putting one in front of another as she walked. Finally, she looked up at him, her expression a sad mix of pain and shame.
"Never?" He meant to try to mask his incredulity, but he failed.
She shook her head.
"Why?"
She shrugged.
"You don't know why?"
She pulled her hood up, retreating into it, tucking her hands into her sleeves. "She said it was to protect me."
"Protect you from what?"
"Bad people," she said lamely, chewing her lip. "People who stole things, people who broke the law, dangerous people."
Flynn tried to lighten the mood. "People like me?"
But she wasn't amused, her expression anguished as she glanced at him from under her hood. "Yeah," she said, the word stressed and pushed from her throat like she was going to cry again. "People like you. She kept me imprisoned my whole life to protect me from funny, caring... amazing people like you. To keep me from the danger of living and feeling."
Flynn was a cocky guy, but it was still weird to hear her say such candidly positive things about him, and weirder still that the despair in her voice made him feel twitchy all over, anxious, unhappy. It wasn't fair that she had to say these things. It wasn't fair that she'd been locked up far longer than he had and for nothing she'd ever done, as far as he could tell. He wasn't a huge fan of Corona's legal system, but the fact remained that he'd committed a crime and he'd been punished for it. What crime had she committed, to earn a worse fate? What had she ever done to deserve the pain it brought her now? And would that pain ever go away?
He felt helpless, and he wanted to pull her close again but he didn't, because he didn't want to smother her, but also because he didn't want to want her, and holding her in that moment would be more for him than it would be for her, more to make him feel less useless, more to reassure him she was okay. He didn't want to care about whatever had happened to her. It was a tragedy he didn't have the stamina for. It was more fucked up than he cared to understand. He didn't have the capacity to help with the kind of baggage she was dragging along behind her.
"Do you know how I feel?" she asked hopelessly, gesturing idly at the air. "Everything I experience now isso wonderful. And it makes me so angry. Do you think about what you missed in prison?"
"No," he said quickly. No. He went in a smug, poor twenty-one year old and came out a smug, poor twenty-six year old and it made no difference. Five years behind bars did nothing to him. Nothing at all. He was the same guy he was before. He'd always be the same.
"I think you're lying," she said, meeting his eyes. "You lied to me when you said you had a family, when you don't. And you're lying now. You stole something from them, or you tried, and they stole something from you. Years, they took. And she..." her hands slipped from her sleeves, balling into fists. "She stole my life from me. And I stole from her."
Flynn swallowed at the intensity of her gaze, confused and a little alarmed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
She frowned, suddenly reaching out a hand - right into his pocket, pulling out his cell phone in one fluid motion.
"Hey, what-"
She was typing away with her thumbs, and then handed his phone back with a smile, all traces of her anger and unhappiness gone, like a cloud that passed right overhead. "Now you have my number!" she declared. "I got yours, and now you have mine."
Flynn shook his head, dizzy from the mood switch. "What? Yeah, how did you get my number?"
"Somebody wrote it on the wall of the cell," she said simply with a shrug.
"WHAT?"
"Somebody wrote 'for a good time, call Flynn Rider' with your number underneath. I thought it was fate, so I called you."
Ugh. Ugh. He could think of at least a dozen women he'd jilted who would do something like that. He better have his number changed.
She pointed to the door they stopped in front of. It was a fancy brownstone, three stories, all the lights out. "This is where I'm staying," she said. "I have a room here. Listen... I don't have the money for bail right now. I'm really sorry. But I work really hard, and I promise I'll pay you back really soon."
Flynn waved away her concern. "Whatever. I'll get it back as long as you don't skip town." He jutted his index finger against her collar bone, a weird excuse to touch her. "So don't skip town."
Some of her worry came back, her brow furrowing. "Do you think they will send me back to jail? Or prison?"
"Pfft, no. You'll have to admit to what you did and they'll make you pick up trash in the park or something for a day." Her eyes lit up. "...but you do that anyway, don't you?"
She bounced a little. "Sometimes! People leave the weirdest stuff!"
"Yeah, I don't want to know. Go to bed. I'll see you tomorrow."
