The art studio is quiet around them as Rapunzel draws a circle for what has to be the tenth time in the last half an hour. She was supposed to be setting up the foundation for her sketch, just the usual circle for the head and a few lines for the features. They're simple lines and will most definitely be erased later, but for some reason she just can't seem to get them right. She can't really decide whether it comes with the weird angle of sitting crossed legged on the wooden floor or the looming presence of Eugene sitting opposite her.

He's sat only a few inches away, his legs tangled in front of him and his elbows resting on his knees, his left hand acting as a base for him to rest his chin upon. In the last few minutes he hasn't really moved much, or at all really, letting Rapunzel do whatever it was that she needed to be accurate as possible. Though that is what she asked of him earlier and it is extremely helpful when drawing, she kind of wishes he would do something other than just stare.

Since she picked up her pencil, his eyes haven't moved away from her - she can't even recall seeing him blink. It's extremely distracting and she doesn't remember his gaze being this intense when she first stumbled upon him in the library. True, they are closer to each other now than they were then, the closest they've ever been she thinks, but she can't say that the new close proximity is really helping. It feels odd to be the centre of someone's attention like that, to know that they're watching you, waiting for you to do something. The feeling sits heavy in her stomach and she wants to all but scream at him to at least look down.

This wasn't something she was really prepared for and she has no idea how she is going to survive this afternoon if she can't even draw her stupid outline sketches.

"Are you okay?"

It's only when she hears his voice break the silence does she realise that she has now stopped drawing all together, her hand hovering over the page. Rapunzel lifts her head, finding Eugene now sitting upright and staring at her with a raised brow.

"You okay?" he repeats and she thinks it's the first thing he's said to her since they sat down. "You sort of just came to a stop."

"Um, yeah" she starts, her voice not sounding very convincing in the slightest. She looks down at her paper, at the disaster lying there, and then back up at Eugene, doing her best to look a lot more composed than she is. "Yeah, I-"

I can't focus with you here. I can't think about anything else but you. I can't concentrate with you looking at me.

She breathes out heavily, defeated. "I've never done this before." It's not quite a lie but not entirely the truth either. With her left hand she gestures towards Eugene, who of course is still staring. "Drawing someone in person is new to me. I just guess it's a lot harder than I thought."

She drops her hand in favour of playing with her abandoned pencil and waits, putting her confession in Eugene's hand. Of course he takes it, swiping it up easily and locking it within words of comfort and reassurance.

"It may come as a surprise to you, but I've never done this before either." She watches him as he brushes a lose strand of hair off his forehead and back behind his ear. "No one has ever asked to draw me before."

"Well, it's not really a common thing to ask someone."

Eugene lets out a small laugh at that and it sends a little burst of warmth into her cheeks. She chooses to ignore it and blames it solely on the sweater she's wearing.

He may not have explicitly said it, his confession giving little away, but she thinks that he's nervous too and it's nice to know that she's not entirely alone in this. They're both trying something new and for some reason the universe wanted them to try it together. She makes a note to thank the universe later.

"I know I can do it" she says, more to herself than Eugene, yet she's got his full attention. "I guess I just need to focus a little harder."

"What if that's the problem." He interrupts her, giving a small quirk of his eyebrow. "What if you're focusing too hard?"

She tilts her head slightly in confusion, her pencil leaving faint lines as she drags it idly across the page. "What do you mean?"

"You told me that you didn't mean to draw me, you just did it." He pauses for a moment, nods towards her paints and brushes laid out neatly in front of her. "So what if you just painted and stopped thinking."

She's never really thought about it like that before, she's never really had to. Up until this year when she was assigned this stupid project, all of her pieces just happened. They idea came and flowed out of her before her brain had the time to catch up to what it was her hands were doing. Just like when she drew Eugene, her hands wanted to capture him before her brain could figure out why. Maybe he was onto something.

"Okay" she says, nodding at him a few times. "And how exactly do I stop thinking?"

"A distraction."

"A distraction?"

"Yeah, we could play a game" he says it full of excitement and now she knows she can't blame the flutter in her chest just on the sweater. "Whilst you paint me I'll draw you and for every feature we complete we get to ask the other person a question."

It's not quite the idea she was expecting, she a has a feeling that Eugene doesn't have much experience with drawing, but it has him looking like an excited puppy and she's just not going to be the one to take that look off his face.

She lifts an eyebrow at him. "I get to ask you anything?"

"Anything" he confirms.

"That can be dangerous."

He gives her a small shrug of the shoulders, his voice coming out easy and sure. "I trust you."

She nods, not trusting herself to actually say anything, and finally gives her attention back to the supplies laid out before her. It had taken her most of the night before to choose the perfect selection for this afternoon's painting session, she wanted nothing but the best. She has brought her finest set of paints, the ones that Cass drove over 4 hours to get for her for her birthday. The palette now sits open just by her foot and next to a few of her favourite brushes which she had selected based on Eugene and which were the ones she thought would best capture him the way she wanted.

Luckily for her, she has her usual overused stock with her tucked away in her bag and decides to give them over to Eugene for this little experiment. She digs around a little before producing an old sketchbook too- not the one filled with her other sketches- and gives that over to him as well, watching as he carefully balances it on his crossed legs and readies himself to draw.

She twirls her own pencil in her hand a couple of times before finally putting it back on the paper, her hand loosely swiping over the paper in a large circular movement. It's still not easy, to draw under someone's gaze, but with Eugene trying to copy her with a small circle of his own, the wave of endearment sweeping over her is distracting enough for her to finally get the lines right.

Typically, when it comes to painting portraits, she'll draw her subject first, have a detailed outline before she even considers going in with paint. But this time feels different. Having someone physically in front of you is not quite the same as looking at an image for reference. Here Eugene is living, he's not just a snapshot in time, he's constantly moving and breathing and living. And that's exactly how she wants to paint him.

"Ready?" he asks, eyes reflecting in the afternoon sun flowing in from the open studio window and all she wants to do is paint them.

She does. She doesn't answer him, not in words, and instead swipes her brush across her palette and drops the paint onto the paper. Her wrist swirls and turns as a dark brown circle starts to take shape on the blank background giving the page it's first line of the story. It's what she loves most about painting, about art in general, loves that she gets to tell a story and tell it in the way that she wants to. In this story she wants tell it through soft eyes and warm smiles.

When she's dipping her brush into her cup of water, preparing it for the next colour, she decides to ask him her first question.

"Are you a cat or a dog person?"

She decides to start off simple, nothing too intrusive, something to get the conversation flowing between them.

Eugene smirks at the question and answers without hesitation. "Cat person. But I think you already knew that."

She shrugs loosely, dragging her brush across the page just above his pupil for his eyelid, being careful to capture that calming stare of his. Anything too sharp and she would have completely thrown the effect she was trying to create.

"When I was a kid, there was a cat that lived across the street." Her eyes may be focused on her painting, but she can see out of the corner of her eye that he has started with her hair, it's a slightly odd place to start but he's giving it his best shot. "She was a black cat and would always stop by to visit. Sometimes I would even sneak out when everyone had gone to bed just to feed her. I think she was quite fond of me." The sounds of pencil scratching paper flows through the room as he draws line up and down creating strands. "I remember asking for a black cat just like her every year for my birthday. I only stopped because Lance is deathly afraid of them."

Rapunzel shifts on the floor slightly, sitting upright to switch to a more finer brush- something perfect for his eyelashes. Grabbing her fan brush from her pot, she peers over at him trying as naturally as she can to get a closer look at the eyelashes in question. They're soft and full and flutter as he laughs. She doesn't know how she's going to paint them like that but she wants to. She gets to work, dragging the bush up and down, and her curiosity surges at his mention of his room mate.

"How did you and Lance meet?"

"Actually, he spilt coffee on me."

Her brush falters, her hand going still, and she shoots him a surprised look. "Really?"

Eugene hums lazily. "It was during the first week of orientation and he was new on the job at Corona. I was sat reading at one of the tables and the next thing I knew I was no longer reading words but the remains of my latte and shattered mug pieces" He pauses to stare at Rapunzel, lips pursed and eyes scrunched as if was trying to remember something. "Sounds kind of familiar doesn't it."

She rolls her eyes. "Shut up."

His head shakes softly, a sigh escaping him. "He felt so guilty that he kept apologising to me every time we passed on campus. The guy wouldn't shut up until I agreed to be his room mate. Three years later and he's the best friend I could ever ask for."

Eugene begins moving, stretching his back a little so he can lean over his book better, his arm moving more freely over the page. He seems more confident like this, more comfortable and she likes to think this is how he is when he's at home. When no one else can see him and he can just be himself. She wants to know more about what's that like, wants to know more about how Eugene is when he's just being Eugene.

"What about you?" he starts, abandoning her hair for now and deciding to move on to drawing the rest of her face. She's not surprised, she has a lot of hair and even she gets bored of drawing it sometimes when it comes to self portraits. "How did you meet your room mate?"

"Cassandra" she provides for him, but quickly corrects herself. "Cass."

"Cass" he smiles. "How did you meet her?"

Slowly his nose is coming to life on her page, the swoop and the shadows blending together nicely. "We were assigned to the same dorm room in freshman year. We hated each other at first, we would always argue about who ate the loudest or who was responsible for the mess around the room." She pauses for a moment, swirls her brush in her water cup and continues to blend the colours down the bridge of his nose. "When the semester started again after summer, things got - complicated. Cass was the only person I could really rely on. One day the arguments just stopped and I guess we were just friends after that."

"She sounds just a dramatic as Lance" he says and the thought of Cass being called dramatic makes her laugh.

"We'll have to introduce them one day."

Eugene goes quite opposite her for a moment, his focus now on drawing her eyes. From where she's sitting they look a little uneven, the right a little larger than the left, but he continues adding in all the little details.

"What's your favourite colour?"

"Easy" she answers, giving him a smile before cleaning off her brush and finding the perfect colour for his lips. "All of them."

"Ah, I should have guessed." Eugene huffs dramatically and rolls his eyes. "Artists."

She flicks a small drop of water in his direction as revenge. "What about you then?"

He smirks. "All off them."

It's now Rapunzel's turn to roll her eyes and groan. "English nerds."

Eugene giggles, full on giggles, and gives her the perfect position she needs to paint his smile accurately. It might be her favourite thing about him so far- his smile. She likes the way it expresses so much, how when he feels something his lips are the first thing to give it away. She also likes how it feels when that smile is directed at her and she could probably get used to that smile. For now though, she settles with painting it, using a mix of reds and pinks and a highlight of white to give it the fullness it deserves.

"Why did you choose to major in Literature?"

Moving back to her hair, Eugene begins drawing the small headband she's wearing, scribbling small flowers onto the top of her head. "I used to always read with my mom. It used to be our thing. No matter how busy she was or how tired she was, she would always make time to read with me. When I was ten, she brought me my own journal and told me that one day I would write my own story." He stops again, erases a flower and redraws it a little bigger. "She died a year later and ever since then I've made a promise that I would fill that journal."

Rapunzel stops her painting to look up at him. His eyes are down, his eyelids heavier than they were before and she is already regretting asking that question. But he smiles again after a moment, it's not full but it's still there, and he continues to add detail to the small flowers he's drawing.

"Studying literature just seemed like the best option at the time. But now I couldn't imagine studying anything else."

She gets that, she really does. No matter how much trouble it's causing her, she couldn't imagine doing anything else than what's she's doing now. Creating art.

"And what about those book forts, do you make them often?"

He huffs out a laugh. "Oh all the time. You have to put the practice in."

"It takes practice to build a book fort?"

"Of course, it's a very difficult skill Rapunzel."

She shakes her head a little, putting the final touches to his mouth. "You'll have to teach me sometime then."

"Let's save that for our next study session."

As they continue on with their pieces they seem to fall into a rhythm, both creating away, letting the afternoon silence sweep over them. The atmosphere has developed into something much more comfortable and easy that Rapunzel isn't really sure what she's painting any more, she is simply is picking up paint and swiping it onto the paper, her brain falling silent as she lets her hands work. Their one question per feature rule has long been abandoned and they become less of the focus and more of welcomed background noise, the things they ask being more uplifting and light.

"Would you rather only eat ice cream for breakfast or never have ice cream again?"

"Easy ice cream for breakfast."

"Do you believe in aliens?"

"Aliens only exist in fiction."

"Have you ever ate peanut butter straight out of the jar?"

"Who hasn't done that?"

The sun flowing in from the window begins to fade, the occasional chatter of students in the halls dimming to almost nothing. They're not sure how long they've been here, but they carry on painting and drawing and exchange answers as they go. Eugene mentions something about the time he got locked out of his own apartment and Rapunzel tells the story of how she ended up in the emergency room with a pencil stuck in her ear as a kid. Eugene talks more about Lance and she offers up a few adventures her and Cass had over the summer. They share their stories of childhood and of the awkwardness of growing up and the problems that come with parents. They talk about future plans and dreams and fears. About everything and anything they can think of.

Eugene's adding colour to his drawing, digging around in the pencil case she gave him and she can't help but ask the question that's been on her mind for days.

"Why did you ask me to paint you?"

She sees him falter a little, nothing too obvious, but his pencil halts and his eyes close for a second too long before opening again. He doesn't look at her but chooses to keep his focus on his book. He's gone for a bright yellow and begins shading in the roots of her hair.

"I don't know." He answers, reminding her of her own answer she gave him a week ago. He raises his head a little, eyes still not meeting hers and focusing on a spot just behind her instead. "You just seemed a little lost and I wanted to help you. I knew you were talented, could tell by the drawings, and even though it was strange to see me, well, everywhere-" she can't help but cringe a little at that "- I didn't want to be that person to take that away from you. To stop you from showing off that talent."

Slowly, she lets out the breath she didn't even know she was holding. Ever since the Cafe she hadn't really considered what his answer might be, was too scared to, and now she has it she doesn't really know what to with it, doesn't know how she feels. Relieved that it's finally out there? Surprised that he did it all for her without anything in return? Confused as to why he would do that when he only just met her?

"Also" Eugene says, interrupting her inner debate and bringing the focus back to him. He's stopped drawing now and has a smile on his face, eyes pointing down at her page. "I wanted to be able to see that."

She looks down, the fading sun casting shadows on the paper, and has to take a moment to comprehend what she sees. It's Eugene, but not exactly how she was planning to paint him. In the middle of the paper are his eyes, light browns and dark browns swirling together with golden highlights. There is his nose beneath them, swooping into an arch and blending together with the tip of his mouth. She's painted his bottom lip and the slight lift it has in the corners. They are all Eugene. But the rest is not.

Across the paper she's painted bursts of colour, some in dots, some in splatters, some in loops and harsh lines and circles. There's a streak of blue cutting across his left eye, a sharp line fading into the page at the end. His nose has been dusted with yellow and orange and his mouth covered with strokes of green. It's blending together in places and remains distinct in others, the colours are hard in one corner but soft in the other, parts of his features get swept away in waves and others stand strong. It's Eugene and it's colour and it's emotion and it's beautiful.

It's something she can actually be proud of.

"I wanted to see what it looked like when Rapunzel paints her best ."

She takes a moment to register what he says and how he says it, voice steady and confident as if he's not surprised at all. As if he knew somehow she could do this and he was just trying to show her.

"I - I didn't mean to do this. This wasn't what I was trying to paint." Her voice comes out with a small tremble and she quickly tries to push it down.

"I think that's the point."

"Thank you."

"It's okay."

"No I mean it." Rapunzel straightens up then, dropping her brush all together and giving him her full attention. "Thank you, for doing this."

"It's okay" he says again, casually, simply, as if he didn't just help her reach an art breakthrough. He looks down at his own page then, eyes glowing with pride and holds the book up until it's level with his chin. "I think you might have some competition though."

"Really?" she challenges, her eyebrows furrowing.

Eugene flips the book around for her to see and it's- it's something. There are two eyes on the paper, one higher than the other and both different colours. There's a mouth and two eyebrows and hair- a lot of hair. He's got all the basics down but not quite in the right order.

She doesn't mean to laugh, she really doesn't, but she can't help it when she notices her nose drawn half way down the page.

"Hey!" Eugene scolds "I worked hard on that! It's my own artistic vision and-stop laughing!"

"Sorry" she tries, laughter coming in waves. "It's-it's really good, I promise!"

"You're lying!"

"No I mean it!" she manages to compose herself, just enough to sit up straight and take another look at the drawing. "I really like how you've done my eyes, I never knew they were two different sizes."

"Rapunzel" Eugene groans, tilting his back to stare at the ceiling and she has to bite her lip to stop the laughter from starting again.

"It really is good I swear" she repeats nodding firmly and waiting for him to look back at her. When he does, she grabs her brush from the floor and circles it in the air around the painting, thinking. "It just needs something."

Eugene raises a brow over his book. "Needs what?"

"This."

Before he can register it, she lifts her brush and swipes a red line across the page and across the disfigured Rapunzel.

Only the paint doesn't just land on the paper like she had planned. Instead it keeps travelling downwards until it lands with a splat on Eugene's jeans, the red quickly seeping into blue. She hears a gasp slip out of her own mouth and the sound of her brush falling back on the floor. Quickly, her eyes snap up to Eugene's full of apologises, her hand raised in a gesture of surrender.

"I swear I did not mean to do that."

She really didn't, at least not the jeans part, and she can't stop the guilt from surging up her throat.

Eugene stares at the splatter above just his knee, his face giving nothing away. "It's fine" he mutters under his breath.

"No it's not" Rapunzel begins rambling, reaching in to her bag in search of something suitable enough to wipe the paint off. "I shouldn't have done that. I'm so sorry. Those were probably expensive and paint is really hard to get out and I really should have just-"

She freezes suddenly at the feeling of wet paint sliding down her arm.

She was so focused on her guilt spiral that she failed to see Eugene reaching for the brush and swiping a strip of red onto the arm of her sweater, the paint seeping through the holes and onto her skin. When she looks back up at him, he's all smiles, the brush still in his grasp.

He lifts one shoulder, his smirk growing. "Sorry."

It all becomes a blur after that.

It starts with Rapunzel springing into action, grabbing another brush and loading it up with blue, sending it flying down the front of his shirt. They are both standing up at the same time, both armed and willing, stares locked and eyebrows raised. It's Eugene firing first, paint spreading from the top of her jeans to the bottom and coating the protective sheets on the floor as it goes. Rapunzel's launching forwards before he can register it and poking the bush into his side over and over again until his shirt is sprinkled with blue. Both of them start gathering up brushes and discarding others, swapping colours and sending the rainbow flying all over each other.

Eugene reaches down to load up on paint, going for a pink and purple combination this time, running over to where Rapunzel is stationed behind an easel. It's maybe not the best hiding place, he reaches her far too easily, but it's all she had in these desperate times. He leaves smears of pink on her back and drops of purple on her arm and is fleeing in the opposite direction before she has the chance to catch him.

Her revenge comes later in the form of luring him over with the promise of a truce before green is being dragged down his neck and all the way down the front of his shirt. She only has a second to admire her work before he's got his hand locked around her arm and is painting the back of her hand a combination of pink and purple. The paint blends together and she laughs loudly as she brushes her hand on his jeans to clean it.

There's no clothing item left spared as they duck and run around the studio, being careful not to coat anything actually worth something in paint. Both their creations weren't given the same fate though, being destroyed as they covered them in shades of yellow and red. There's more switching of brushes until they give up all together and just use their hands to smear paint on the few inches still exposed. There's paint soaring and words of war being shouted and laughter. So much laughter. It's loud and reckless and it's sure to be heard in the hallway by whoever may still be lurking around.

Neither off them care though, there's a paint war to be won.

.

.

.

.

In the end they had called it a draw.

Well, it wasn't really their decision to end it in the first place. The cleaner came by to do his daily rounds and once seeing the state they were in so kindly asked them to leave. They had both nodded guilty, wiped whatever paint they could off their hands and left as quick as they could. They continued laughing as they made it through campus, laughed at the stares they were getting from the occasional student walking across the quad, laughed even harder when they noticed they were leaving a trail. It was when they walking to their apartments that Eugene suggested that maybe they should dry off a little before going home. It took Rapunzel only a few seconds to think of Cassandra yelling at her to agree with him.

It's dark outside by the time they walk back through campus, each of them holding a dark red coffee cup. The server's eyes had grown so wide when she saw them that they thought they would spare her by taking their drinks to go. They walk through the grounds aimlessly until Eugene leads them over to a bench in the middle of the courtyard, a dim street light hovering above them. They sit in silence for a while, sipping on their coffees and letting the sound of campus night life fill the air.

She's not sure how long they sit there for before Eugene's speaking again, his voice as soft as the night around them. "Can I ask another question?"

Rapunzel nods wordlessly, taking another sip of her coffee and wrapping her hands a little tighter around the cup for warmth.

He turns to look at, his eyes roaming her face in curiosity. "Did today help at all?"

She lowers her cup just below her chin, letting the steam overtake her for a moment. The paint on her fingers has started to harden so she busies herself with trying to pick it off her skin. "I think so. I mean I painted."

Keeping her cup steady, she moves just enough to face him, her body turning on the bench. She watches him drinking his own drink, looking out at the empty campus beyond them and she wants to question what he sees in the dark. Instead, she hooks one arm over the back of the bench and rests her head loosely on her shoulder. "Somehow you just seem to make it easier."

"Maybe it's not me" he muses, sinking down slowly and leaning his head back on the bench until they're at eye level."Maybe it's what you feel when you paint me." He lets his eyes wander over her face again, flickering over each cheek, her nose, her lips and then back up to her eyes. "Maybe it's what you feel when you stop thinking. What do you feel?"

What do you feel Rapunzel? What do you feel? What do you feel?

She has no idea.

"I have no idea" she says aloud, her voice coming out on a sigh. "I don't know."

Eugene smiles, turning his head away to stare at the starless sky above them. "You'll find it" he whispers, voice getting lost in the night.

She joins him, tilting her head upwards to peer into the darkness beyond, nothing but black and the small white of the moon.

"Can I ask you a question?" she says into the dark.

"Of course."

"How does it feel to loose your first paint fight?"

He turns his head to look at her and let's out a breathy laugh. "Who says it was my first?"

Rapunzel shrugs lazily, eyes closing to let the easy atmosphere consume her. "I can tell."

"Besides-" Eugene continues, his voice washing over her "-I'm pretty sure I won."

"Whatever you say Fitzherbert."

She can hear him sigh, shuffle a little on the bench and she wants to thank him again, wants to give him her undying gratitude for everything he's done today. But she thinks he must already know. So she says nothing, let's the silence envelope them, his words and the paint settling on her skin.

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.

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Eventually, she makes it back to her apartment, high on coffee and laughter, and wastes no time walking to her room to rid of her paint stained clothes. Only on her way through the living room she notices something strange. Cassandra is lying on the sofa with her legs kicked up in the air and her phone grasped in her hands, the only light in the room a small lamp on their desk in the corner. It's nothing totally out of the ordinary, she's often found Cass in this position, but this time she's smiling. Her happiness hating room mate is awake in the dark on their couch smiling.

She ventures further into the room, closing in on the couch, and can hear several notifications coming from Cass' phone. Her smile widens with every one. If she were to listen closely, she thinks she can even hear Cass laughing.

"Hey!" Rapunzel calls out, walking the rest of the way over to the couch and looming over a now disgruntled Cass. Her eyes have narrowed into a squint and she's trapped the phone against her chest. She look the perfect picture of annoyed.

"You're back late" Cass says calmly, her eyes now taking in the paint covering Rapunzel's clothes and part of Rapunzel herself. "What happened to you?"

She shrugs. "I painted."

"Yourself?"

"I may have gotten carried away."

Rapunzel narrows her eyes at Cassandra, waiting for her to explain what dimension she has just entered where Cass smiles.

"What?" she asks, head tilting to the side.

"You were smiling"

It may be dark in their apartment but Rapunzel can still still the faint blush beginning to creep up on her cheeks. Cass' phone rings again, the screen lighting up her chest, and she waits to see her reaction. She's not expecting an explanation, knows her friend isn't that easy, but whatever she's willing to share she will listen.

Instead, she gets a steady gaze in return, a face showing no sign of faltering.

"You have paint on ear" is all she says before jumping up off the couch and walking into her room, the door locking behind her. The silence envelopes her and she doesn't try to fight her any further than that, she'll let Cass keep her secret for tonight.

She walks into her room and discards her clothes in a pile by her door, promising to deal with them tomorrow. It feels nice to slip under the covers and she let's out a small groan at the feeling of warmth the covers give her. She lays in the dark for a moment, staring at the ceiling, before her own phone lights up next to her. When she unlocks the screen, a smile forms on her lips.

I had fun painting you today

Maybe her and Cass both have secrets to keep tonight.