Chapter 3
Rapunzel is too excited about getting answers to remember to be embarrassed walking next to Eugene. She likes walking with him, and being with him, and holding his hand – none of which she's done in the last few days. She decides that that's a shame, and she's glad she'll know what's happening so things will stop being so complicated and confusing and they can go back to having fun together. Maybe having fun together in the future will involve more kissing. She hopes so. She grins and slips her hand into his. He gives her a reassuring squeeze, feeling immediately more at ease.
Upon entering the Snuggly Duckling, she is instantly greeted with a rowdy cheer, and whisked away so she can hug everyone. She loves the Snuggly Duckling and they love her back. It's so good to have friends! Yay!
The tavern thugs really don't give a shit about Eugene's presence, so he slides up to the bar and orders two mugs of beer and a glass of water. It might turn out that Blondie won't drink her beer, but that just means two for him. The bar tender growls at him and Eugene flashes his most winning smile. This earns him another growl.
Collecting his drinks, he takes a moment to spot Rapunzel (still doing fine) and slips around to an empty booth along the wall. It's under a window, but the glass is so grimy that the light that comes in makes the room look even more distasteful. After a moment, she appears again on the beefy arm of Hookhand, who has gallantly offered to escort her to the bench next to Eugene.
The big man leers at him as he flops onto the bench across the table with a thump. "How's it feel being a kept man, Rider?"
"Better than you're going to feel if you keep asking stupid questions."
Hookhand lets out a bark of laughter, lifts the ale in his hook in salute, and downs half of it. Smacking his lips, he turns to Rapunzel. "What brings you here, girlie?"
Rapunzel grins. "I wanted to ask you about something I don't understand."
"I can try. Not the most eloquent of pretty faces, you know." He leers at Eugene again. Eugene glares back. "What's it that interests you?"
"Kissing!"
Eugene's head snaps towards her. "What?"
Hookhand beams. "Rider's not doing a good enough job explaining it to ya?"
From the table behind them Big Nose shouts, "I'll help!" and dashes over to their table, each of his footsteps causing the floor to tremble. He shoves Hookhand over and squeezes his way into the booth. Crammed side by side, they look simply too big to be allowed.
"Soooo, girlie. What exactly is it ya need? A demonstration from a real man, maybe?"
This cannot be happening to Eugene. He's starting to feel numb and clammy. He would make a break for it, but sitting in the booth like this Rapunzel has him trapped against the wall. He considers slipping under the table, but his pride won't let him. Damned pride. "Rapunzel, we should talk about this someplace else."
"Shut it, Rider," Big Nose shouts. "The lady asked us." Eugene doesn't comment that she actually only asked Hookhand. He doesn't think that having only one of the thugs around would make much of a difference in terms of how horribly this is going to go.
"Yeah, and you've had your shot," Hookhand adds.
"Seriously, Rapunzel. Someplace else."
"Quiet. Let her talk. Go on, sweetheart."
"Well," she says, wrapping her hands delicately around her mug and looking up at the ceiling in thought. "I'm not really sure how to ask."
"Straight out's always best, I say!"
"Ok. Well, when I was kissing Eugene the other day, I started to feel all tingly."
"Oh hell." This cannot be happening to Eugene.
The thugs are so pleased they look like they might explode. "Tingly, you say! Then what happened?" No. Definitely not happening.
"Then I started to think – and I don't really know why I think it – but there might be something more than kissing. Something better." She grins and blushes at the thought, her shoulders squeezing together, lifting with glee. "Do you know anything about that?"
The grins slip off both the thugs' faces as they stare at her. Eugene rests his elbow on the table and covers his face in his hand. Maybe if he hides everyone will forget this happened. Maybe the floor will swallow him whole.
The thugs look at each other in confusion, then turn back to the princess. "Girlie," Hookhand starts, leaning forward slightly, his voice slow and low and serious. "Are you saying that you don't know?"
"Don't know what?"
Big Nose's mouth drops open. "My God. But you're eighteen. Eighteen!"
"Didn't your ma ever explain it?"
Eugene snorts. Lucky Gothel, who didn't have to give the birds and the bees talk because there was no chance (in her mind) that her daughter would ever meet a romantic partner. Rapunzel shakes her head.
"Ouch, Rider," Hookhand says, a look of pity on his face. "I'm sorry, kid."
"Yeah. That's gotta be rough."
Eugene doesn't move. He's still hiding. A massive hand reaches across and pats him on the shoulder, although it feels more like he's being beaten with a bath mat.
"What's wrong?" Rapunzel asks with concern. "You're all acting like someone's died."
"Something has died," Hookhand says knowingly. "Something in Rider's pants."
Rapunzel looks down at Eugene's lap in horror as if expecting to see the outline of a deceased squirrel or a dead dove. Not seeing anything of the sort, she gives him a confused look, puts a comforting hand on his leg (not that she's checking for dead things under the fabric of his pants or anything), then turns back to the thugs. Eugene shoots them a glare between two fingers before burrowing back in his hiding spot. No sarcastic comment can make this better. He takes Rapunzel's hand in his own. That makes it a little better.
Hookhand sighs and crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back to give Rapunzel a thoughtful look. "Why haven't you asked Rider about this? He's an experienced man whore, and I'm sure he's the one with the most interest in you knowing."
Rapunzel doesn't know what a man whore is. She files the term away to look it up later in the encyclopedia. "I think he's embarrassed."
The thugs both look at Eugene, his face still hidden behind his hand, the grimace of his mouth just barely visible. "I can see that."
"Why don't you ask yer ma?"
"Well," she shifts uncomfortably, "sometimes I ask her things and then she looks… sad. Not all the time. Sometimes she looks shocked. I don't know. I just thought that this might be a little different than other things and that I should ask someone I'm close to."
It's like a stone has dropped in Eugene's stomach, and at the silence across the table he can tell the thugs are feeling the same kind of discomfort. Rapunzel's relationship with her new mother is fine, all things considered, but it's still stressed. Unlike her new found relationship with her father, her mother is taking over the place of someone else. In Eugene's humble but biased opinion, the queen is a way better person to be related to than Gothel, but Rapunzel loved the old witch regardless of what she did or how things turned out. And the queen is kind and clever and understanding – understanding that the daughter she lost has in many ways grown up without her.
"Alright," Hookhand says slowly. "We'll see what we can do."
"Really?" she asks, trying not to let the excitement show too much. Everyone seems so sober. She wonders why, but then again she's going to find out really soon and that will be great.
"You see," Big Nose says, "when two people love each other very much-"
Hookhand punches him in the arm. "Quit being an idiot. The girl wants the truth."
"It is the truth!" Big Nose punches him back. "Whatever beau the princess finds should love her or he's going to have to answer to me!"
"Yes, of course, that's true for her but not for most people."
"There's no point in making it too complicated for her."
Hookhand grunts and begrudgingly admits, "Fine. You've got a point there."
"Good." Big Nose turns back to Rapunzel. "When a man loves you very much-"
"Yeah, that's better."
"-he'll try to kiss you."
"And you should punch the bastard because he's not good enough for you!"
"That's not helpful, Vladamir. Go away."
Vladamir snorts and continues walking past.
Big Nose clears his throat and continues. "He'll kiss you and then… uh… kiss some more."
Rapunzel nods enthusiastically. She knew this part. "With tongues," she squeals.
This isn't happening to Eugene.
"Right," Big Nose says. Having overcome his initial shock, he's back to trying not to laugh at the poor sap across from him who roped himself into being the princess' boyfriend. "Then the next step is touching above the waist."
"I wouldn't call it a step. It's not like you do one thing, and then move on to the next. Not unless you're really boring."
"It can be boring?" Rapunzel asks, her eyes wide. She can't imagine that being possible.
This outburst raises Eugene's spirits ever so slightly. Not much, but slightly.
The thugs ignore her, already engaged in a debate over the benefits of progressing base by base. Rapunzel doesn't know what they mean by that either.
"-Sure you can hold an ass and a boob at the same time. I'm just saying that you should grab the boob first!"
"What a load of horse shit! You can grab whatever you want at any point during the process. It keeps things interesting."
"Or it makes yer girl surprised and twitchy."
"I've never gotten any complaints!"
"Of course you haven't. You've never touched a woman's ass in your life!"
"Say that again, you goitered piece of filth!"
"Guys?" Rapunzel tries, wanting to avoid a fight before they finish explaining everything. That would be awful.
Eugene decides that he's had just about enough. Flynn Rider would never put up with this. He should kick everyone in the room's ass, then drag Blondie away and tell her about sex with graphic and horrifying demonstrations. Or not. Yeah, definitely not. Maybe they should just slip out while no one is paying attention. He nudges Rapunzel in the side. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
She looks almost betrayed when she looks at him. "But I'm learning."
"You're not going to learn anything from these idiots."
"Who are you calling an idiot?" Hookhand shouts, disengaging his hook from his ale to wave it threateningly in Eugene's direction.
"You two," he snaps. "Seems to me that neither one of you have any style when it comes to pleasuring women. You've got no finesse. No flair. No…" he thinks for a moment before his face slips into a smirk and his voice grows huskier, "Je ne sais quoi."
Rapunzel feels her face heating from his words, and then- Oh! Now she understands what that weird voice he uses sometimes means. Wow!
"Alright, smart ass, what would you do next?"
"Depends," Eugene says, covering his complete and utter embarrassment with self aggrandizement, because – honestly – why didn't he think of doing that earlier? Just another sign that he's going soft. "Such things require subtlety. A delicate touch."
Rapunzel feels faint. She thinks she might have been better off clueless as to just how attractive Eugene is, because right now she can't think straight. All she can do is picture dragging his face down and kissing him – those long kisses too, the ones that heat her stomach and pull away her breath. He wasn't even looking at her and he's still having the effect of making her want to grab him. She takes a sip of her beer in hopes of cooling the warmth that's washed over her. Instead she is distracted by how bitter the drink is. She makes a face and coughs. How can people drink this stuff?
"That sounds like a whole bunch of fancy talk for how you don't know," Hookhand says.
Eugene shrugs. "I'm just saying that there's no clear cut way to go about things."
"Fine," Big Nose says. "But for the purposes of this discussion-"
"Oh, we're still talking about this?"
"-it's easier to explain above the waist first."
"Whatever," Hookhand grumps.
"Touching above the waist means the stomach, right?" Rapunzel asks. She almost knows about that. She feels briefly proud of herself before remembering that she should feel scared and guilty. She shoots a look at Eugene and he can feel the Flynn mask shielding his flushed, stuttering self start to crack.
"I guess so," says Big Nose, scratching his head as if this has never occurred to him before. (It hasn't.) "But it's mostly about boobs."
"Boobs?" Rapunzel asks.
Eugene is determinedly not looking at her, so he murmurs the word out of the corner of his mouth. "Breasts."
Oh! She shoots a look at Eugene's chest and quickly looks away. There's something about it that she likes. She knows that she herself has smallish breasts because Gothel always told her not to be too upset about their size, so when she first met Eugene she was excited to know that there was someone out there who was flatter than she was. Poor Eugene. Even the unkempt men in front of them have more impressive busts. She wonders if he ever feels self conscious. She hopes not, because there's something about the broad, taut planes of his chest that makes her feel a bit weak.
The men begin to expound upon the many fantastic things about breasts, none of which sound very comfortable to Rapunzel, but the men seem to like it so she pays attention so she can try everything on Eugene later.
"And you can squeeze them-"
"-and suck them –"
"- and bite them. Not too hard, mind you, but… still."
"-and tweak them –"
"I once knew this whore who used to take- Ow! What the hell, Rider? Don't kick me! I'm telling the girlie for your own good." There's a THUMP from under the table and Eugene cringes as Hookhand returns the kick to his shins. Eugene strikes back, hitting Big Nose by mistake, and the three of them collapse into a mad scuffle of kicking legs under the table, ending with Eugene standing up in his seat and climbing over the table to get out. He doesn't make it very far before he's grabbed by three other patrons, who dog pile him as the whole tavern explodes into a brawl.
Eugene is very pleased with himself despite the bloody nose. Bar fights are the best way to end awkward conversations.