Chapter 33
Eugene's eyes snap open as someone desperately shouts his name. She's still above him, her eyes full of fear, but her face is darker now, almost blurry. The pain in his side is excruciating, and he can feel her trying to pry his hand away. He fights her, because if he doesn't keep pressure on it he'll bleed to death.
"Shh. It's alright," she murmurs, her voice quavering in a way that tells him that it is not going to be alright at all. He is going to die.
He is going to die.
And there was something he had to do… something very important… something…
He pulls her down and kisses her with a fiery passion, with everything he has left, with the last air left in his lungs - her first kiss, his last kiss – and he pours so much into it, too much, but he wants her to know. Before he dies he needs her to know.
She pulls back far too soon, and immediately turns back to his hand as if he hadn't done anything at all but distract her momentarily. She grabs his wrist with both hands and pulls.
"Stop it, Eugene. You're going to hurt yourself."
He doesn't know what she means by that, and he drops his eyes to the stab wound in his side.
His hand is clenched unnaturally, his fingers buried in his flesh as if he's trying to hold in the blood and pull the rip back together through physical force. He can feel the dig of his short fingernails against his skin. The image is downright frightening.
In his surprise, she pulls his hand free, and amazingly the pain begins to fade. Aside from a deep bruise that he'll find in the morning, he's unharmed. Holding his hand up to his face, he stares at it in confusion.
There's no blood.
It was a dream.
It was just a dream and he's perfectly safe and everything is alright and…
"Shh." She reaches out to cup his face, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "It's alright. It was just a nightmare. You're alright now."
He stares at her, and she takes his hand again before he can panic. She's gentle with it this time, cradling it against her breast, his palm over her heart. She lowers her head and closes her eyes and takes a deep, calming breath that stutters as she exhales.
He's too shaken to do anything else but stare at her. His blood pounds through the veins of his arm, through his head, the pulse visible through his skin, hammering against his chest so hard it hurts. He bows his own head and closes his eyes and tries to breathe. He concentrates on finding Rapunzel's heartbeat through the adrenaline, pumping so strongly that everything else is hard to hear. He breathes and tries to calm down. He tries to find her again.
They stay like that for a long time, sitting and facing one another with lowered heads and lowered eyes. The panic fades like a wave rolling back into the ocean. The moment clears and he can again distinguish between the memory and the present. He sighs with relief when he can finally feel her steady heartbeat against his palm, a little flutter of something real.
She scoots backwards to lean against the footboard, pulling him along with her to settle his head against her breast. Her heartbeat thrums reassuringly in his ear, and she's so small and soft that he worries about using her as a pillow like this. He might squish her. She pulls his arms around her waist, then rubs his back, running a soothing hand through his hair.
Being this close to her is calming, the feel of her gentle fingers in his hair, the press of her cheek against the top of his head, the way they seem to meld perfectly together.
He inhales the scent of her, releasing a warm gust of breath against her breast, making her breath catch ever so slightly, which brings the ghost of a smile to his face.
"It's unnatural for you to be quiet this long," he says, annoyed that his voice sounds so much like a croak.
"I'm trying to keep myself from singing to you. I don't think you'd like that."
"Yeah. Please don't." If she starts singing, he's going to have the world's most epic panic attack.
"I've been getting better about not saying everything I think." Or singing every time she feels like it.
"I know. But you don't have to filter what you say around me. Talk to me, Goldie. It'll make me feel like a normal person again."
She thinks for a moment as he closes his eyes and tries to sink into her.
"Being held like this used to help me when I had nightmares when I was little. But I was much littler than you are, so I was probably easier to hold."
"I'll bet."
"It used to make me feel safe. Just being held. And I would fall back asleep in the warmth of my hair and the sound of my mother singing…" Her hand freezes mid stroke, and her whole body tenses. He looks up to see her staring, unseeing at the picture of Pascal hung over his bed. "I just realized that- ugg!"
She moves to push him off, but he's already scrambled back. "Yep, that's enough of that."
She presses both her hands against her forehead and groans. "That was one of my good memories! And she was just using me. Oh, she was just using me all the time."
"Here, switch with me." He pats her hip to get her to budge over, but she doesn't.
"No, I'm comforting you."
He doesn't know what to say to that, because she's not really doing a very good job so far, what with bringing up the woman who stabbed him. But telling her this will hurt her feelings.
"And I want to be taller than you," she adds.
He raises an eyebrow.
"What? It doesn't happen very often."
"Alright," he says. He scoots down to use her stomach as a pillow, wrapping one arm around her hips and sliding the other up her thigh under her night dress. He decides that this is significantly different from anything Gothel would ever do and is therefore acceptable. After a moment, she comes to the same conclusion and runs a hand back through his hair.
"I never knew how awful she was before I came here. Now it's like every day I realize some new way she was mean."
"Ignorance is bliss."
She frowns. "Is it?"
He shrugs. "That's how the saying goes."
"Huh." She thinks it over for a moment. "I heard something else like that a few days ago. My oration tutor said, 'What you don't know can't hurt you.'"
"Unless you don't know that there's an alligator in your closet and you walk in and it eats you."
"I think he meant something more figurative. Like how I didn't know about anything outside my tower, so I didn't know what I was missing and I couldn't get upset about it. Or like kissing. I used to be perfectly happy not kissing and now I don't know how I ever survived."
Eugene has to smirk at that one.
"I don't know if ignorance is bliss," she says. "I was content in the tower, but I don't think I was happy. I didn't know what it was to be happy, so I didn't know that I didn't have it. Does that make sense?"
"Yeah."
"What about you, were you happy?"
"I thought I was. Now I'm not so sure."
She grins down at him. "Are you happy now? I'm happy now."
"Blondie, I'm ecstatic."
"Good… But what if there's something more. Like some other level of happy that neither of us have thought of yet, and right now we're not really as happy as we could be?" She looks down at him with a hint of anxiety.
"Deep," he says.
"I'm serious."
"I know. But it's not something to really worry about. That's what 'ignorance is bliss' means. If you're always worrying about all the things you don't know, you're going to drive yourself crazy."
"That's true," she says, not sounding convinced.
"Think of it like if you're always chasing something better, all you're really doing is running." He smirks up at her. "And anyway, I think the life you've got is pretty good."
"Of course it is! That's not what I meant. You know I love you and Pascal."
"Me and Pascal?"
"Yes." Her voice drops to a whisper, "I think he's listening."
He snorts, because he's used to that joke by now. He plants a kiss against the silk covering her stomach before snuggling deeper against her, rubbing his thumb over the soft skin of her leg.
"Are you feeling better yet?" She whispers it as though if the answer is "no" then they can pretend she didn't ask and she can keep talking about something else.
"Much."
"Good." Her shoulders sink in relief and she smiles down at him in a way that makes him feel as though his insides have warmed and then melted to seep down into his stomach. He probably looks like a sappy idiot grinning back at her, but he doesn't really care.
She's just so sweet, and caring, and lovely, and genuine, and… and her skin smells really, really good.
He has this crazy urge to-
"Rapunzel." He props himself up on an elbow before he cuts himself off and clears his throat.
"What's wrong?"
"I- Just let me get this out first, ok?"
She nods, that unsure pucker returning to her eyebrows.
"Ok… ok… I am really happy. Here. With you."
She smiles.
"And I think that this is perfect and I can't really ask for anything more and I really don't want to mess it up."
"You won't."
"I might. You never know."
She has to give him that one.
"Yeah, so I don't want to mess it up. And that's why getting married…"
"…Scares you?"
"I'm not scared."
"Oh."
"No. I just- When people get married they stop trying and then they start hating each other, and the girl starts nagging and the guy stops hiding all his bad habits-"
"That's not true."
"It is of all the married people I know." Which isn't very many people.
"My parents are married. Did you forget about them?"
He had. It's just that they're so peachy all the time and don't constantly complain about each other that they kind of blend into the background of this discussion. Eugene decides that he's not going to let this one counterexample throw off his train of thought.
"Mine weren't," he says.
"Your father was."
"Yeah, to someone else. He was the best husband ever. A fantastic example of wholesome family living." He thinks about throwing in a "hurray!" but then decides that enough sarcasm is enough.
Her response is matter of fact. "You're not going to end up like him, Eugene."
This gives him pause too. Maybe that's the real problem here and he just hasn't thought of it before.
"And I already know all your bad habits. Unless you have more. Do you have more?"
"No. I've got enough as it is."
"And what do you think I'll stop trying to do?"
He's actually not quite sure, because the answers he comes up with don't really make any sense with regards to Rapunzel. Trying to impress him. Trying to look extra pretty. Trying to get in his pants.
"Look," he says, "I'm just trying to explain how I'm… hesitant… about change-"
"Getting married won't really change anything," she says, interrupting him.
His speech is in total chaos now and he doesn't even remember where he was going with this. Where was he going with this? Why did he bring this up? What is wrong with him?
"When you love someone you get married, so you can be together and love each other forever. It's a way to keep things the same, not change them."
"That's a fairy tale, Goldie."
She leans down to look him full in the face. "I have magic tears that bring people I love back to life when I sing. We're kinda past fairy tales now."
They stare at each other, and her face is so funny that he wants to laugh and so serious that he wants to gulp. "You're really not making this easy for me."
"You make it hard on yourself."
"… That's a good point."
"And what am I supposed to be making easy for you anyway?"
"If you'd just let me finish-"
"But I've heard these arguments before."
"Rapunzel."
"And I'm tired."
"Rapunzel."
"And you really scared me with your nightmare and shouting my name in your sleep."
"Rapunzel."
"Why don't we just-"
"Marry me."
"-drop the whole thing and- What?"
"Marry me?"
She stares at him, face completely slack, eyes widening by the moment. He raises an eyebrow at her, which snaps her back into the present, into a moment of desperate exasperation.
"Eugene!" she groans. "That was the worst proposal ever!"
"Get proposed to often?"
"Yes. I've been proposed to three times and this one was the worst. You're lucky I like you."
"What? When?"
"And what was all that about us not liking each other?"
"I don't know! It sounded better in my head."
"Oh, Eugene."
"So is this a 'yes' or what? Because it would kind of suck for you to say 'no' after you've been bugging me about it for months, and I got you that stupid ring and everything."
"Ring?"
"Oh! Right!"
A moment later, with the ring box in her hand, the giddy excitement begins to boil up and spread across her face, which was the reaction he'd expected in the first place. She throws her arms around him and kisses him, dozens of little excited kisses all over his face. The cool metal of the ring is in sharp contrast to the warmth of her hand as it presses into his shoulder. He finds himself grinning into a kiss in the moment before they topple over.