Chapter 34
The king, queen, and Eugene look up as Goldie bursts into breakfast the next morning, the only indication that she's lost any sleep being that she's ten minutes late. She beams at them, then dashes forward, skidding to a stop next to Eugene to kiss his cheek before she bounces over to her father.
"Guess what!"
The king raises an amused eyebrow.
"I'm getting married!" She throws her arms out in a grand ta-dah gesture. Then she squeals, throws her arms around her father and somehow manages to bounce up and down while hugging him. The king chuckles and pats her hand, but she's already dancing around his chair to beam at the queen.
As she inhales Blondie draws herself up, tall and thin and shivering with excitement. She balls her hands up against her chest. "Isn't it exciting, mama! Eeee!" She claps her hands together then presses them over her mouth to hold back some small portion of her joy.
Eugene takes a bite of toast. She spent most of the morning before dawn bouncing on his bed, skipping around his room, and listing all the amazing things they could do once they were married.
"You get to have a ring too. Of course yours won't be as nice as mine. Mine's gorgeous. Oh, Eugene, it's so pretty!... And then we can sleep in the same room and I won't have to wake up so early and leave, and I won't have to sneak around the guards. Their patrols have changed lately. It's kind of hard to get past them these days."
He's gotten pretty good at just letting her do her thing when she gets this excited, waiting patiently for it to stop without interrupting.
"That's wonderful, dear," the queen says.
"Are you pregnant?" the king asks.
Eugene chokes on his toast.
The queen sighs and her voice turns chiding, "Richard."
"What? It's just a question."
Goldie answers in a dreamy voice with a giggle that is completely inappropriate to how horrifying the moment is. "No."
"Ah." The king turns to Eugene, and asks in a tone of mild concern, "Are you doing something wrong?"
Eugene chokes on his toast again.
"Richard."
"Oh well, maybe someday. That'll be really exciting."
"My getting married's not exciting enough?"
"Honestly?"
Rapunzel nods.
The king shrugs. "I thought you already were married."
"You did not," the queen says.
"Yes, I did. I eventually figured it out. But still, I suppose the thrill isn't as great if you start out thinking something like that. Pass the butter."
Eugene passes the butter.
"Don't listen to him, dear," the queen says, taking Goldie's hand. "He's excited, you can tell. He's just pretending he's not. We're both very happy for you. Both of you."
Rapunzel beams.
She doesn't stop beaming for a good week and a half.
Eugene has only been to one wedding before. The groom was one of his buddies (not a great buddy, but as close as Flynn ever got,) who had knocked up his on-again-off-again girlfriend. The wedding was mostly an excuse for everyone to laugh at the dumb sap as he marched to his doom. That and get really drunk.
It was awesome. But Eugene is under no delusions that his wedding will be anything like that. He does hope that there's booze, but he doesn't hold out a lot of hope. Probably just a bunch of pompousness and a big show for the nobility, that will cost more money than the castle he once wanted. He'll probably have to wear one of those jackets with the high collar that he despises. But after that his imagination dries up. Not that he even wants to think about what kinds of fancy tortures will be involved in a royal wedding.
In short, Eugene has no clue what's coming.
Neither does Rapunzel.
"Can Pascal be my flower girl? He's not a girl, but he's not particular about labels anymore since he got used to Eugene calling him a frog."
"I already have a lot of dresses. Why can't I just wear one of those? Some of them are very nice."
"I know the greatest concert pianist in the world! He can do the music. He'll be so excited when I tell him."
"Can the cake be chocolate? I love chocolate cake. Mmmm. Oh! I know! We can have one layer be chocolate and one layer be red velvet and one layer be… Wait, they do come in layers, right?"
She wants to invite the pub thugs so desperately that the party planning committee eventually caves. It then comes to her attention that she doesn't actually know any of their names, and Eugene has to fill her in (making up a few last names as he goes through the list.) He thinks it's just asking for trouble to invite "Lenard 'Big Nose' Wilson & Guest," but he keeps it to himself.
The party planning committee is frightening, and any leeway he and Rapunzel are given is taken with gusto.
Eugene gives his opinion fairly often in the beginning. This opinion is mostly along the lines of, "No," or "Hell no." They start outright ignoring him, and he then decides that he needs to pick his battles better. He needs to find just the right thing to push on the party planning committee that will disrupt their plans most effectively and still get him something he wants. After much deliberation, he pushes for a particular brand of beer and the release of a bazillion floating lanterns. It helps that Goldie and the queen are behind him one hundred percent on one, and the king's behind him on the other.
Having gotten his way on both of these, he backs down and lets the party planning committee do what they want. As long as he's married by the end of the day, he doesn't care.
The only time in the entire process that they actually ask his opinion is when they ask who his best man is.
"I don't know. Can Pascal do it?"
"Pascal," the committee member says with a distinct tinge of disdain and sarcasm, "already has multiple roles in the ceremony. It would be rude to ask him to bear any more responsibilities."
"Huh. Well, how about Max?"
The party planning committee is not amused. A week later he's informed that Lord Wesley will do the honor of being his best man, and Eugene is shocked to hear that the kid's head didn't explode when he was asked.
After his failure to find himself a best friend who isn't an animal or the person he's marrying, the party planning committee gives up on asking him questions and turns to just telling him things. They burst in as he's being given a lecture on economics and tell him to stand up so they can take his measurements. The worst part of this isn't that he has to strip off several layers of clothes while three people poke at him with measuring tapes in the middle of the library. No, the worst part is that his instructor keeps talking through the whole ordeal.
Then they burst in on a lesson about the inner workings of the judicial system to hold up bolts of cloth to his face and comment on how "this shade makes him look peaky."
And then there's the dancing lessons. The party planning committee has cleared out one of the smaller banquet halls, which is still obscenely large, so that he can practice, and the most renowned dancing instructor to have ever graced the word with his presence, a mediocre pianist, and the queen are all there to watch him screw up. At least Rapunzel's there too. She already knows how to dance and her presence makes him calmer at things like these.
"I don't dance," he says, crossing his arms over his chest.
"You have to, Eugene," the queen tells him from her seat next to the piano. She doesn't even bother looking up from her book.
Why is it even necessary? Last time he checked, all he had to do was sign some papers and say, "I do." Since when was dancing a requirement for the process?
"I don't dance."
"Yes, you do. I've seen you," Goldie says. She turns to beam at the instructor. "He sings too."
Despite the princess' pride in this fact, the instructor is unimpressed. Dancing is an acceptable manly past time. Singing is not. Eugene scratches at his eyebrow and mutters, "I don't sing either."
This – of course – causes her to burst into song, bobbing up and down to the beat of her own voice and using hand gestures that he vaguely remembers using. God, he must have looked like a fool.
"I've got dreams like you, no really. Just much less touchy feely. They mainly happen somewhere warm and sunny!"
"I was threatened into doing that."
"On an island that I own, tanned and rested and alone-"
He snatches up her hand, pulls her against his chest, and locks a hand over the small of her back, effectively ending her song. Her eyes widen in surprise – an expression that easily slips into a grin.
He shots her a glare he doesn't really mean, then turns it on the instructor. "It's like this, right?"
Behind him he hears the queen's delicate cough that she uses to cover up her laugh as the instructor adjusts everything about his posture. After a few basic instructions the music starts, and under the cover of a sluggish waltz, Goldie giggles into his ear.
"Surrounded by enormous piles of money!"
He pulls her closer, not enough to get him yelled at, but close enough that she can't see his smirk.
One day the party planning committee bursts in during dinner and drags him away so he can try on his outfit. He stands on a little box in front of multiple mirrors while a whole mess of tailors have him step into this and shrug on that and button this up. There's a long line of hooks down the front of his jacket, and suddenly he's very relieved that Goldie knows how to work hooks. He smirks. The best part of this outfit will be taking it off.
He likes the boots though. Those are nice. They don't fit in the way that new boots never fit, and he wonders if he's going to be allowed to break them in. Did you know that you can eat boots if you get really, really hungry? Eugene does. Of course it's always better to try to sell them before you try to eat them. You get more meals out of them that way. And the ones he's wearing right now could buy him something like a hundred meals.
One of the tailors adjusts his baldric, then as one the crowd around him steps backwards and he's able to see himself in the mirrors.
He stares at his reflection.
And he just keeps staring, because damn it, he looks good.
Ok, maybe this outfit isn't so bad.
He swallows and runs a hand over his baldric, fingering the sun medallion resting against his chest. This is what he'll look like when he gets married. Complete with stupid expression. He blinks and realizes that everyone is staring at him and he's not upholding his usual levels of obnoxiousness.
"Can't you do something about this collar?" He tugs at it, but he doesn't think he's fooling anyone.
"No," one tailor snaps, and they're on him again, inserting straight pins into his sleeves and his pants and the back of his jacket for alterations. He holds very still and stares at the only part of himself that he can see: his stupid expression.
As soon as they let him loose, he tracks down Rapunzel and pulls her against him, into a fierce kiss in the middle of the hallway. He doesn't notice if people are watching him. He doesn't care. All he knows is that he feels like he's been kicked in the chest and he's not sure if it's a good feeling or not. He needs her to help him pull himself back together and remind him what the hell is going on.
He closes his eyes and all there is is her, her breath and her mouth, her arms around his shoulders, her waist in his hands. The smell of her, the heat of her, the way she melts against his chest, it all washes over him and after a moment that tightness in his chest dissipates. He lightens his kiss into something more soothing, something more caring and respectful and much less needy.
She sighs as he pulls away, and smiles up at him with eyes so bright it makes him a little giddy. Not that he'll ever admit that.
"Are you freaking out?" she asks.
"No. I'm all done."
"Ok." She gives him a peck, then continues on her way, off to a tea with the ladies from the kingdom's public library system.