Oh hey, everyone ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

Everybody ready for Flynn to be a self-serving, manipulative piece of garbage who has no clue he's about to get his shit rocked?

:D

Flynn's dark eyes moved over the room. Packed with bodies, people laughing, shouting, huddled together whispering, coins changing hands, tankards being sloshed and spilled, the whole place rumbled with energy. The low ceiling with heavy beams seemed to amplify the sound, pressing it all in around him.

No obvious threats detected, he went back to her bag. He had sent her to the barkeep with instructions and a coin and only had a minute before she returned. She had not wanted to part from him. He could see she was anxious at the suggestion she go alone into the crowd, but he had insisted she do it if she were ever going to adjust. Giving her a winning smile and a gentle pep-talk, promising that he'd keep an eye on her the whole time had worked like a charm. And speaking of charms...

He saw through touch, hand in the bag under the table's edge, feeling for anything unfamiliar. The sputtering candle melting directly onto the graveyard of other waxy stubs on the center of the table did not offer much illumination.

He could feel combs, a piece of soap, fabrics- nothing that felt like a bottle. No coins. No jewelry. No potions. Maybe she wasn't a witch after all?

No weapons, either, he noted, displeased. She was woefully unprepared. In a little pang of conscience, Flynn told himself he would leave her a knife wherever he abandoned her.

He watched as she broke out of the crowd then, weaving between the tables and heading toward him, focusing hard on not spilling the contents of the two tankards she carried. Her hair was covered now. At a cottage half an hour before the inn, he had lifted a cloak from the back step's hook and swung it around her shoulders, pulling the hood up and over her head. With her hair gathered up and resting partially in the fall of the hood, none trailed on the floor. He couldn't exactly walk her in here and expect no one to notice. They were still too close to the tower. She could be recognized by her mother, or someone her mother knew. Importantly, he knew she would be remembered if people saw her hair, and he didn't want anyone remembering he had been seen with her. He needed plausible deniability at every stage of this disaster. How was this going to work?

"This is the first time I've ever paid for something," Rapunzel confessed, quietly excited. She then frowned at the drink, smell not what she was expecting as she brought it to her mouth. He smiled at this privately, hiding it by taking a drink of his own.

"This is horrible," she ventured, looking at him, uneasy.

"You get used to it. The more you drink it, the more you get used to it," he conceded, inclining his head toward her tankard, encouraging her. "And paying for something that turns out to be horrible is...not uncommon," he chuckled.

"Why would I want to get used to something horrible?" she half laughed.

"Because that's what life is, Rhapsody. It's getting used to many, many new and horrible things, one after another, each worse than the last."

Her face fell at his sincerity. His voice was hard. Resigned, she took a sip, and refused to let herself make a face.

A crooked smile took him at this, eyes crinkling, and he regarded her over the rim of his tankard.

"My name is Rapunzel," she reminded him flatly. And maybe life is being used to the same horrible thing all the time, she thought. She was not going to waste this opportunity.

He could see she was ill at ease, uncomfortable under the too big cloak, nervous about being recognized now that he had brought it up, out of her depth in a crowded and noisy room, struggling with the taste of the ale, complaining about a headache, a lot on her mind - perfect. She might even ask him to take her back tomorrow morning, without the need to ditch her on the road. One night of strange rebellion would be enough. A few drinks with a thief at an inn and a sweaty night in an upstairs room? He was feeling more relaxed than he had in hours. He had options.

"Some place, huh?" he wondered, casually scanning the room as he eased back into the bench. "Everybody's out tonight- that guy in the corner just got out of prison last week, I'm pretty sure...the working girls have been waiting for him, from the looks of it."

She started to twist her whole body around to look beyond the billow of her cloak's hood and Flynn reached out across the small table to stop her, exasperated.

"Don't make eye contact! That's an invitation."

"Invitation for what?"

"Trouble," he emphasized, finishing his drink, hoping all of this was starting to worry her. There was a fine line he had to walk. He needed her on edge, but reliant on him. Whether he decided to leave her or keep her, he needed her to need him and distrust everyone else. It was the best way of staying in control.

He pointed wordlessly at her drink, eyebrows raising in question. She nodded, letting him slide it to himself.

He took another gulp, before training his gaze back on her. He leaned in, quiet. He had to know. He already had her here. He knew she needed him as a guide and had some kind of business in Corona, and whatever it was seemed important enough to her to challenge and blackmail a man much bigger than she was in the isolation of the tower he had found her in. He should have intimidated her, but she didn't seem to fear him. Certainly, she was wary of him, but not afraid. Was it because she had already bested him when she surprised him with that blow to the head? Or was it because she had some power he wasn't privy to? Depending on what she said, he would either leave her in Vinmur tomorrow night so he could return to the tower, or he could-

"Are you a witch?"

The question hung in the air between them, right over the candle. He searched her face as she opened her mouth, but then didn't speak. The candle's light cast a fuzzy warmth on both of their faces, and he watched the light reflect in her green eyes, honeying them to a disarming yellow. He watched her thinking, waiting for a tell.

"No," she decided, but quietly, like she wasn't sure. The room narrowed and the hollow feeling of vertigo spread in the palms of her hands. He knew something. Knew something, or suspected it.

He grinned. "You're a horrible liar."

She watched his face change, eyes suddenly alive in a way that said he'd discovered something important, something valuable.

"You are, aren't you?" he encouraged, delighted. His face was even more gorgeous then, and it made her heart sink.

"I'm not, I'm just-"

"So what are you?"

He looked fascinated and she felt her cheeks burning under his insistent gaze and the way his canine tooth glinted as he smiled wider and wider watching her discomfort.

Possibilities were suddenly swirling. Options. His own witch. She couldn't be that dangerous if she needed him to escort her. And she could be valuable- people paid good money for good magic.

"You can trust me," he offered, softening his face and sliding down a little to make himself smaller in front of her. Maybe he wouldn't take her back immediately. The crown was a one-time payment, but it was also safe for the moment. A witch was many months of returns.

She didn't say anything. She had the feeling anything she said would only encourage this belief of his and lead to more questions.

He waited, before shrugging and dipping his head as if at peace with defeat. "Okay. We don't have to talk about it. But it's important you know what a bad liar you are," he explained, eyes laughing. "If you're going to go anywhere with me, we need to work on that."

She grinned at him suspiciously. "You're going to teach me to lie?"

"Sure," he nodded, taking another drink. "You seem pretty quick. I'm sure you can take instruction. So, here's rule one of lying: you gotta have a good exit strategy in the event it falls apart. And right now, with all that-" he gestured around his face, indicating all the hair she had tucked inside her hood, barely kept out of sight under the hem of the cloak, "you're going nowhere fast. We gotta do something about that if we're going to be covering distances. Why don't you cu-"

"I can't cut it," she said immediately, stopping him. He raised his eyebrows. Studying her, he saw that she meant it. She couldn't. It wasn't an option. Something like fear passed over her face at the suggestion.

"Okay," he breathed out, to placate her. He raked a hand through his hair and then dragged it over his face, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. "Okay. Something else then."

Flynn rolled his shoulder, trying to loosen the muscles in his neck. He had slept on the floor the night before, facing toward the door, using his leather jerkin rolled up for a pillow. He had had poorer sleep and slept in far worse places, but knowing that there was a bed right there...and a bed he had paid for...

She had refused to share the bed. It hadn't been a fight. She hadn't told him to sleep on the floor. In fact, she had told him to take the bed and was in the process of lowering herself onto the floor when he stopped her and conceded. Still, he was annoyed. Frustrated with her for not entertaining him, and irked with himself for giving in and being a chump who chose the floor. Maybe he had misjudged the situation. For a girl so ready to go off with him alone, she did not seem inclined to share her body. He had seen her looking at him- often- but there was a hesitancy there. Gods, he must be rusty, or not looking his best. Maybe these past months on the road had taken a toll. She had even pulled away from his hand on her shoulder. The next time there was only one bed, he would let her sleep on the floor.

After the impromptu late-night hairdressing session he'd arranged, rather ingeniously too, there were only a few hours left for sleep, and he'd used her stolen cloak as a blanket, telling himself that she was already stressed and he didn't want to be on a witch's bad side. He let her pull her dress back on completely and get into bed alone. He kept his distance. He needed her to start to trust him.

The closest they had been throughout the night and into the morning was at daybreak when she'd woken him, a curtain of hair falling around him when he opened his eyes to her face above him. It was disorienting- like waking in a golden room. With light coming in through the window, she didn't seem uncomfortable with him joining her on the bed then, with her sitting on the edge, him behind her, pulling most of her hair into a wide braid while she worked on a braid of her own at the front. Her smaller braid had been looped over and around her head, forming a crown. When she turned around and smiled at him in thanks, her hands going back to feel the newly-learned braid he had attempted, he had taken the opportunity to run his fingertips over the braided crown in the guise of smoothing down errant hairs. Stupidly, he had told her, "you look like a little queen", and she had smiled even brighter at this. He didn't know why he had said this or why her smile had made him smile too. Something about having his hands in her hair had given him that strange warm feeling again.

Even now, he tensed and flexed his hands- they felt good. He couldn't feel the old ache from the broken finger. And, looking down at them, the blackened bloody scabs that had marred the knuckles on his right hand were gone. Smooth skin. The scrape on the pad of his left hand had gone. Old callouses were soft.

"Queenie?" he wondered, looking over to her just behind him, and found her massaging one hand in the other, brow furrowed as if in discomfort. She immediately schooled her face and smiled at him. He frowned.

"What's the plan for today?" she asked, making sure to keep her smile in place as she watched his eyes move over her face. He seemed suspicious. Her hands ached, as if she had hit something hard with closed fists. Healing his hands had been unconscious on her part. She hadn't meant to. She hadn't hummed or thought any incantation. She hadn't focused herself to the task. There had just been something so warming about the way it felt with him so close to her, trying his best, little huffs of frustrations escaping him as he worked so intently on the braid. She hadn't expected the pain to bloom and then flare in her hands, just like she hadn't expected the throbbing in her skull when she'd healed him in the tower.

They had already been walking for two hours, mostly in what she hoped was companionable silence. He seemed lost in thought. She hoped he wasn't upset about sleeping on the floor. He had offered her the bed readily as soon as she'd refused to share. Part of her had wanted him to lay down beside her, but she had panicked. After he had come in with the woman while she had been undressing, and then stared at her so intently while the woman showed him different ways to tie her hair back, all while she'd had to hold her dress up against herself, and his hands brushed against her naked back and neck when he was instructed to try something- it had overwhelmed her and she had needed distance from him. Watching him walk ahead of her, and seeing him rolling his shoulders around, rubbing his neck, carrying both of their bags, made her feel guilty about it. The next time there was only one bed, she would let him take it.

"We're a day's walk from the next town. We'll get there by nightfall if we keep to this road and don't take too many breaks."

The narrow road stretched out ahead of them, before disappearing around a curve. Flowers and weeds protruded from the grassy verge that ran alongside its edges. Trees hung overhead, branches reaching out to almost meet, forming a near canopy. The light that filtered through mottled the ground. Worn carriage tracks had left deep grooves.

"You seem to know your way very well," she ventured, trying to be friendly, wanting him to smile.

Honestly, getting him to say anything would be a start. He had been so quiet since last night. Being with someone she could talk to freely was so new, and so far, it had been stilted and awkward. Not the expansive conversations she had imagined. She had read so many plays and books, and all the easy-flowing dialogue between the characters had told her to prepare for him to be lyrical and expressive. Instead, his interactions with her were short. He held himself back from her. Sometimes he was sullen, sometimes he was teasing, and other times he said something surprisingly gentle, but always he was closing. He spoke with a finality that didn't invite much more once he'd finished.

"I picked the right guide."

" 'Picked' ?" he laughed. "Blackmailed, actually."

Further away from her, without a handful of her hair, it was easier to see her for what she was- an opportunity. A very, very pretty opportunity, he would admit, but still. He could tell there was something valuable in front of him. She would need to be adjusted to the idea of a working partnership while he lead them further and further away from her tower if he was ever going to get a return out of her, and for that to work she needed to trust him and see him as a completely neutral companion. If she was worried about impropriety from him, she would never agree to work for him- For him? With him? With him, he soothed himself. He needed her to feel safe and that he wouldn't take advantage of her, since she obviously was already uncomfortable with sharing a bed or letting him touch her in any state of undress. And once she was at ease with him, with no expectation he was likely to crawl onto her at night, she needed to understand that she still owed him something in exchange for all this. That crown was his- not hers to give back to him. She had offered nothing new. Appealing to her guilt then would be easy- he would have wrapped her around his finger so closely by that point, she would surely divulge her powers to him. Maybe her guilt would get to her first. Maybe before he even had to ask she would offer to start doing tricks and spells for money to earn her keep. He felt like the only clarity he'd had over the past two unexpected days had been when he was a few feet away from her and those green eyes.

Rapunzel scowled when he didn't respond as she wanted him to. She had been waiting for so long for someone to talk to. "Listen, I am trying to be nice."

"Yes, you 'picked' the right guide. Out of all your many choices, might I add? I'm so honoured," he drawled, hand going to his chest, as if moved by her.

The town several hours ahead was where he had been planning to give her the slip. Vinmur was perfect for abandoning her. Not too close, not too far, and it had a small chapter of a Good Order, if he remembered correctly. There was still time to work on her before deciding finally.

"Are you mad with me?" she wondered. "You were so kind this morning," she protested, hand instinctively coming to rest on the wide braid that fell over the front of her shoulder out of the sagging hem of her cloak's hood. Not her cloak, she corrected herself. He had stolen this.

"I tend to be nice to any girl I get into a bed with," he laughed, broaching the subject. "It improves your chances."

Flynn watched her face work before she settled on setting her jaw. Interestingly, not all of the expressions that flashed before him were outrage. "That is not-"

"Not going to happen? Yep, I got it," he breezed, raising his hands. "Just roadfellows, you and I. Don't worry," he waved, "I could tell you're not into me. That's why I didn't do anything. I'm not going to do anything," he promised. This was going to be his mantra until she believed it thoroughly.

A little thrill of disgust passed through her. "Are you only helping me because you want-"

His eyebrows shot up, eyes widening at her, real exasperation slipping out. Kind of a low blow to assume he would agree to a months-long journey just so he could fuck her. How desperate did she think he was? Wait, was that why she didn't seem interested in him? Did she think he was more interested in chasing her skirt than he was in getting his payout? Was he so beneath her she thought the idea of dangling herself in front of him was reason enough for him to go along with all of this?

"I want my crown back! Believe me when I say I don't want anything to do with you, except you returning my crown as soon as possible. Let's not make this something it's not. I won't try anything with you, you don't try anything with me, and we get on with this epic misadventure," he concluded, looking back to the road.

She balked. "But-"

"Ah, ah! Let's have a nice quiet walk."

He could feel her stare on the back of his neck as he walked on, away from her. Fuck. That hadn't come out exactly right. She had just irked him so deeply, unexpectedly. He fumed. Promising a witch you want nothing to do with her and then picking a fight was probably not the best course of action to establish a companionable business venture.