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“Okay, first real date. It’s fine,” Rapunzel says to Pascal, blowing out a breath as she looks at herself in the full length mirror in her bedroom. “But this is the outfit, right?”

She smooths down the sleeveless dress before pulling on the denim jacket and stepping into a pair of purple flats. Her hair is braided with flowers and thin purple ribbons woven in and she’s wearing the earrings that Peter got her for her birthday.

Pascal scampers up her shoulder and fixes a stray piece of hair before giving her a thumbs up. She smiles and takes him gently in her hands to set him on the pillow in the middle of the sofa, where he has access to the remote and snacks. Rapunzel and Pascal are a package deal and she’s pretty sure Peter knows that, but she figured they could use some privacy, at least on the first date.

“Okay, be good and—“ She’s cut off by the buzzer sounding, and she lets out a little gasp as she straightens up. “Wish me luck!”

After grabbing her purse, she leaves the apartment and locks the door, nervous but happy as she heads down to meet Peter at the front of the building.

Her heart is so full, and she’s so happy. No matter what Peter has planned, she knows that it will be fun.

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"Okay, that's enough," Peter said, struggling against a grin as he tried to wave off her supportive cheers. There were people looking, a couple of girls a few lanes down, leaning in close and giggling together.

He couldn't really remember the last time he'd felt like this-- just normal teenage embarrassment, the kind that felt exciting and tingly and not a whole lot like embarrassment at all.

"The gutter," he said, "Or loser pit, whatever." Grinning, he turned back towards the pins, lining up his shot and then trying to arc the ball a little more towards the middle and right. This time, all but the pin on the far right came clattering down.

"Jesus, okay," he said, ruffling a hand through his hair and trudging back to Rapunzel's side.

“Hey, that’s ninety percent,” she says as he comes over to her, and she suddenly feels nervous as she looks over at her own ball. “You’re setting a bad precedent. What if mine goes right in the loser pit?”

Oh well, playing is the fun part. She combs a few wisps of hair back behind her ears and picks up her ball before padding barefoot up to the line at the end of the lane. She does her best to copy Peter’s pose while also not letting her dress ride up too much, and then lets the ball go.

She throws it more than rolls it, and the ball goes barreling down the lane to barely pick off one pin before it drops onto the gutter at the last possible moment.

“Okay, hm. I need to re-strategize,” she murmurs to herself, looking down at the little diamonds embedded into the wood and then down the lane again as the pins reset. This time she grabs her ball with a little more confidence and rolls it right down the middle, kicking one bare foot back and hopping back to watch.

“Oh my gosh, look at how straight— oh, no. There it goes.” The ball veers left bear the end of the lane and ends up taking down a few more pins, and Rapunzel turns to give him a sheepish smile. “I was hoping that was going to be very triumphant.”

"No, that was kind of great," he assured her, picking up his ball and waiting as the pins were reset. "The first time I played, I swear, I didn't knock over a single pin for at least my first few turns."

He'd been about eleven at the time, but she didn't need to know that.

Lining up his next shot, he threw the ball, blowing out a breath when all but three were knocked over. "Okay, see," he said, pointing out the two pins on the right, and the third on the left, "That's called a split. Knocking them all down now is like, really hard."

"Kind of great," she says with a bright laugh, nodding her head and going to sit on the edge of the seat in front of the screen. She studies the little numbers and then looks up when she hears the sound of Peter's ball clashing against the pins.

"Oh, wow. How would you even do that?" She gets up and walks over to Peter as she looks out at the split pins. Casually, she rests her hand on Peter's back and tilts her head. "You'd have to knock one into the others somehow."

Rapunzel rests her chin on Peter's shoulder and blinks up at him with faux innocence, wanting to tease him a little. "I bet no one could make that shot."

"Are you trying to make me feel better or worse?" Peter laughed softly, wrapping his arm around her waist as his ball came rolling down the shoot.

"If you're, uh, going to judge this whole date on whether I make this shot, I guess I'm screwed."

“Nah, I’ll let this one slide,” she says with a laugh, pressing up onto her toes a bit when Peter’s arm goes around her waist. The girls a few lanes over are glancing at them every so often and Rapunzel realizes that she’s never really been on the other end of that sort of attention. She’s sighed wistfully over plenty of cute couples, and now she’s a part of one. It makes her feel fluttery, full of both nerves and excitement.

“For good luck,” she says, twisting up to drop a quick kiss on the corner of his mouth before twirling away. Their hands stay clasped until they’re stretched between them and she has to let go, and she leans back against the score monitor as Peter goes to get his ball.

"Uh, thanks," he said, watching the twirl of her skirt, her thick braid swaying against her back. There was literally no way he could concentrate on his shot now.

Drawing in a deep breath, he turned away from her, lined up his shot, and threw wide, managing only to knock down the pin on the far right before the ball clattered into the gutter.

"Don't say it," he said, biting back a grin as he turned back to her, lifting a finger in playful admonishment.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Rapunzel says with a delighted laugh. “It was very impressive.”

Honestly, she doesn’t care how good Peter is at bowling. He could knock down zero pins, and she would still love that he brought her here so they could have fun together. Sure, she can get a little competitive, but this isn’t the place for that.

She gets up and leans in to playfully snap her teeth near his finger, laughing musically as she retrieves her ball. Her first throws were a little too hard and on the next one she overcompensates and there’s a very awkward minute where the ball rolls slowly down the lane. That actually knocks down a few pins, so she tries to do the same thing but faster, and it leaves only two pins standing.

They go through a few more turns each, getting a little better each time, and once Rapunzel’s ball disappears behind the pins she turns to see Peter seated near the score monitor. Without giving herself too much time to think about it, she walks over and sits sideways across his lap, curling one arm around his shoulders as she kicks her foot up.

“How many more turns before food?” She asks, letting her thumb glide back and forth across the soft skin above the collar of Peter’s shirt. “I believe you mentioned burgers.”

Peter was barely paying attention to the game at all.

He felt kind of like a perv, but her skirt was really short, and at every turn she made, it rode up just enough to show him a peek of the back of her thighs. He found himself imagining what her panties looked like, if they were the kind that showed just a little bit of cheek beneath the elastic.

God, he was a jerk.

But then she sat on his lap, smiling sweetly, innocently, her thumb playing across the top of his collar. His mouth went dry. "It's ten frames, but we can take a break, if you want."

“Ten frames,” she repeats, tipping her head back to get a look at the monitor. They’re halfway through, but she wouldn’t mind a break. It’s selfish, though. She mostly wants a break so she can be close to him like this, to touch him. A part of her wonders if it’s too much too soon, if maybe she isn’t being proper, but she dismisses the idea almost as quickly as she thinks of it.

“The lane will still be here if we go get food?” She asks, watching him swallow. He seems nervous and for a moment she can’t tell if it’s a good nervous or a bad nervous, especially since his hands are just at his sides, so she shifts until she’s sitting on just one thigh and her bare toes brush the floor.

“We can wait until after we’re done,” she assures him, squeezing his shoulder before she stands up and gives him a smile. “Either way, I’m having a really good time.”

Her smile goes a bit teasing and she reaches out to lightly touch the tip of his nose with the pad of her index finger. “Even is you haven’t knocked down all the pins yet.”

He'd just dredged up the courage to touch her, his fingertips grazing the top of her bare knee, his other hand moving to slip beneath her braid to rest against the small of her back, when she slipped off of his lap.

He let out a breath, struggling not to roll his eyes at himself.

"I don't know, we can leave our stuff here. It's not too busy, maybe everybody'll leave it alone," he suggested, snapping his teeth playfully near the tip of her finger, just like she'd done to him.

"We should eat," he decided, getting to his feet and offering her his hand.

Peter’s hand skims lightly across her lower back and it feels almost like a tease. She almost sits back down but decides against it, laughing instead when Peter moves to fake a nip at her finger. Her hand rests against his cheek for a moment as she looks down at him, and then she slides her fingers through his hair before pulling away to grab her purse.

“I’ll get the food since you got the bowling?” She offers, taking his hand with a warm smile and threading their fingers together as they head for the snack bar. They get in line and she swings their joined hands gently between them as she ponders. “Did you have burgers where you’re from? I never had one until I came here. Or pizza. Or ice cream.”

Her eyes are wide as she takes in the menu, and she twists a little to watch as someone walks away with a big tray of nachos. “It made decisions easier, at least.”

"Uh, no, it's cool. I mean, I've got this," he insisted awkwardly, "You can get the next one? I mean, when we go out again. I mean, assuming..."

He trailed off, and despite wanting more than anything to just play it cool, he gave her a nervously hopeful look. He liked her too much to let her think he didn't want to go out with her again.

"We have burgers, yeah," he answered, before the moment became uncomfortable. "The food here's basically the same as it was back home."

Rapunzel wants Peter to feel comfortable around her, and certainly doesn’t want him to be so nervous. At the same time, it does make her feel a little better to know that she isn’t alone in all of it. The hopeful look he gives her is so charming, so hopelessly endearing, that she can’t help but to lean up and kiss him on the cheek.

“That sounds good. I’ll get the next one,” she tells him, nodding as she pulls back to look at the menu and slip her hand into his. “We had some of the same things, but certainly not all. Maybe next time I can cook something.”

Cooking is something that she’s good at, and she loves experimenting with new recipes. Having someone other than a lizard to share it with would make it even better.

“I’ll have a cheeseburger and sweet potato fries,” she tells Peter, leaning away to pull a bottle of iced tea from a cooler next to the counter without letting go of his hand. “And this.”

"Uh, yeah. Okay," Peter said, trying not to read too far into her offering to cook for him, which would mean a date at her apartment, which would mean they'd be alone.

Like, really alone. And sure, they'd been alone before, but the last time, he'd been fucked up and snot-crying and covered in his own piss. Not exactly romantic. In fact, he was still generally shocked that she wanted to go out with him at all, after all that.

Putting in her order, he got himself a bacon cheeseburger and regular fries, along with a coke. They were given a number to take back to their table, and he picked a quiet, corner booth. "Is this okay?"

“Perfect,” Rapunzel replies as she slides into the booth, tucking her dress neatly under her thighs as she does. Once Peter is settled across from her, she takes a small sip of her tea and looks at him with an expression of eager curiosity.

“So, how are you?” They haven’t talked much since her birthday, and that was mostly about her, so she wants to know more. Before he can answer, she reaches out to rest her hand over his on the table, hooking her thumb around his playfully. “You’re almost done with school for the year, right? And then you have one more?”

"Um, yeah. I'm okay. I mean, it's okay. It's school," he said, shrugging. He'd made mediocre grades all through high school, and that hadn't changed in Darrow. It just never had really held his attention.

"I'm, uh. I'm probably going to have to finish up some stuff in summer school. I took some time off, after... you know," he trailed off, wincing around a smile, his thumb curling around hers. "But yeah, just the one more. Then, I don't know. Everybody keeps saying I should be thinking about college, but..."

He shrugged.

“Right, yeah.” She gives him an understanding smile and then twists their hands until she can lace her fingers through his. “You should be thinking about what you want to do, not so much what everyone tells you that you should want.”

That was a hard lesson learned for Rapunzel after a lifetime of being told what to think, but it’s something she believes in strongly now. “You have to follow your dream, but maybe that’s easier said than done if you don’t know what it is yet.”

It’s a little hard to get the lid off of her tea one handed, but she manages to do it so she doesn’t have to let go of Peter’s hand. She grabs a straw and rips off the end with her teeth, and then playfully blows the wrapper in his direction before sticking it into her drink.

“But don’t worry,” she assures him, leaning in to take a small sip of the tea. “You have plenty of time to figure it out.”

"Maybe I'm not really the kind of person who has dreams," Peter admitted, laughing softly as he halfheartedly knocked the straw paper onto the floor.

"I mean, I know that sounds really pathetic, but maybe I'm not meant to do important stuff. The rest of my family was really talented. My mom and my sister were artists, and my dad was this really respected therapist. But I think maybe I'm just, you know. Ordinary."

He shrugged.

Rapunzel takes time to think over what Peter's said, watching him with a soft expression and smiling a little before she replies. She doesn't know much about his upbringing, but she gets the feeling that maybe it was complicated. Maybe he lived in some sort of shadow.

"I don't think that there's anything wrong with being ordinary," she says after a moment, giving his hand a little squeeze. "But maybe you haven't had the time to really figure it out yet. You're seventeen, Peter. It would be very impressive if you already knew what you wanted out of life, I think."

Coughing out an uncomfortable laugh, Peter, grimaced, gently pulling his hand out from under hers as he sat back in his chair.

"Yeah, I know. I know there's nothing wrong with it. But you're making it sound like you think I'm a kid," he pointed out, "And if that's true, then why the hell are we even here?"

Rapunzel blinks in surprise when Peter pulls away, and then feels her cheeks flush with embarrassment at his words. She stays silent and sits back to think over her words, and bites her lip before saying anything.

"I didn't mean it like that," she says shakily, brow furrowed as she wonders how it went wrong so quickly. She didn't mean to offend him, but she also doesn't like how quick he seems to snap at her when she says something he doesn't like.

"Peter, I was just trying to say something helpful," she says in a tone quiet but unwavering. "I wouldn't be here if I thought you were a kid, or if I didn't want to be."

She sighs and slumps back in the booth, brow furrowing again as she looks down at her nails.

"I know, okay? I'm sorry, but I'm not... I don't want to talk about school, and I don't really want to talk about how I might feel differently about what I want to do with my life, once I'm older," Peter said, folding his arms across the table in front of him, a frown creasing his heavy brow.

"My parents, my sister? They were all great. Brilliant and talented and misunderstood. And they're all dead. So, maybe being ordinary isn't all that terrible. That's all I meant."

They'd wanted him, or at least his body, for something, but he had a feeling it was just that... his body. A vessel, just like the manikin he'd found outside the Home.

"Okay, fine. I won't ask about school," Rapunzel says easily, resisting the urge to cross her arms defensively. Peter's mention of his family makes her frown, and she looks back over at him. "Then it sounds like we were saying the same thing."

She watches him, feeling trapped in this awkward moment, and a sudden movement in the corner of her eye makes her visibly jump. It's just the server setting down their plates, and Rapunzel gives the girl a tight smile and a thank you before she takes a sip of her tea.

"These do look good," she says once they're alone again, trying to push past the awkwardness.

"Yeah," he said, looking down at their plates, even though last thing he wanted to do was eat. Picking up a fry, he nibbled at it halfheartedly, his stomach churning guiltily.

"Rapunzel, I'm sorry," he blurted, as she set down her glass. "I don't..." He floundered, because he couldn't give the excuse of saying he didn't know what was wrong with him. He knew exactly what was wrong with him.

He tried— he fucking tried just to have some normality, but he still had this black cloud hanging over him, and even when that wasn't the case, he'd never known how to keep from saying stupid shit all the time.

Edited 2019-06-02 22:56 (UTC)

"I'm sorry too," she says after a moment, softening slightly as she looks up at him finally. "Maybe I pushed too hard."

She knows that her usually unfailing optimism can sometimes get to people, maybe especially people like Peter who have seen so much darkness. She can't change it, though, even if for some reason she wanted to. And so she smiles at him, showing all is forgiven.

"So, does my being older actually bother you?" She asks, mostly teasing as she smiles him and reaches for the ketchup. "Because really, it's not much of a difference."

"No, you didn't," he promised her, even if it felt a little like she had, if only to Peter, who felt most of the time like an animal trapped inside a cage that just kept getting smaller and smaller.

"You didn't. But, um. Some of that stuff is kind of tangled up with things that are... hard to talk about," he admitted, offering her a lopsided smile as he reached out and handed her the ketchup, since it was closer to his side of the table.

"What! No, no. I just... I thought maybe it bothered you."

"Well, if I ever make you uncomfortable, please just tell me," Rapunzel says in a gentle request to not be snapped at again. Still, it's a minor upset that she's happy to let pass as long as they both learn something from it.

She takes the ketchup with a smile and squirts a small pile on the edge of her plate before picking up a knife and cutting her burger in half so she can handle it better. She has to laugh fondly at his response, and she looks up at him as she lays a paper napkin in her lap.

"It doesn't bother me. I wouldn't be here if it did," she assures him. Where she's from Peter would already be getting married off and working hard, and she'd be edging closer to being an old maid. He's old enough. "I like you, Peter."

"Yeah, I know. I like you, too," Peter said, offering a thin smile. "Sometimes I wish we'd met somewhere else. Or before all the stuff with my sister. Or maybe that you hadn't seen me piss myself that one time."

His lips twisted into a self-deprecating smile.

"I was never all that great at it, but I can't even pretend to be cool around you," he admitted with a soft huff of laughter.

Rapunzel watches him speak and smiles a little, keeping her gaze on him for a few minutes before she gets up and comes around to his side of the booth. She slides in next to him and takes his hand to hold under the table, lacing her fingers with his and squeezing.

“Peter, I like all of you, not just the pretty parts,” she tells him, smiling softly over at him. “And as for that other thing, I have no idea what you mean.”

She winks at him to try and lighten the moment, because she knows that he’s embarrassed but she doesn’t judge him, not after what he had to see.

Rapunzel lifts their hands and rests them on the table, brushing her thumb back and forth across the back of Peter’s. “I don’t want you to pretend to be anything. For what it’s worth, I already think you’re pretty cool.”

Choking out a laugh, Peter gave her a good-natured roll of his eyes, catching her thumb with his own and pinning it playfully to the back of his hand.

"Yeah, well, maybe your judgement isn't that great," he said, looking down at the table to hide his faint smirk.

"Luckily for you," she teases with a wink, leaning over to press a kiss to his cheek. And then a few more little pecks along his jaw to try and make his smile a little bigger. After one last kiss to the corner of his mouth, she sits back and gives his hand a squeeze before letting go and reaching out to slide her burger across the table.

"Looks like I'm posted up over here now," she says, smiling over at him before lifting her burger half and taking a dainty bite. "I had a burger with an egg on it once. Amazing."

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