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rapunzel

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It's been a few days and Keys feel like he's at least sort of starting to settle in. His apartment is still pretty sparse, but he's bought a few things to make it feel cosier, more like his. He still misses his place in Seattle, misses how like him it had felt, but it's not like he can blame the apartment in Dimera for still feeling like it's someone else's, not when he's been in it for less than a week.

His wardrobe is also still feeling pretty basic. He'd bought a week's worth of plain t-shirts in black, white, navy, as well as a couple of pairs of jeans, a few sweaters, a hoodie, socks, boxers. His wardrobe in Seattle hadn't been anything to write home about, honestly, but there are a few things he'll miss. He found a decent pair of combat boots in an army surplus store, which helps with the weather.

He's met a few people so far but really the only person he can think of as a new friend is Rapunzel. She's been checking in regularly and he's thoroughly grateful every time his phone lights up with a text. They text a lot, not about anything in particular, and it's been pretty much the only thing that's stopped Keys from spiralling into just feeling desperately, completely alone.

When Rapunzel invited him over for dinner, Keys had a brief panic about what he should bring with him. His parents raised him to be polite, and he knows that it's good manners to not show up empty handed. So, when he shows up at her door, he's wearing the coat she helped him to buy, a hat pulled on over his hair, and he's got pie and he's got wine.

He's doing his best, anyway.

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Keys takes a bit of his pie, glad he went for strawberry because it's pretty good. The question makes him kind of sad, actually - that she's so wistful for something she's never experienced.

"Yeah," he says. "It's pretty nice. Except for when you've got someone with, like, pincers for fingers or something."

"Well, no," she replies with a grin. "In that case, I imagine not."

Once they're done with their pie, Rapunzel gathers the plates and takes them into the kitchen with the others. The dishes can wait until later, maybe even tomorrow.

"Let's move back over to the sofa." She picks up her glass and the bottle on the way by, setting the latter down on the coffee table before sitting down on the middle cushion, legs tucked underneath her. "I was going to get your measurements, but I'll do that another time. When I've had less wine."

She sits in the middle of the couch so Keys tucks himself into one end, back against the arm, one knee folded up on front of him so that his leg touches hers. He takes another sip of his wine.

"Yeah, that's probably for the best," he says. "Don't want to go to the trouble of making me a suit that doesn't fit right, right?"

"It's more that you probably don't need me drunkenly crawling all over you with a measuring tape," Rapunzel admits with a laugh, tossing her hair back over one shoulder a resting the base of her wine glass on his raised knee, slipping the stem between her fingers to hold it in place.

"Hm, what should we do?" She taps at her chin with her index finger and then laughs a little. "I'm not always that great at entertaining, as you can probably imagine."

Keys nearly says something about her crawling all over him not sound so bad, but he manages to bite it back at the last moment. Of course, she's gorgeous, and it's been a while since he was with anyone, but she's also pretty much the only thing he has approaching a friend here, and he is not about to fuck that up.

"Talking is good," he says, tilting his head, smiling a little when she basically uses him as a table; something about it makes him feel settled and comfortable, somehow. "But I did bring my glasses in case of movies or whatever."

"I do like talking," she admits, smiling over at him and then realizing how close she is to him, practically leaning against him with her wine on his knee. She sits up a little and removes her glass, biting her lip shyly. "If I'm touching you too much, just tell me."

Rapunzel is always a little prone to rambling, but it's made easier by the wine, and the good company. "I used to hug everyone, like all the time, because I went so long without anything like it, you know? But one day a friend sort of blew up at me. He said not everyone likes hugs, or being touched, and I shouldn't just do it. I try to think about it more now, because I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable."

She laughs a little self-consciously and tucks her hair behind her ear, not quite looking at him. "Almost eight years out of the tower and I feel like I'm still learning how to be a person."

Well, that's heart-breaking and, when she sits up, he can't help but feel a little bit disappointed. Keys lives alone and, when he'd lost Millie (through his own stupidity, really), he'd also lost the only person in Seattle who really touched him with any regularity. Sure, there had been hookups, a few short-lived girlfriends, even, but nothing regular. Nothing that lasted. He hates the thought of someone making her feel like that.

"I think we're all kind of learning how to be people sometimes," he says, and he reaches out with his free hand, brushing his knuckles against her upp arm. "You're not making me uncomfortable. Honestly."

"Okay, good." Rapunzel smiles at him and while it was a little embarrassing, she's glad that she asked. It's better to know for sure. When she lost Peter, she also lost most of the physical affection that she'd gotten so used to. Not just sex, but hugs and cuddling-- being able to put her head in someone's lap after a tough day. She'd gotten so used to that, and then suddenly it too was gone, and she was left so lonely and so cold that it felt like being locked away all over again.

She puts her hand back on Keys' knee with a shy smile, hair spilling in her face as she looks up from under her eyelashes. "I guess there's no one way to be a person. Everyone's just doing their best."

"That's pretty much my experience, yeah," says Keys, brushing his fingers over the back of her hand before he takes another sip of his wine. "I always try and remember that when I write characters, anyway. That way they don't all end up feeling the same, like they've been made with a cookie cutter or something."

Rapunzel understands very little about video games. She's never really played them, and her only real exposure to them was watching Peter play them sometimes. As someone who grew up without electricity, video games always seemed a little beyond her.

"So, it's like you're writing a book, but it's a video game?" She asks, curious and confused and slightly tipsy. "Like a choose your own adventure book."

"I like to think of myself as being like an author, sort of," says Keys, brightening visibly, leaning forward a little. "Except, instead of words, I use numbers - zeroes and ones. Words will let you down, right? People use words to lie to you, all kinds of stuff. But numbers? Are cool as shit."

"I don't really understand how computers work," Rapunzel admits, whispering loudly as if she's sharing a secret. But Keys looks so excited to talk about it, so Rapunzel puts her hand on his knee and rests her chin on it, gazing up at him curiously. "How do ones and zeroes become a video game? I think it might just be too complicated for me. My shop doesn't even have a website."

"Websites aren't super my area, but I did do some web-design as part of my degree, so if you ever want something putting together, I could probably do it," he says. She leans in, and he settles back a little, still beaming all over his face. "So, the zeroes and ones make up the code. And code is how you build the game."

"That's sweet of you, but you don't need to do that," Rapunzel assures him, smiling at the offer. She seems to do just fine without a website, and she's busy enough thanks to word of mouth that she often has to turn down commission requests. A simple site for the shop itself might be useful, but she doesn't need to worry about it now.

"I will never understand it," she admits with a giggle, shaking her head a little where it rests on his knee. "And some people here say magic isn't real. That sounds like magic to me."

"Not magic," he says, but he's smiling when he says it because, honestly, it does feel a bit like that, sometimes - when it's flowing, when the going is good. "Just...math. I always loved it, even when I was a kid, and then I found out what you can do with it and..." He makes a soft sound, mimes an explosion going off next to his temple. "Mind blown."

"It's wonderful that you have something that you love so much," Rapunzel says happily, pleased to see his passion at work even though she doesn't really understand it. "Are computers here like the ones you're used to? I've heard a lot of people say that the technology here is a lot like what they had at home."

She giggles a little and wrinkles her nose. "Not for me, obviously. Do you know how hard it was to find a spinning wheel?"

"I really do love it," he says, and she doesn't make fun of him. Even Millie used to make fun of him, sometimes, and she loved it as much as he did. "From what I've seen, yeah, they're pretty much the same. And I've got my own laptop with me, which is pretty high spec, so I'm pretty good to go if I want to wokr here." He huffs a laugh. "I bet. I'm guessing you found one?"

"It works here? Oh, that's good," she tells him, happy that he has at least some of his work from home. Maybe the transition, at least in that regard, won't be so terrible.

"I did, but it was very old and didn't work very well," she explains with a soft pout that almost immediately smooths out. "But I don't really have to make my own yarn here. I can buy some and save myself a step, so I usually just do that. I used to work at the art supply store. When I first got here, that place seemed like heaven." She smiles a little and shrugs a shoulder. "It still kind does."

"All that paint, all those colours," he says, imaginging how happy that must have made her. When she smiles, he echoes her, reflexively. "I can't connect to Soonami or anything, obviously, but I've got the work that my friend and I were doing, before that. Some of it, anyway. It's enough. A seed."

"It's a wonderful place," Rapunzel says happily, grinning tipsily as she rests her chin on Keys' knee. "Even after I started my business, I still worked there for a day a week for a while, just for the discount."

She sits up and turns to face him, pulling her legs fully up onto the sofa. Her toenails are painted bright yellow with intricate purple flowers that she did while bored one night, desperate to bring some small piece of summer into her winter gloom.

"Soonami?" She asks, tilting her head curiously. "Like a giant wave? I assume that's where you worked." Grinning, she lightly slaps her hand down onto Keys' knee again. "Beautiful things can sprout from a single seed."

She's a little bit drunk, he realises, and he feels a tiny bit quilty for suggesting more wine. Still, he grins when she leans in. .

"Yeah. It was kind of a shitty place, honestly, but the money was food, so..." he shrugs. "Maybe I'll take a leaf out of your book and try and get my creativity back."

"Ugh, money." Rapunzel wrinkles her nose a bit, because money is so complicated, and the cause of so many problems. "But yes, be creative! Have fun!"

She thinks for a second and then uses her grip on Keys' knee to push herself up, getting off of the sofa and hopping over her hair to go to the closet. She pulls out a box and bites her lip as she comes back over, then sets the box in Keys' lap.

"This is a video game system. It was Peter's," Rapunzel tells him with a small smile. Peter had no real emotional attachment to the thing, and it just sat collecting dust until she put it in the closet. She has his favorite clothes, his guitar, the things that meant the most to him. Those things, she'll always hold onto. But this? She can let go of this. "It should go to someone who will get some use out of it."

"That's why I'm thinking about going back to school, honestly. Just...do something I love and not worry to much about what it's worth for a while."

When she pushs up to her feet, he instinctively puts out his free hand to steady her if she needs it. When she comes back with the box, he leans so that he can set his half full wine glass on the floor next to the couch so that he can take a look at what's in the box. It's not a make he recognises, but it's got enough in common with the various systems he's got set up at home that he recognises it.

"You don't have to do this," he says, a broad grin spreading across his face. "This is awesome."

The look on Keys' face is enough for Rapunzel to know that she's doing the right thing. She doesn't think that Peter would mind, and it makes her happy to be able to share his memory with other people. She smiles warmly as he goes through the box and nods to herself as she sits back down on the sofa.

"I know I don't, but it's okay. He wasn't super attached to it and I think he'd like knowing it was getting used, you know? I still play his guitar all the time," she admits, smiling wistfully and swallowing hard. Grief swells up but she manages to hold it back, because she doesn't want to be sad whenever she thinks of Peter. He wouldn't want that. "That, I'm never giving up. So, you take this, and I hope it helps water that seed a little."

He spends another minute looking through the box and then he leans so that he can set it aside, pick up his wine again, get comfortable. He gives her plenty of room to settle back against him, if she wants to.

"That's really kind of you," he says. "Gaming has always been a pretty good way for me to switch off. I collect vintage systems back home." He blushes at that admission, because it kind of makes him sound like a massive nerd. Somehow, he doesn't think Rapunzel will mind.