insteadofwords | (no subject)

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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From:

insteadofwords

Keys can't help it; his eyes are drawn to her shoulder as she tugs her shirt back into place. He looks back to her face quickly.

"Well, unless this is a goodbye dinner, I hope I can keep you posted?"

From:

fatesdesign

“Of course it’s not, silly.” Rapunzel smiles at him and then takes a big sip from her wine before leaning forward and grabbing a carrot stick instead, looking over at him as she takes a bite, slowly sinking her teeth into it so the snap isn’t so loud.

For a moment, she feels a little self-conscious. Keys isn’t asking her many questions, even when she offers up information about herself, and she worries that maybe she isn’t interesting. It’s so frustrating when she gets stuck in her head like this, battling against years of mental abuse that, at the time, she had no idea was even happening.

It makes her feel shy, and she tugs down her knitted crop top a little before reaching for her wine again.

“I’m sure you’ll make lots of interesting friends at Barton,” she says with a smile. “Just don’t forget about me, and there will be more dinners.”

From:

insteadofwords

"You make it sound like you're not interesting," he says, and he leans forward, grabbing a stick of cucumber and biting into it. They're sitting close on the couch and it's easy to shift so that his knee brushes against her.

"Like the paintings," he says, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling again. "Where did you get the ideas from? They're...I've never seen anything like them, honestly."

From:

fatesdesign

“Am I interesting?” She asks, half teasing as Keys moves closer to her. He smells good, feels warm against her side, and in that moment she realizes how long it’s been since she’s been held.

She’s gotten used to not being touched like that again, since Peter, and for some reason the realization is almost devastating. Yes, she hugs her friends, but it isn’t quite the same.

The question surprises her a little, lost in her own troubling thoughts as she was, and she blinks as she tilts her head back to look up with him. Her over shirt falls again, leaving her pale shoulders bare, and her tattoo peeks out from behind the strap of her shirt as she leans forward. There’s a similar design on the ceiling, a golden sun surrounded by swirls of purple, and Rapunzel smiles a little.

“My head, I guess.” She shrugs a little and then bites her lip before glancing over at him. “That sad story I mentioned before— part of it was that I was kept in a tower for eighteen years. All I ever really had was my imagination. I tried to think of bright and sunny things to keep my spirits lifted.”

From:

insteadofwords

"I think so," he says, fidgeting with his wine glass for a moment. "More interesting than me, anyway." His eyes are drawn to her bare skin, the design on her shoulder and the one on the ceiling that it echoes. "That's...I'm sorry that that happened to you." He nudges her gently with his knuckles. "Is here better?" He laughs at himself. "Jesus. I'm sorry. That was a stupid question."

From:

fatesdesign

Rapunzel can’t help it— she laughs. It’s a warm sound, not at his expense. She finds herself inexplicably charmed.

“There are no stupid questions,” she tells him, leaning in against his side a little. “If there were, I never would have settled in here. I had to ask about everything. Stuff everyone else thought was commonplace was completely foreign to me.”

Her transition to Darrow was a rough one, but she also had so much freedom. Even trapped in a weird alternate dimension, she had never felt anything like it.

“But yes, it’s better here,” she assures him, smiling ruefully as she pours herself some more wine. “The day I escaped my tower for the first time was the same day that I was brought to Darrow. I only found out later about the princess stuff.”

She turns her head to look at him, smiling shyly. “I was taken from the palace when I was a baby. That’s why I never got to know my parents.”

From:

insteadofwords

She feels good against his side, and Keys tries really hard not to think about how lonely he is, how lonely he was even back in Seattle.

"Like the story," he says, drinking another swallow of his drink. "It took me ages to get that, by the way." He ducks his head, laughing at himself. "So I know you like to sew. What else?"

From:

fatesdesign

“Yes, like the story,” she admits with a wry smirk, and then wrinkles her nose. “That’s so weird, and I’m not sure I’ll ever understand it.”

They’re sitting close together and Rapunzel stays where she is, finally slipping out of the button down shirt and tossing it aside since it won’t stay up. She only had it on to cook in, anyway.

“Well, I had time to come up with lots of hobbies growing up, and I carried some over with me,” she tells him. “I make clothes, paint, draw. I write and sing songs sometimes. I love to bake, and make candles, and play chess. Pascal’s a good partner.”

From:

insteadofwords

"Says the girl who was worried she was boring five minutes ago," says Keys, gently teasing as she shifts to strip off a layer. It's warm in the apartment, and he considers taking his sweater off, but leaves it for now. He's something approaching relieved when she settles back.

"How long have you been here?"

From:

fatesdesign

“Well, I had to keep myself busy,” she admits with a laugh, though she winces a little at the question.

“I kind of avoided telling you that before because I didn’t want to freak you out,” she says gently. “But I got here on my eighteenth birthday. Almost eight years ago.”

From:

insteadofwords

It does freak him out, just a little bit. For all of his talk about teaching and studying, part of him had thought he'd snap out of...whatever this is. To hear Rapunzel talk about nearly a decade here puts that into perspective. Eight years ago, he'd still been at MIT.

He puffs out his cheeks with a long, slow exhale.

"I heard people leave sometimes?"

From:

fatesdesign

His reaction makes Rapunzel frown sympathetically and she reaches up to rub between his shoulder blades, expecting something like this. What takes her by surprise is what he says next, even though it probably shouldn’t.

Her breath catches and she goes still, eyes stinging as her lower lip wobbles.

“They don’t leave,” she admits with a trembling voice. “Sometimes people just disappear without any warning. I—“ She pauses and swallows hard. “We don’t know where they go.”

From:

insteadofwords

He leans into her touch without really realising he's doing it. He's upset her, he can see that, and his eyebrows draw together as he studies her face.

"You lost someone," he says. "God. I'm an idiot. I'm sorry for bringing it up, Rapunzel. I..."

From:

fatesdesign

“No, no. It’s okay. You couldn’t have known,” Rapunzel assures him, sniffling a bit and wrinkling her nose. No tears fall, thankfully, and she takes a slow breath.

“My boyfriend. About nine months ago,” she tells him. She’s lost more than just Peter, but that was the one that hit her hardest, and the one she isn’t sure that she’ll ever really get over. “I feel like I’m just sort of getting back into the swing of things. Being a person again.”

From:

insteadofwords

"Doesn't mean I'm not sorry for bringing it up," he says. He hesitates for a moment and then he slips his arm around her shoulders, tentatively, tugging her in against his side, but giving her plenty of slack to pull away if she doesn't want it.

"We can talk about it, if you want," he says. "Or we can talk about literally anything else."

He's been ignoring the fact that he might never see Millie again, been refusing to think about it. He shoves the thought away again.

From:

fatesdesign

Keys’ arm goes around her shoulders and Rapunzel can’t seem to help the way she slumps against his side, grateful for the contact. She sighs softly and rests her hand on his thigh, closing her eyes for a moment.

“Gosh, look at me,” she says, chuckling a little and shaking her head. “You just lost your whole life and here I am.”

She pats the top of his thigh and tips her head over onto his shoulder, feeling grateful that she was the one to run into Keys first. He’s nice, and she likes nice people.

“We can talk about something else,” she assured him. “But thank you. You’re very sweet.”

From:

insteadofwords

"Yeah, well, my life wasn't up to that much to be honest," he admits, his arm curling around her to keep her tucked in against his ribcage. He has to concentrate to stop his brain from blue screening when she puts her hand on his thigh - when she squeezes - but he's got a lot of experience at that.

"What do you want to talk about?" he asks. "I remembered to bring my glasses in case you ended up wanting to watch a movie or something later."

From:

fatesdesign

“Well—“ Before she can even think of a new topic, the oven timer goes off and she startles a little, grabbing at the inside of Keys’ thigh as she sits up straight. “Oh, the chicken!”

Rapunzel hops up from the sofa and holds her hair out to keep from getting twisted in it as she runs into the kitchen. She feels a little flustered, maybe because that was the first time she’s been so close to a man since Peter, and she wasn’t really expecting it.

She takes the chicken out and prepares them each a plate— roasted chicken with veggies and wild rice— and calls out to Keys from the kitchen. “Can you bring the wine over to the table, please?”

From:

insteadofwords

"Yes, ma'am," says Keys, wincing a little at the way his voice gives, a combination of her hand on his thigh and the accidental glimpse down her shirt he gets as she sits up.

"That smells delicious," he says, bringing the bottle and the glasses over to the table, pouring a little more wine for each of them. Before he sits down, he peels off his jumper, t-shirt tugging up to reveal a strip of pale skin. "I've been living off microwave stuff. I still need to.get my kitchen properly set up."

From:

fatesdesign

"Well, that won't do," Rapunzel says as she comes over with two steaming plates, smiling as he takes off his sweater and makes himself comfortable. "You need real food."

She sets one plate in front of him and playfully ruffles his hair with her free hand, then sets her own plate down around the corner from him, rather than across the table. Before sitting down, she brings Pascal a small cup of his own food, setting it on his little platform in the ficus. He squeaks happily and nuzzles against her fingers before digging in, and Rapunzel returns to the table to sit down in her chair, reaching for her glass of wine as she tosses her hair over one shoulder. "Okay, dinner is served for everyone."

From:

insteadofwords

"I'm not actually a bad cook," he says, settling himself down in the chair. She ruffles his hair and he grins, pushing it back out of his face with one hand. She watches him take food to Pascal and then waits for her to settle before he picks up his fork. "I meant it when I said this smelled delicious." He glances up at her, smiling. "I'm so glad I met you."

From:

fatesdesign

"Then maybe you can cook for me next time," she teases, scooting her chair in a bit and twisting her hair back over one shoulder before reaching for her fork. Keys' next words take her a little by surprise and she blushes a little, looking over at him with a softly pleased expression. He might just mean it because of all the help and the home-cooked meal, but it makes her feel nice.

"I'm glad I met you, too," she assures him, looking at him from under her lashes for a moment before looking down at her plate and spearing some food onto her fork just for something to do with her hands. "Now, eat before it gets cold."

From:

insteadofwords

"It's a date," says Keys, loading up a forkful and popping it inot his mouth. He groans softly as he chews. "Seriously," he says, reaching for his glass and taking a sip of his wine. His knee bumps against hers under the table. "I guess cooking was a good way to keep yourself occupied?"

He'd basically learned to cook so that he wasn't living entirely as a stereotype. So many guys he knows live on coffee and take-out sushi.

From:

fatesdesign

Keys' reaction to her food delights Rapunzel and she laughs happily at the noises that he makes, pressing her knee back against his. It's nice to share a meal with someone. She has her friends over as often as she can, but they have their own lives, and their own partners that they spend time with. Keys will eventually be the same, she supposes, but she'll enjoy it for now.

"Yeah, but I think that I'm better at baking," she tells him once she's swallowed a bite. "I really only ever had what Gothel brought me to occupy myself. Sometimes it was books, sometimes food, sometimes paints. She was gone a lot."

She smiles ruefully and sips from her wine again. It goes well with the chicken, she thinks, but she's not exactly an expert. Most wine just tastes like wine to her.

From:

insteadofwords

He can't imagine isolation like that, especially not for someone like Rapunzel, who's some warm, so vibrant, who so clearly comes alive in company. He can't imagine how lonely she must have been.

"I don't remember it ever being quiet when I was a kid," he says. "I might have been happy to trade with you." He takes another sip of his wine. "Or, at least, come and keep you company or something."