[Tangled] The Snuggly Duckling Finishing School of Romance 6/?
If talent equaled desire, these next chapters would be in comic form. As it is, I'll do my best with text-based slapstick! This thing also just keeps getting longer and longer as I keep having ideas for ever more detailed ways to torture Eugene.
Title: The Snuggly Duckling Finishing School of Romance
Status: Incomplete Series Fic
Date Chapter Completed: January 23, 2012
Series: Disney's Tangled
Genres: Humor, Romance, Buddyfic
Rating: 10+ for a little language and mild sexual references
Pairing: Eugene/Rapunzel
Summary: Who would've thought that the best teachers in the ways of the heart would be hulking, hairy, tattooed, walking armories? Eugene plans to pop the question to Rapunzel on her birthday, that is, if he can survive the pub thugs' assistance.
Parts I | II | III | IV | V
Time now proceeds in a blur of trauma and shame. This is not how once upon a times are supposed to go, you know? This list of activities that Big Nose has made out, that I haven't been allowed to see in its entirety, is work! None of my childhood tales ever included the hero (that would be me in this case) being humiliated and degraded and suffering like this, all for the sake of four small words, only one of which is even multisyllabic.
Will. You. Marry. Me. Just look at that! Little words! Little, horrifying, hard to say words! Okay, let's be honest and not quite so melodramatic. They're hard to say but not that hard to say. I've done it before, sometimes, when I could overcome the adhesive sticking them to my larynx, just never successfully, which is how I’ve ended up here at the mercy of a bunch of men for whom "mercy" is something to be slaughtered, deboned, and digested.
My childhood never prepared me for this, and I have no idea what the Snuggly Duckling gang's respective childhoods prepared them for, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't this either.
Honestly, I would prefer not to dwell on my training-it's bad enough to be living this nightmare without dwelling on it-but I know people are going to be curious, so here goes. Remember, it's nine rounds of "education" led by a bunch of men who are more accustomed to cracking heads together than courting princesses. Love is a battle field, and this is a war, boys. Oh, good golly gee! Happy-fun times are coming! Insert pained face-splitting grin here.
No, I don't know what I was thinking. Leave me alone.
Love Battle, Round 1: Table for Two: Cooking with Attila!
As I strut-stride, really, because that's manly, but I stride like I do all things, with flair-maybe swagger would be a better term?-into the Snuggly Duckling for my first day of lessons, my eyes dart around to take in the largely indifferent and disinterested expressions of my compatriots.
So far, so good.
I'm getting a bit of casual acknowledgment of my presence, which generally isn't my preference but on a day like today I'm willing to take as little attention as I can get. If I could be invisible or elsewhere or both, that would be best. Of course, invisibility and physical displacement definitely aren't going to get me married to Rapunzel. Hanging out with these guys might. I know, believe me, I know, it seems like a super doubtful prospect. I started having those thoughts too, pretty much immediately after enlisting their aid. What was I thinking?
Big Nose had said, however, that the guys would mostly come at me one at a time. He's overenthusiastic and a hopeless romantic, but he's obviously got some smarts! I can't tell you just how nice it is not to be ganged up on by a bunch of massive, looming, hygienically challenged mercenaries whose idea of a good time is studying the basic principles of physics via javelins and catapults.
Look, I do like the guys, okay? They just scare me sometimes.
A lot.
This being day one of my new training, however, my hopes are high (Who am I kidding? Not me.) that perhaps this won't be such a grievous mistake after all.
"Aha! There you are!"
Big Nose's big nose precedes him as he rises up over the bar in one quick surge like an overexcited elephant seal. I clamp one hand over my mouth to hide my squeal of terror as his fingers lock on my arm and he hauls me to the back of the pub.
"Call me when it's time for the testing!" Shorty slurs from his comfortably reclining position beneath an open tap. He waggles flirtatious fingers in lace gloves at me before twirling them into his ribbon-bedecked beard, but he does not follow, and he is thankfully fully clothed and dress free today. Relief.
And now Big Nose has me standing in front of the roaring fires of hell. Awesome. I'll be so bronzed for the wedding.
I've never been in the back of the Snuggly Duckling. Behind the bar, yeah, under the floor, sure, hanging from the support beams, definitely. But the backrooms? No way!
This particular backroom is a kitchen, possibly the kitchen. It doesn't seem big enough to be the kitchen, but I guess when you keep your main chameleon-boiling cauldron up in the front, the space where you keep the oven and fire pit and... butchering table… doesn't really have to be enormous. (Note to self, on no account sit or recline on that table.)
"We'll start with the romantic dinner," Big Nose says briskly, consulting his list and then looking first to one side of me, then the other, then behind me.
"Um, what are you doing?" I inquire politely.
"Where's Attila?" He stares at me reproachfully. "You didn't bring Attila."
Wow, seriously? "No, I didn't, but you know how careless I am. I didn't bring Attila, and if you'll remember, I didn't even bring myself."
"Trust me, that lack of initiative isn't going to get you the girl."
As my teeth start to grind, he zips back up to the front room and yells for Attila. By the time he returns, perpetually mitted, helmeted Attila in tow, my incisors have worn down a foot or so. I press my fingers to my temples and stare beneath them at my "teachers". My brain has rattled back in place now, and I'm starting to think again.
"Wait a minute... I thought Attila did cupcakes, not dinner."
"Transferable skills." Big Nose rolled his eyes to the heavens, as if pleading with some higher power for patience and a more intelligent student. "Cupcakes are his favorite, but he can make other stuff. You really think we're that one-dimensional?"
"Will I be punished if I say yes?" Honestly, I try not to give that much thought to what the thugs get up to in their spare time.
Attila's chuckle echoes hollowly in his helmet. "Besides, do you want the landlord to teach you cooking?"
Okay, he has a point. Given the two, I'd pick Attila any day. Even if I have no idea what his face looks like under that tin can because he wears it all the freaking time, his cupcakes are edible-pretty darn tasty actually. Now, I've never eaten anything whipped up by the landlord, but if the smell's anything to go on, Attila would be my choice for culinary delights every time.
Actually, it might not be such a bad idea to butter up Attila. Hopefully I'll be in need of a wedding cake soon, and a pub thug wedding cake carries a lot more pizzazz than a castle pastry chef wedding cake.
And there goes the mental image of me smearing a stick of butter down Attila's armor. Oh, that's a bad thought. That's a bad, wicked, nasty, repulsive thought, and I think I should go vomit in a cupboard.
"Have you ever cooked before?" Attila's hollow, metallic voice interrupts my figuratively self-flagellatory thoughts, and I quickly straighten.
Of course I've cooked before, just only in the most basic sense. Roasting a carcass over a fire in the woods as a last resort because I was a ne'er-do-well on the run, the occasional pot of soup when I was a kid from whatever I could scrape up in the kitchen, things like that. Normally, however, I've always been perfectly happy to pay for food (okay, fine, steal, either the money or the food itself).
Or take my meals on the sufferance of someone nobler and wealthier than I, once my living status reached that point. The castle cook is amazing, of course. I'd probably also be beaten with rolling pins for setting foot in the kitchen, so no cooking lessons have been forthcoming from that quarter, not that they'd ever been a goal of mine.
Apparently I've taken too long thinking about the question because the Attila and Big Nose look at one another and heave a great, mutual sighs.
"We'll start you out with something simple, see how you do." Big Nose is brisk. "Attila, give him something simple."
Attila's tin can head tilts to the right, considering. "Maybe a dessert?"
Big Nose's face lights up like Rapunzel's birthday lanterns. "Definitely, that's perfect!. He'll be set with a dessert even if he can't manage a main course! There isn't a woman in the world who doesn't love sweets."
I really do prefer it when people don't talk about me like I'm not standing right there. I also prefer it when they don't compare Rapunzel to every other woman in the world because Rapunzel is not every other woman in the world. Rapunzel is so perfectly unique and so perfectly herself that no other woman can even begin to compare to-
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, if we haven't already established it, I've got it bad. Cupid's arrow is solidly buried in my backside, and I'm not going to be able to extract it anytime soon.
"Just give me something, guys. I'll give it a shot."
Attila plunks down a recipe box on the butcher table and directs me to look through the cards for something that catches my interest.
"Pick something with only a few ingredients to start with, nothing too complicated."
Okay, I can do this. I can read. This isn't hard. While I start pawing through the box, Big Nose and Attila withdraw into a corner, whispering. It's hard to glare at them and pick my recipe simultaneously-I either need eyes like Pascal's or just more eyes, period- so I quickly give that up.
The dessert section is helpfully divided into subsections, although the categorization scheme seems a little odd. Frozen, I can understand, but not so much Meaty. Me, I want Spicy! Rapunzel's expressed an interest in foods with a bit of heat to them lately, and I am more than happy to oblige her if it means that I'll get tingly, new-experience-enthusiasm kisses immediately after dinner. I finally find the batch helpfully labeled Hot and flip through the cards: Bananas Foster, Cherries Jubilee, Mangos Diablo, Peaches Louis... You know, these are all very fruity desserts, with not a single chili pepper to their name. Rapunzel does like fruit though...
Cherries Jubilee sounds fun, festive, cheerful. But does it scream "I love you, marry me?"
"You're going for drama." Attila's suddenly got one mitt over my shoulder, and his echo sounds approving. "Something that'll really impress her."
That'll work.
So, I'm looking at the ingredient list, and Cherries Jubilee doesn't really seem like it'd be very spicy, but oh well. I've got the approval of my instructor, right? Yep, there's an oven-mitted thumbs-up. I can add some cinnamon to it; that'll make it better.
Under Attila's watchful eye, I work my way through the instructions quickly. Throw the ingredients into the saucepan when the text directs me, stir, bring to boil, stir some more, add a few more ingredients, boil some more, then simmer, take the saucepan off the flame, hold it away from the body, strike a match, etc. Cooking requires surprisingly less thought than I realized it did. I mean, I thought this would be work or hard, confusing stuff. This is easy! I just do what the words say to do, and I don't even have to think about it.
Oh look, snapping mountainous blue fire reaching for the ceiling. That's pretty awesome.
Snapping mountainous blue fire reaching for the ceiling!
My gaze jerks down in horror to see that, with one hand, I've stuck a freshly lit taper into my recipe-perfect Cherries Jubilee and the whole dessert is just jubilantly blazing away at the end of my other arm.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
"It's okay!"
Attila catches my wrist as I flail backwards, accidentally thrusting the lit candle directly at a certain large nose. He slides the saucepan safely away, while Big Nose yelps and tackles me to the floor.
"Calm down!"
I'm down and rapidly smothering under his and Attila's combined weight, but I'm not out yet. Oh, believe me, I am hyperaware that I am not out yet, that I am in fact still in the kitchen with the butchering table and the oven and the fire pit and my new mini-inferno in a saucepan.
"Calm down? You want me to calm down? It's on fire! This is your fault!"
"It's supposed to be!"
"How is it supposed to be on fire?" As best I can, I thrust an accusatory finger in Attila's face. "Am I supposed to singe off her eyebrows, burn her nose? Oh, yeah, she'll love me then!"
"Well, well, this certainly does look like a lover's meal." Shorty stumbles into the room, tittering as he eyes the three of us frozen in combat on the floor. "You three are looking awfully cozy together, more entwined than a bunch of mating snails."
Me and Attila and Big Nose, really? That's the nightmarish place his demented little mind decided to go? Also, and more importantly because we all know I'm gaga over Rapunzel and not interested in my current wrestling buddies, did he just imply I was slimy? Or that I have enormous feet? I snarl. I'm pumped full of adrenalin and feeling just a little murderous at the moment, and here is the perfect taunter awaiting his punishment. Just one breath over that saucepan and he'd go up like a torch.
"Shorty," I croon through clenched teeth, "come be my love and eat my dessert!"
Shorty, however, wisely backs up to the doorway after seeing the remains of my Cherries Jubilee, still burning just slightly now. He shakes his head, beard ribbons flying, his eyes stricken and slowly filling with tears.
"My brandy?" he whispers before his voice rises to a wail. "How could you? I thought you loved me!"
Next chapter
Title: The Snuggly Duckling Finishing School of Romance
Status: Incomplete Series Fic
Date Chapter Completed: January 23, 2012
Series: Disney's Tangled
Genres: Humor, Romance, Buddyfic
Rating: 10+ for a little language and mild sexual references
Pairing: Eugene/Rapunzel
Summary: Who would've thought that the best teachers in the ways of the heart would be hulking, hairy, tattooed, walking armories? Eugene plans to pop the question to Rapunzel on her birthday, that is, if he can survive the pub thugs' assistance.
Parts I | II | III | IV | V
Time now proceeds in a blur of trauma and shame. This is not how once upon a times are supposed to go, you know? This list of activities that Big Nose has made out, that I haven't been allowed to see in its entirety, is work! None of my childhood tales ever included the hero (that would be me in this case) being humiliated and degraded and suffering like this, all for the sake of four small words, only one of which is even multisyllabic.
Will. You. Marry. Me. Just look at that! Little words! Little, horrifying, hard to say words! Okay, let's be honest and not quite so melodramatic. They're hard to say but not that hard to say. I've done it before, sometimes, when I could overcome the adhesive sticking them to my larynx, just never successfully, which is how I’ve ended up here at the mercy of a bunch of men for whom "mercy" is something to be slaughtered, deboned, and digested.
My childhood never prepared me for this, and I have no idea what the Snuggly Duckling gang's respective childhoods prepared them for, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't this either.
Honestly, I would prefer not to dwell on my training-it's bad enough to be living this nightmare without dwelling on it-but I know people are going to be curious, so here goes. Remember, it's nine rounds of "education" led by a bunch of men who are more accustomed to cracking heads together than courting princesses. Love is a battle field, and this is a war, boys. Oh, good golly gee! Happy-fun times are coming! Insert pained face-splitting grin here.
No, I don't know what I was thinking. Leave me alone.
Love Battle, Round 1: Table for Two: Cooking with Attila!
As I strut-stride, really, because that's manly, but I stride like I do all things, with flair-maybe swagger would be a better term?-into the Snuggly Duckling for my first day of lessons, my eyes dart around to take in the largely indifferent and disinterested expressions of my compatriots.
So far, so good.
I'm getting a bit of casual acknowledgment of my presence, which generally isn't my preference but on a day like today I'm willing to take as little attention as I can get. If I could be invisible or elsewhere or both, that would be best. Of course, invisibility and physical displacement definitely aren't going to get me married to Rapunzel. Hanging out with these guys might. I know, believe me, I know, it seems like a super doubtful prospect. I started having those thoughts too, pretty much immediately after enlisting their aid. What was I thinking?
Big Nose had said, however, that the guys would mostly come at me one at a time. He's overenthusiastic and a hopeless romantic, but he's obviously got some smarts! I can't tell you just how nice it is not to be ganged up on by a bunch of massive, looming, hygienically challenged mercenaries whose idea of a good time is studying the basic principles of physics via javelins and catapults.
Look, I do like the guys, okay? They just scare me sometimes.
A lot.
This being day one of my new training, however, my hopes are high (Who am I kidding? Not me.) that perhaps this won't be such a grievous mistake after all.
"Aha! There you are!"
Big Nose's big nose precedes him as he rises up over the bar in one quick surge like an overexcited elephant seal. I clamp one hand over my mouth to hide my squeal of terror as his fingers lock on my arm and he hauls me to the back of the pub.
"Call me when it's time for the testing!" Shorty slurs from his comfortably reclining position beneath an open tap. He waggles flirtatious fingers in lace gloves at me before twirling them into his ribbon-bedecked beard, but he does not follow, and he is thankfully fully clothed and dress free today. Relief.
And now Big Nose has me standing in front of the roaring fires of hell. Awesome. I'll be so bronzed for the wedding.
I've never been in the back of the Snuggly Duckling. Behind the bar, yeah, under the floor, sure, hanging from the support beams, definitely. But the backrooms? No way!
This particular backroom is a kitchen, possibly the kitchen. It doesn't seem big enough to be the kitchen, but I guess when you keep your main chameleon-boiling cauldron up in the front, the space where you keep the oven and fire pit and... butchering table… doesn't really have to be enormous. (Note to self, on no account sit or recline on that table.)
"We'll start with the romantic dinner," Big Nose says briskly, consulting his list and then looking first to one side of me, then the other, then behind me.
"Um, what are you doing?" I inquire politely.
"Where's Attila?" He stares at me reproachfully. "You didn't bring Attila."
Wow, seriously? "No, I didn't, but you know how careless I am. I didn't bring Attila, and if you'll remember, I didn't even bring myself."
"Trust me, that lack of initiative isn't going to get you the girl."
As my teeth start to grind, he zips back up to the front room and yells for Attila. By the time he returns, perpetually mitted, helmeted Attila in tow, my incisors have worn down a foot or so. I press my fingers to my temples and stare beneath them at my "teachers". My brain has rattled back in place now, and I'm starting to think again.
"Wait a minute... I thought Attila did cupcakes, not dinner."
"Transferable skills." Big Nose rolled his eyes to the heavens, as if pleading with some higher power for patience and a more intelligent student. "Cupcakes are his favorite, but he can make other stuff. You really think we're that one-dimensional?"
"Will I be punished if I say yes?" Honestly, I try not to give that much thought to what the thugs get up to in their spare time.
Attila's chuckle echoes hollowly in his helmet. "Besides, do you want the landlord to teach you cooking?"
Okay, he has a point. Given the two, I'd pick Attila any day. Even if I have no idea what his face looks like under that tin can because he wears it all the freaking time, his cupcakes are edible-pretty darn tasty actually. Now, I've never eaten anything whipped up by the landlord, but if the smell's anything to go on, Attila would be my choice for culinary delights every time.
Actually, it might not be such a bad idea to butter up Attila. Hopefully I'll be in need of a wedding cake soon, and a pub thug wedding cake carries a lot more pizzazz than a castle pastry chef wedding cake.
And there goes the mental image of me smearing a stick of butter down Attila's armor. Oh, that's a bad thought. That's a bad, wicked, nasty, repulsive thought, and I think I should go vomit in a cupboard.
"Have you ever cooked before?" Attila's hollow, metallic voice interrupts my figuratively self-flagellatory thoughts, and I quickly straighten.
Of course I've cooked before, just only in the most basic sense. Roasting a carcass over a fire in the woods as a last resort because I was a ne'er-do-well on the run, the occasional pot of soup when I was a kid from whatever I could scrape up in the kitchen, things like that. Normally, however, I've always been perfectly happy to pay for food (okay, fine, steal, either the money or the food itself).
Or take my meals on the sufferance of someone nobler and wealthier than I, once my living status reached that point. The castle cook is amazing, of course. I'd probably also be beaten with rolling pins for setting foot in the kitchen, so no cooking lessons have been forthcoming from that quarter, not that they'd ever been a goal of mine.
Apparently I've taken too long thinking about the question because the Attila and Big Nose look at one another and heave a great, mutual sighs.
"We'll start you out with something simple, see how you do." Big Nose is brisk. "Attila, give him something simple."
Attila's tin can head tilts to the right, considering. "Maybe a dessert?"
Big Nose's face lights up like Rapunzel's birthday lanterns. "Definitely, that's perfect!. He'll be set with a dessert even if he can't manage a main course! There isn't a woman in the world who doesn't love sweets."
I really do prefer it when people don't talk about me like I'm not standing right there. I also prefer it when they don't compare Rapunzel to every other woman in the world because Rapunzel is not every other woman in the world. Rapunzel is so perfectly unique and so perfectly herself that no other woman can even begin to compare to-
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, if we haven't already established it, I've got it bad. Cupid's arrow is solidly buried in my backside, and I'm not going to be able to extract it anytime soon.
"Just give me something, guys. I'll give it a shot."
Attila plunks down a recipe box on the butcher table and directs me to look through the cards for something that catches my interest.
"Pick something with only a few ingredients to start with, nothing too complicated."
Okay, I can do this. I can read. This isn't hard. While I start pawing through the box, Big Nose and Attila withdraw into a corner, whispering. It's hard to glare at them and pick my recipe simultaneously-I either need eyes like Pascal's or just more eyes, period- so I quickly give that up.
The dessert section is helpfully divided into subsections, although the categorization scheme seems a little odd. Frozen, I can understand, but not so much Meaty. Me, I want Spicy! Rapunzel's expressed an interest in foods with a bit of heat to them lately, and I am more than happy to oblige her if it means that I'll get tingly, new-experience-enthusiasm kisses immediately after dinner. I finally find the batch helpfully labeled Hot and flip through the cards: Bananas Foster, Cherries Jubilee, Mangos Diablo, Peaches Louis... You know, these are all very fruity desserts, with not a single chili pepper to their name. Rapunzel does like fruit though...
Cherries Jubilee sounds fun, festive, cheerful. But does it scream "I love you, marry me?"
"You're going for drama." Attila's suddenly got one mitt over my shoulder, and his echo sounds approving. "Something that'll really impress her."
That'll work.
So, I'm looking at the ingredient list, and Cherries Jubilee doesn't really seem like it'd be very spicy, but oh well. I've got the approval of my instructor, right? Yep, there's an oven-mitted thumbs-up. I can add some cinnamon to it; that'll make it better.
Under Attila's watchful eye, I work my way through the instructions quickly. Throw the ingredients into the saucepan when the text directs me, stir, bring to boil, stir some more, add a few more ingredients, boil some more, then simmer, take the saucepan off the flame, hold it away from the body, strike a match, etc. Cooking requires surprisingly less thought than I realized it did. I mean, I thought this would be work or hard, confusing stuff. This is easy! I just do what the words say to do, and I don't even have to think about it.
Oh look, snapping mountainous blue fire reaching for the ceiling. That's pretty awesome.
Snapping mountainous blue fire reaching for the ceiling!
My gaze jerks down in horror to see that, with one hand, I've stuck a freshly lit taper into my recipe-perfect Cherries Jubilee and the whole dessert is just jubilantly blazing away at the end of my other arm.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
"It's okay!"
Attila catches my wrist as I flail backwards, accidentally thrusting the lit candle directly at a certain large nose. He slides the saucepan safely away, while Big Nose yelps and tackles me to the floor.
"Calm down!"
I'm down and rapidly smothering under his and Attila's combined weight, but I'm not out yet. Oh, believe me, I am hyperaware that I am not out yet, that I am in fact still in the kitchen with the butchering table and the oven and the fire pit and my new mini-inferno in a saucepan.
"Calm down? You want me to calm down? It's on fire! This is your fault!"
"It's supposed to be!"
"How is it supposed to be on fire?" As best I can, I thrust an accusatory finger in Attila's face. "Am I supposed to singe off her eyebrows, burn her nose? Oh, yeah, she'll love me then!"
"Well, well, this certainly does look like a lover's meal." Shorty stumbles into the room, tittering as he eyes the three of us frozen in combat on the floor. "You three are looking awfully cozy together, more entwined than a bunch of mating snails."
Me and Attila and Big Nose, really? That's the nightmarish place his demented little mind decided to go? Also, and more importantly because we all know I'm gaga over Rapunzel and not interested in my current wrestling buddies, did he just imply I was slimy? Or that I have enormous feet? I snarl. I'm pumped full of adrenalin and feeling just a little murderous at the moment, and here is the perfect taunter awaiting his punishment. Just one breath over that saucepan and he'd go up like a torch.
"Shorty," I croon through clenched teeth, "come be my love and eat my dessert!"
Shorty, however, wisely backs up to the doorway after seeing the remains of my Cherries Jubilee, still burning just slightly now. He shakes his head, beard ribbons flying, his eyes stricken and slowly filling with tears.
"My brandy?" he whispers before his voice rises to a wail. "How could you? I thought you loved me!"
Next chapter