Disclaimer: I own nothing related to the Tangled universe including, but not limited to, characters, names of places, lyrics, dialogue, or any other piece of product. Disney retains all the rights to this universe. I am making no money or receiving any kind of compensation, material or non-material, for this fiction. It's all for fun. Please don't sue me. I do claim the writing, the idea behind this particular narrative, and any peripheral characters or locations created to augment Disney's work. The summary line is borrowed from Robert Burns' poem To a Mouse.

A/N: One of my main gripes about Tangled is the cut from Rapunzel and Flynn on the rowboat to the shore where he goes to meet the Stabbingtons. I always felt it was rather abrupt. This is my attempt to fill in, what I feel like, is a rather large gap. I, of course, make it saucy because… do I really need a reason? Out of canon, but not out of canon. I am a rule bender. Enjoy!

It wasn't that Flynn never felt fear. No. That wasn't it at all. It was that he never found fear to be a problem. He knew how to use it to give himself the advantage. Fear made him faster, stronger, and sharper. Fear gave him drive, wit, and speed. Fear let him know he was still alive.

He was no stranger to the adrenaline that came with pushing his limits. It wasn't a good week unless he was on the run from at least one person who wanted him dead. It was his pattern, his style, his M.O., and he loved it.

Right now, however, in the bay overlooking Corona's palace surrounded by thousands of paper lanterns, he is way beyond fear.

He is way beyond fear because there is this girl, this child, in front of him. She looks at him with huge green eyes like she knows exactly who he is. That wouldn't be scary except - somehow - she does know. She may be in the dark on some of the details, names and places of the sob-story he never got around to telling, but she still knows him. In the middle of cutting through the forest, serenading The Snuggly Duckling, nearly getting killed numerous ways by numerous people (and one horse), and navigating the populous of Corona, she figured him out. She knows how to make him laugh and when he needs her to be quiet and just the right way to ask to get him to do anything she wants. She knows him and she trusts him, and that is scarier than anything he can imagine.

Worse still is it isn't the functional fear he harnessed and mastered long ago. No. It is the scatter-brained, sweaty-palmed, full-fledged kind of panic he is used to seeing in others, but not in himself. Flynn Rider is never flustered. Flynn Rider never cracks under pressure. But here he is, Flynn Rider, with his chest so tight he can't breathe because she is just sitting there being – perfect. She is just perfect and he is just a mess and this is not the plan.

The plan was simple and streamlined and sexy. The plan was all about him, the crown, his island, and his enormous piles of money. The plan was going to be the pinnacle of his thieving career. Then she ruined everything by getting involved and she keeps ruining it with every second she is around him. Even in this stupid moment in this stupid boat with the stupid lanterns, she ruins it, because now he realizes that the plan isn't about him at all anymore. It is about her, all of her, and all of what she does to him and he is terrified.

He has the urge to jump out of this dinghy and swim far, far away, but he chokes it down. That isn't going to fix anything. Nothing he can do will erase the fact that he now knows how warm and bright touching her makes him feel. Now he knows how excited she gets about snails, and kites, and rivers. Now he knows her joy and her sadness and how she explodes with so much life he doesn't know how she fits it all in her tiny body. He knows her just like she knows him, and that closeness is a shock unlike anything he's ever felt.

He needs her to stop looking at him.

Her eyes say she cares and he doesn't know what to do with that. He doesn't know what to do with her honesty. He doesn't know how to hide from her vibrance.

He needs her to stop looking at him.

He needs to make her stop looking at him because her eyes drag up feelings in his chest that he didn't know he could have. Feelings that bang and rattle inside him so hard that he aches. Feelings that make it difficult to think, to breathe, to swallow. Feelings that he is not willing to have.

He wants her.

He doesn't want her.

Dammit. How can both be true?

He cannot be here with her for one more second without doing something to make her stop looking at him.

He knows kissing Rapunzel is not the best strategy to neutralize her gaze. He knows it will do nothing to alleviate the fear he feels. There is a real chance that it will only intensify the problems he currently has, but she is just looking at him and, dammit, he wants her.

His hand hooks up behind her head. Her skin too soft to be real against the calluses on his fingers and palms, but it is. This is real. She is real and she is watching him, waiting for him to show her what to do, to show her what comes next after the air grows thin and crackles with energy. He pulls her forward, so gently, like he might break her and leans in to find her halfway. He can feel her breath, he can smell the flowers woven into her hair, and he can almost taste her...

Then a light catches his eye. It is different than the warm glow of the lanterns and his heart jumps to his throat for a reason that has nothing to do with kissing Rapunzel.

There, on the shore, the green glow of a lantern flashes on two familiar faces he could do without seeing ever again. Ice shoots through his blood and he revels in its familiarity. This is the fear he is used to. This is the fear he understands. He knows this fear. He can use this fear.

His eyes go to the satchel sitting an arms-length away from him on the bench where Rapunzel sits, then back to her face. Her eyes are closed. The last of the lanterns cast a warm glow across her cheeks. Her lips are parted in anticipation and she is so close he can count her freckles. He can't decide if seeing her like this, unabashed in her wanting, is better or worse than her just looking at him.

He looks over her shoulder to the bank where the brothers stood, but they are nowhere in sight. He doesn't wonder where they went. It isn't important. They aren't trying to get to him out on the water. They are trying to make a point. They want him to know that they know where he is. They want him to know that even if he can't see them, they can see him.

They want the crown.

They probably wouldn't mind seeing him dance a little, either. And by 'dance' he means 'writhe in pain'.

This is chess and it is his move.

His mind churns.

He needs a plan.

He drops his hand from her neck. Her eyes blink open at the change in mood, in the shift of proximity, and he tries to ignore the questions in her expression. In fact he tries to avoid her face altogether. They need a plan and her face makes it difficult to think about anything other than how much he really does want to kiss her.

It was better when her eyes were closed.

Forget chess. Part of him says. Forget plans. Drop her like dead weight and get the hell out of here. He can't say the idea isn't tempting.

The crown is inches away from him, she is down a frying pan, and he can swim. Why is he making plans for two when plans for one are all he needs? Blind running is a great option. Let her figure out her own way back to her tower. Let her deal with the Stabbingtons. After all, this is all her fault. If she hadn't coerced him into this suicide mission, he would be halfway to his island by now.

He could go.

He should go.

He can't.

He won't.

And he is only just beginning to understand how complicated caring can be.

"Is everything – okay?"

His gaze jerks to her face when she speaks. He is still so close to her, and his breath catches at the nearness. It takes him a moment to focus.

There are a thousand questions in her eyes and he doesn't have an answer to any of them. Not a good answer, anyway. He could give her something like a lie, but his tongue won't form the words. What she does to him is too real to just dismiss her with a quip or a smirk. She deserves more, deserves btter, deserves the truth, but he can't give her that.

It looks like she might start crying. He needs to say something before she starts crying. Something. Anything!

"Huh?" It is the best he can come up with.

If it was physically possible to kick his own ass, he would have right then. What is wrong with him? He needs to pull his shit together. Fast.

"Oh! Yes. Uh – yes – of course. I just…" Because a chain of monosyllabic garble is a lot better that one guttural grunt.

Right?

Wrong.

Oh hell.

The way she looks at him with her eyes all glossy and hurt makes him angry. They make him want to scream at her. They make him want to tell her every single bad thing he has ever done just to get her to stop looking at him like he has answers, like he is going to take care of her.

He doesn't.

He can't.

He isn't that guy.

He isn't the guy that fixes girls. He isn't even the guy who remembers girls names, and it pisses him off that she makes him wish he was.

This is why he works alone.

This, the way she looks at him with disappointment etched deep into her eyes, is why he doesn't like partner operations. This is why he doesn't have friends, doesn't settle down, doesn't have a family. This is why he can't just tell her the truth. He can't tell her why he has the crown, or what that means, or how the Stabbingtons are waiting to, most likely, kill him or how pissed off he is because she is now the main reason he cares if he dies.

Death used to be a risk he took with every heist. There are a million ways to die, and it seemed like he was always skirting around one or another. He never was the guy with long term plans, and the idea of the end never bothered him that much. That is until she came along and ruined him. Two days with her and his whole perspective shifts. Now all the time in world won't be enough because he doesn't think he will ever get tired of watching her do... anything.

And, dammit, she just looks at him with all those questions she doesn't know how to ask and somehow what she is feeling is his fault. Somehow, he ended up on a boat with a girl who never knew that all people weren't cannibals, much less understood the finer points of romantic interaction.

He wants to kiss her and confirm to her that he wants her, he needs her.

He doesn't want to kiss her, doesn't want her to know just how much she means, how captivated he is with her.

She waits for him to say something, to make this okay, to make this better, but he has nothing for her. The hurt from his rejection and subsequent speechlessness is radiant and it pulses off of her in waves. He feels it sink under his skin, into his bones, like poison.

The brave front she clutches starts to slip in wake of his silence. Her lip quivers. Her breath catches. The narrow line of her shoulders shudders. She draws her hands out of his and curls them in her lap. Just when he thought she would erupt in a typhoon of disappointment, she looks down to where she twists tiny fingers against her skirt.

"Okay. Then, I guess… that's it." She keeps her head down, gaze locked on her lap

The way she says 'that's it', like she is finally giving up on him, is a swift kick to the gut.

Since their first meeting, Rapunzel never hid one flicker of feeling from him. She was warm and open and freer than any other person he'd ever met. She was effervescent and unflagging in her joy, her sorrow, and her fear. She colored her world, and his in turn, with her emotions, leaving them both vivid and vital. Now with her face turned from him, shutting him out of her technicolor existence, he feels that color drain out the bottom of his feet. Now as she closes him out, his world shifts to his old gray. He never much minded his monochrome until she showed him that life could be so much more.

He thought he knew fear at the end of a sword. He thought he knew fear when they were trapped in the abandoned mine shaft, water climbing up around them and no escape in sight. He thought he knew fear when they hurled together after dancing till they were dizzy and a shock ran up his system at her touch, at the electric quality of her smile, at the way her body fit so elegantly against his. He thought he knew fear when she looked him in the eye tonight, joy so plain in the lantern light, and he saw how much he wanted her reflected in her expression.

He thought wrong.

Her looking away, hiding from him, shutting him out is worse than all of that put together. It is a steel blade through his heart. He never knew a gesture so simple, so small, could hurt so much.

He has a new plan.

Forget the crown, the island, and the enormous piles of money. Forget the details of getting out of here, the Stabbingtons, and that the entire force of Corona's military is looking for him right now. Forget that he is Flynn Rider and that she is some girl from a tower and that them together could never make sense in a thousand years. Forget everything except for the voice screaming in his mind to grab onto this girl and never let her go.

The time for thinking is done.

He does what he has wanted to do since that moment last night by the fire.

He reaches out to her, without preamble or preface, and grabs her face in rough hands. In one exact movement he turns her face up towards him and presses his mouth against hers. She goes rigid in surprise, body full of steel before melting under the heat of his lips.

This is no introduction course and he is no teacher. He wants to knock her off balance, to make her head spin and her breath stop because she does that to him. He wants her to flail and fight and feel like she is drowning in the intensity of her feelings because she does that to him. He wants her to forget who she is, where she is from, and everything that she has ever known because she does that to him. After all, it is only fair.

She means so much to him it that makes him angry and his kiss is punishing to reflect that. Who is she to make him feel all these things? She is just some weird girl from a tower he wishes he never found. She is just the girl who almost got him killed more than once. She is just the girl with the magic hair that is creepy and unsettling. She is just the girl - just the girl - just the only girl who ever meant anything to him. But that isn't even the worst part.

The worst part is she kisses back.

She kisses back, all teeth and tongue, mimicking every motion he makes with such precision his need throbs and - gods - he cannot get enough of her.

He moves closer and kneels in front of her. The boat rocks. Pascal squeaks and hides in some rope. He clutches her face in his hands, holding her, moving her where he needs her to go, because she doesn't get to lock him out again. Ever. Not when it is her damn fault for making him care so much it hurts.

She bites him.

Fuck.

She bites his lip and his brain stops. She sure as hell didn't learn that in her damn tower. So that means she learned through implication. That means she learned that from him. She learned because he kisses her like this was war. That alone is enough to finish him.

The line between anger and passion blurs to extinction and there will never be enough of her. No. Not ever.

Every fiber of his being strains to be closer to her. He wants to hold her too tight, to kiss her too hard, to leave marks on that too soft skin. He will. He will. He will, because he feels how much she wants this. Her desire makes it easier to justify his own. Of course she wants him. He is Flynn Rider! Except, to her, he isn't. To her, he is Eugene, and the implications of that make him dizzy.

He pulls her down off of her seat. Her legs strain against the confines of her skirt to straddle his lap. She pulls on the fabric till it bunches up above her knees and she comes to kneel over him. The boat rocks more and he clamps his hands under her thighs to steady her. His fingers clench into her flesh. He doesn't understand how skin can be this soft. It makes his fingers itch to see if she is this soft everywhere.

She presses herself against him. The thick boning of her corset protects soft curves. He feels the swell of her breasts against his chest with every gasping breath. He feels the soft velvet of her tongue mix with the hard pressure of his kiss. He feels the tattoo of her heart beat hard against his hand on her back.

He cannot remember wanting anyone as much as he wanted her right now. Fully clothed, just kissing, and still his body registers heat that it typically reserved for his dirtiest romps. He tries to find a reason to not find her the sexiest thing he has ever touched. He cannot find one. In fact, it is the opposite. A moan rips from his chest because she is being so damn good.

He wants more.

His hands come to her waist and pull her down the last few inches to sit against him. He needs to feel her heat. The tips of his fingers touch around her middle, making a full circle, and he can't understand how anyone so small can make him have feelings this big. She whimpers into his mouth at the change of pressure. The sound coupled with the weight of her on top of him sends shivers down his spine.

Under different circumstances, he would spread her out under him and show her just how many wonderful things his hands and mouth could make her feel. Under different circumstances, he would teach her what the deep burning in her stomach was precursor to. Under different circumstances, he would have never been here in the first place.

The thought is a reality check.

What is he doing?

Oh. He knows exactly what he is doing.

His hands are on her hips, rocking her back and forth, and it feels so good it takes effort to remember to keep kissing her. He is breathing her in and she is running tiny fingers through his hair in a way that he can't help but love. He is wondering at how she just melts at his every touch, so responsive and pliant, and how he ever settled for anything less.

But why? Why is he doing this? He should be coming up with some clever to get out of trouble with the Stabbington brothers. He should be planning what his island should look like and what kind of stone he wanted for his castle. He should be off somewhere, out of reach, far away from Corona, counting piles and piles of money. He isn't doing any of those things, though. He isn't even close. All he is doing is kissing her, and that is all he wants to do.

Fuck it.

She grinds down against him just right and - this is what he wants. This is what he wants forever. More than an island, more than a crown, more than anything - this, this, this and more of this for the rest of his life. He wants this heat, this denial, this surrender for every breath he takes and every day he wakes. Fortune be damned. No money had ever bought him anything close to what the girl in his arms gives him right now.

He fists his hand in her hair and twists her head back. In the light of the night sky he can see her parted lips, blood red and swollen. He did that. He can hear her breathing, hard and irregular. He did that. He wants to do that again and again and again.

He kisses down her neck, warm and wet, lingering on pulse points, and he cannot understand how anyone lives without this. He wants to finish her. He wants to show her what happens when the coil of desire explodes and the lanterns aren't the only light she sees. He wants to teach her, mold her, shape her so that every single one of her dirty secrets have him tangled in with them.

Her wants her, all of her and all of what she does to him, for the rest of his life.

The realization is as chilling as it is thrilling. The tightness in his chest is still there, the chill and the anxiety of real intimacy, but it feels different now. It feels like every great heist he ever pulled off all put together in one cluster of inescapable need, and he understands now. She is his greatest adventure. She is his greatest thrill, fear, rush. He never wants to feel anything but this for the rest of his life.

But first – there is one matter of business to which he must attend.

He slows down. He loosens the hold he has on her hair and eases the kisses on her collarbone to gentle brushes of his lips. She rocks against him still, not understanding, frustrated, but he puts his hands on her hips to settle her. It is the most difficult thing he has ever done.

Business or not, he doesn't want their first time to be half dressed in an uncomfortable wooden dinghy. He wants their first time to be somewhere he can lay her out and make her beg and scream. He wants their first time to not be tied to him making an ass of himself by not kissing her the first time. He wants their first time to be special because for the first time in his history, he wants there to be a second and a third and an infinite amount of times to follow.

But in order for that to happen, he has two very ugly problems to get rid of.

He rests his forehead against the crook of her neck, grounding himself, taking deep breaths to pull himself back to reality. She doesn't make it easy. She doesn't understand why he stopped, and she tries to suck him back in with a wanton shimmy of her hips. He hisses. This girl will be the death of him.

With every ounce of strength and self-control in his body, he takes her by the waist and lifts her off of his lap. He settles her back on the wooden seat where she started and he pushes himself back to his. He doesn't look at her because he is afraid he'll lose control again. There would be time for the loss of control later, but right now he just needs a minute.

All he needed to do was get rid of that crown, and then he'd find some nice inn where they could finish what they started. Yeah. That sounded good. Get rid of the crown, get rid of the Stabbingtons, and show her exactly the right way to finish what they started. It couldn't be that difficult, right? Right?

He knows she is watching him as he rows them back to shore, and he is glad that it doesn't take too long. He isn't sure how long he can endure her quiet confusion again. One time is enough. She is only this quiet when she is really thinking, and that normally led to questions he didn't want to answer. So he rowed quickly.

He jumps out of the boat as soon as they reach the shore. Water splashes around his ankles and he pulls the vessel up onto the sand so it wouldn't float away. He comes around to the side and grabs his satchel out of the side of the boat. His knuckles brush the satin of her skirts and he remembers them bunched up around her waist. It takes everything within him not to just grab her and kiss her till she can't breathe. There will be time for that soon, but not now. Now he has to make sure that she is safe, that their life can begin, that a blood mark doesn't rest on his head.

"I'm sorry." He fiddles his fingers across the worn leather of his satchel. Even in its familiarity it feels strange. "Everything's fine. There's just something I have to take care of." He takes a few steps back, hoping she understand, hoping she knows she is doing this for her. For them.

"Okay." She gives him a half smile, so many questions lingering on the tip of her tongue, but she doesn't ask. She knows him. She trusts him. And what once was frightening is now reassuring.

"I'll be right back." He says.

He really thought he would be.

A/N: BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE! Oh, and if you followed my fanfiction twitter - you would have known that this update was coming. So if you wanna get creepy, look me up: ravenswrite