rapunzel von der sonne

His thought snags on the girl’s last comment for longer than he’d like to admit. Oh this kid’s sharp. Not as sharp as he is, of course, as he backs away from giving any sort of emotion response. But still enough to keep him on his toes.

Note to self - if she ever gets close to the ‘get my powers back’ plan, nip that in the bud as soon as possible.

“And you seem like the type of person who wants to play shrink with any random person she meets on the street.” The barbs are out. “I could slit your throat right now and you’re not even concerned.”

Oh, hurtful! Internally, Rapunzel is grinning and kicking. Once again, it's just so reassuring to be threatened outright. It's better than her Mother and it's better than the two men who would have given her back to Mother for a cash payout, two lugs that didn't even see her as a person to be threatened.

Exchanging barbs with someone just has its own appeal, even separate from threats and the fun intentions. They're waiting for a bus. What an interesting way to do it.

Okay this conversation is getting kind of out of hand. She’s scared? And she’s still willing to talk to him? Either she’s got balls of steel to be carousing with a worse-than-criminal like this or she’s just. Incredibly naive. Hopelessly naive. Would probably be apocalypse fodder if he had his powers naive.

She’s interesting, that’s for sure.

“The messiness is the point, kid.” He sighs, almost wishing a cigarette was between his fingers just so he could smoke it. “Crimes aren’t fun if they don’t leave me caked in some other dude’s blood.”

The concept of a crime has always been enough to make Rapunzel comfortable, if only because she spent her entire life in the ropes of someone else's crime, kidnapping her, and then she had to commit quite a few of her own to truly break free. At least criminals admit that there's something going on. Regular people will bleed you dry of who you are and pretend they're looking out for you while they do it.

To that end, there's something comforting about this creep. At least he's open about being a creep.

rapunzel squirts sunscreen into his hand, white and cool and liquid. he closes his hand around it, commits the feeling of it to memory as if that is something important - as if memories stay, as if he could make them. “it’s just like lotion,” jack says, as if he has ever needed to use lotion, as if that is a thing that would happen to him. he’s felt lotion before though, smooth and wet across his fingertips. now that he thinks about it, he can’t remember why he’s felt lotion before. obviously it wasn’t for him - his synthetic skin has no need for something to hydrate it, his automatic faculties making sure to keep his body pliant and lifelike. whatever the need for feeling lifelike comes from, he finds himself quietly thankful for it. without that lifelike feeling, he couldn’t pretend to be just the same as those he chooses to surround himself with. and though they know, rapunzel knows, she doesn’t care. he likes that part of her the best. “do you have something against lotion?”

“it would make more sense if you couldn’t get a sunburn out here,” jack agrees, looking up at the synthetic sun. though it stings his eyes, that is just another factor built into his making. it can’t really hurt him. would it hurt people like rapunzel though, the same way that it burns her skin? he looks back to her. “i guess it would take away from the real feel of it for some people. maybe there are people who like burning their feet on the ground and their skin in the sun. i, on the other hand, would like to get in the pool and have fun, if someone,” he drags out the word, playfully jabbing at her, “could hurry up!”

rapunzel contemplates it for a second. "i guess i do have something against lotion," she says, imagining the texture of and having to stop herself from shuttering. she wonders, just this once, how jack knows what lotion feels like- it's not like he needs to use it, and she never has it in the apartment, not really. she tries not to wonder about jack's days without her, the afternoons he runs late getting home sometimes, the way he sidesteps the mention of his boss every time she asks him about how his day was. he doesn't work with anyone besides pitch, she thinks. so, what is his day like, really? she shakes off the worry.

dcwnturn.

“is it rude to be concerned about your skin?” jack asks, raising an eyebrow. behind the incredulity however, he’s not entirely sure how she is going to answer. is it rude to be concerned? is that somehow overstepping in a relationship that has proven to have the fewest boundaries that he has ever encountered? while he’s not going to let himself get anxious about it, he can admit privately that the idea of that does worry him quite a bit - he has never known anyone in the way that he knows rapunzel, never trusted anyone with the broken bits that refuse to form the perfectly completed puzzle he has been told an automaton is supposed to be. still, his eyes narrow. “i think you’re just trying to change the subject and get out of it or something. aren’t there diseases you can get from burning your skin?”

as an automaton, jack has little to no experience with or knowledge of the diseases that people can get. still, he is well within his rights. “well let me know if you need help with anything. i packed the spray and the lotion kind just in case.” now if they could just get in the water, he’d be happy. “that’s a great idea. why does the ground get hot, anyway? shouldn’t there be some way to counter that?”

rapunzel sighs. "no, it's not rude to be concerned about my skin. i just hate sunscreen. it has this weird texture! here, feel this," she says, grabbing the sunscreen out of her bag and squirting some into her hand. she then squirts just a little bit into jack's hand, not enough to use (because he doesn't have to), but enough for him to feel it. she's made him feel the texture of sunscreen before, but it's been maybe a few years now, and she never knows which things he's going to remember. he's gotta have a corrupted memory drive, something, but his boss (whom rapunzel has never met, but has enough reason to dislike, she thinks) doesn't want him going to a medical technician.

dcwnturn.

jack rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t mean it. he would do anything for rapunzel, even if it means waiting to get into the pool so that she has somewhere to sit when she gets tired, when she wants a snack. he thinks that he could spend hours in the pool without a break; his skin doesn’t burn, his limbs do not tire, his body does not hunger. but there is no mistaking the weightlessness that he is gifted by the feeling of the water around him, lifting him up; for a moment, it is almost as if he can fly.

“did you put on sunscreen?” jack asks, following her to the chair that she has claimed. though his skin does not burn, the same cannot be said for his companion. “you know that you’ll look like a lobster if you don’t prepare right.” he doesn’t think that he has ever seen a lobster in person. he can’t be sure. “we should probably leave the snacks under the chair and a towel - maybe it won’t melt then.”

"you're so rude to me!" rapunzel says, rubbing her hands over her arms in fear of the lobster treatment. they're in space for crying out loud, couldn't someone have come up with a sort of sun protection that would get rid of the ailment she'd dealt with since she was a child? sun sensitivity is a useless function of the human body. sure, it provides evidence of external damage in part because of deeper damage, but that doesn't have to happen in space. the entire space community is full of it. rapunzel sighs.

"no," she says, holding back her instinctive eye roll at the very concept, "i haven't put on sunscreen. i should probably put it on before getting in the water." she says this last part without any inflection at all, her tone flat. she perks up a little for the snacks, however. "i'll wrap the towel beneath them as well, just in case the ground is hot."

Okay, so not the response he was expecting. Oh well, there’s gotta be some way for him to turn this conversation straight into the danger zone. It’s like a game.

“Haven’t you ever heard of blackmail? Anyone can be a getaway driver if you push them enough.” Threats of violence - now that’s gonna do it.

Oh, what a wonderful opportunity to play along. She can tell from looks that this is a person that would most likely get away with a crime, should they choose to commit it, but it's fun to theorize, especially with a new friend. He's probably not robbing anyone right now anyways- they're going on public transit! There's something reassuring about a person just admitting to being a threat. It's nice when they don't pretend.

“That truly would have been awful,” Mal said with a smile, the edges of her expression curling with practiced ease. “I’m going to get lunch myself now.” There was a pause, just a beat before that reassuring smile turned a little more friendly. “Say, dear, would you like to join me?” 

there was something strangely reassuring about the mayor, rapunzel thought, especially seeing as she had never been especially comfortable around women older than her in the first place. "that would be nice," she said anyway, and her own readiness to agree makes her smile awkwardly. "if you really don't mind."

hikari pauses, straightening their shoulders and tries to listen keenly for the device. they turn their head thinking maybe if they just lean or look a certain direction it might help, but the familiar sound of their ringtone is not in the wind. “no… i don’t think so. do you know dodie? the musician? a classic way back when, but i use one of their songs as my ringtone.”

dcwnturn.

jack only barely remembers to slam the door shut - completely unsure if it is locked or not, and deciding that he doesn’t care - before he is sprinting off after rapunzel. she has the lead by far, but he does have a couple of notable benefits: the first, that he is an automaton. he will not tire, he will not run out of breath, he will not risk falling or hurting himself. the second, he’s taller, his legs are longer, and he’s catching up fast. he slows down, just a bit, enough to where he’s not quite as close to overtaking her, and works on convincing himself that he’s not going to let her win just as he does just that. she reaches the pool first, him just behind, and he comes up short of pushing her into the water, hands pressed to her back, wild grin on his face. “you win,” he says, laughter coloring his tone.

she knows that jack is letting her win; he outpaces her by far whenever they get those sweet, hot snacks from the market, running so fast to the booth that he doesn't even look human. and, well, he isn't. he can run faster and longer and harder than she can, but he still lets her win. it's things like that that make her wonder how anyone could ever think jackie isn't a person, even if he's not human. pure machines don't let people win. if you play chess against a computer, if you get into an argument with an automated service, they don't capitulate. they don't relent. still, she gets to the pool three paces in front of jack, and she loves him so, so much. even when he tries to push her in the pool. "dang right i do!" she says, pressing back the thoughts plaguing her, and then she bee lines to one of the empty chairs by the pool. "come on, jackie, we gotta claim a spot before we get in!"

dcwnturn.

there is something special about spending time with rapunzel. no matter his own confusion at times, no matter the struggles that he buries beneath his artificial skin, she seems to have no reservations towards her spot at his side. or maybe it is he that stays at her side, an ever present companion, too scared to branch out, too scared to leave. and yet she never seems to mind. “yes,” he replies with a chuckle. and he thought he was the one with memory trouble. “you fed cam. would have fed him twice if i didn’t stop you. as for the pool… the faster that we get there, the less crowded it’s going to be, right? what do you think about a race?”

"thanks jackie, you're the best," rapunzel says, kissing jack quickly on the cheek. "you'll never catch me alive!" she yells then, her head turned away from jack out of politeness, and she springs into a dead sprint, leaving their apartment door open behind her. either jack will remember to close it or he won't, it's not like they have much worth stealing in there. she never got used to the idea of having her own belongings, of being able to spread them all out all over the apartment. she does have belongings now, probably too many for their tiny studio, in fact,  but it's nothing expensive. the fear always got her before she could purchase. now, she's laughing as she runs, hair spread out like a veil behind her.

dcwnturn.

jack finishes throwing the last of it together; rapunzel had picked up some cute little tupperware containers a while back, a time that is fuzzy in his memory but not completely gone - a memory that makes him feel more human than not, but he is quick to pack that away. nearly as quick as he is to shove the full tupperware into a beach bag, spinning to face his roommate with a smile. “well i’m ready to go when you are!” jack replies. “and your towel? do you have your own?” he is dramatic in the way that he taps his own towel, still thrown over his shoulder, but it is an obvious jest. they both know that he would share if she asked.

"i have my towel, jackie!" rapunzel groans, rushing forward to grab her friend by the arm, taking the beach bag from him to rush him along. "let's go!" she enthuses, not unwilling to drag jack out of the apartment, but at least wanting to give him a chance to have another outcome to this situation. "how crowded do you think the pool is going to be? did i feed cam this morning?" she asks both of these questions right after another, as if the thoughts are related. cam is a nickname she uses for her chameleon, even if the nickname has nothing to do with the name itself.

“you have a chameleon?” the words blurted out of their mouth before they could help themselves. their love and affinity with animals just naturally took a hold of them, and focused on that one small tidbit. shaking their head, they let out a soft giggle, “i can ask about that later. oh! you’re right! let’s see my number is-” hikari jumped brightly at the idea. they began to recount their number to the stranger, hoping that this would work. 

Oh, she’s scared. She’s trying to do a good job at hiding it, but he can tell. It’s in her posture - she’s trying really really hard to not just jump ship at the sight of him. The question is, what’s it gonna take for her to up and run?

It’s a challenge, Bill decides.

“Oh, nothing,” he starts, trying to ease into throwing up red flag after red flag. “Robbing a bank in a bit.” He’s lying - he wouldn’t dare risk jail time in a body like this - but it’s at least a fun idea. An idea she might believe.

She can't help it. She laughs, all of the tension running out of her as soon as he introduces a concept she can focus on instead of any sort of fear she felt before.

"Oh yeah?" she asks, ready to play along. "And you're taking a bus? What about a getaway driver?"

“Oh, very good!” She said this with a smile that then turned into a slight frown. “Well, I don’t mean that it’s very good that we’re on a delay, simply that I’m glad I didn’t miss my bus.”

“No, I get it, I’m glad it’s late too. I was late getting out of an appointment and I almost missed getting home for lunch!” Rapunzel said, wave a hand to assure the mayor, of all people, that she understood.

dcwnturn.

“i’m not worried, punz,” jack says with a smile. and he’s not. though he doesn’t understand money more often than he does, he can at least trust rapunzel to know what she is talking about. she takes his half of the rent money and makes sure that the bills are paid, and she never makes a big deal about it. he can trust her. “maybe some sour candy too if you’re, uh. interested in that. i just saw some in the store the other day. looked good.” he does not mention that he was in the store for pitch, and that it is several more credits than he could afford to waste on someone who doesn’t actually need to eat: aka him. “are you ready?”

it's so nice to be trusted some days that rapunzel can hardly stand it. for someone to look at her and see someone who can handle themself, someone who can pay the bills and go to work and do everything she's supposed to do. "sour candy sounds great, jackie. i'm dressed, so i'm ready when you are," she says, the words coming out just a little teasing. she loves making fun of jack for taking longer than her, even if it's hardly ever actually true. she leans on the counter beside him.