A/N. For Lauriesf, Belle, Twyla, and Ryunn, who requested a Belle-centric sequel to "Air Conditioning."
In retrospect, Belle would have to place the blame not on the heat but rather on her upbringing. If she hadn't been raised as a proper noblewoman, modest and innocent, she might have known more about male physiology and-
Aw, screw it. Belle knows exactly what she's doing. And the reaction she gets from her master (though somewhere along the line, she'd stopped thinking of him that way and he'd stopped treating her that way–who stopped first? She never could figure that out) was exactly the one she was going for. Magic, she has none, but power, as she discovered, she has plenty; and since it's the most powerful mage in the world that she is, gradually and (to him) subtly, drawing in, by the transitive property of love, that makes her powerful too. This last realization will come only years later, however; for now, she is still innocent of the politics of sex. For now, she is simply desirous of learning the laws of attraction as they pertain to herself and Rumplestiltskin.
She's desirous of learning about desire. Specifically, his. She already knows a fair bit about hers. Those hands, for example–her stirrings of longing had started with his hands. Other women would have been captivated by his eyes, large and exotic and full of knowledge and mysterious tales, and indeed, she dreams of his eyes: dreams of them locking on hers, transfixing her before slowly closing as his lips capture hers. She dreams of his eyes, but in daylight it's his hands she stares at. Hands are a safe thing to stare at, are they not? Except–no. Not his. His hands tell his story. Through their movements, sometimes seemingly involuntary, she learns to read him. He can deceive with his eyes, but not with those hands. And the story his lean hands tell her is one of recovery: through her, he's recovering from profound loneliness, recovering his capacity for caring, recovering his humanness.
She longs to kiss those hands to assure him of her faithfulness. And then, when the wariness fades from his eyes, she will teach him other uses for those hands besides spinning. Certain of her books (and her dreams) have taught her these uses.
Freed from the mind-games of her father's court, where one of her roles was to serve as a paragon of maidenly propriety, and freed from the mind-prison of her father, for whom she will forever be a little girl, Belle begins to dream freely.
And she begins to awaken to her womanhood.
The heat is just an excuse for some experiments. Rumplestiltskin isn't the only resident of this household with a scientific bent.
She lowers the necklines of her dresses: his eyes widen and forget to deceive. When beads of sweat collect on her collarbone, he stops blinking. When the beads make their slow journey to places hidden by cloth, he swallows hard.
She remembers Gaston looked at her like this, too, but with a curl of his upper lip that made her want to run away. It was the same expression he wore when he tossed a plump pheasant, the spoils of his war against nature, at her feet as proof of his ability to provide for her. Asston's gaze demanded admiration for his manly talents; Rumplestiltskin's gaze asks permission to admire her.
When she washes Rumplestiltskin's laundry, she holds his trousers up to her own hips, comparing his waist to hers. She's concerned: he seems to be losing weight. She decides to feed him pies, lots of pies.
When she's tucked into bed at night, so far away from him, she imagines his lips pressed in homage against the u-shaped dip in her collarbone, his long fingers freeing her hair from its prison of pins.
She stops wearing stockings. Pretending to be in a hurry, she spins, turning her body too quickly so that her skirts will flare out as they catch up with her, exposing a bit of ankle, sometimes even calf. Then she suddenly freezes her movements so the skirts wrap form-fittingly around her legs. Rumplestiltskin's hands freeze in mid-air. His body coils like a tight spring ready to snap.
When she's tucked into her bed at night, kicking at the stifling sheets, she imagines releasing that spring.
Then the cruelest experiment of all: She shortens her skirts to mid-calf. The poor man forgets how to breathe. His tongue dashes out to moisten dry lips, then darts back in again as she smiles a lazy half-smile and fans herself with the lace handkerchief he'd bought for her in Eire. He breaks his gaze, staring at the teapot, the table, the floor, but his eyes keep creeping to the hem of her skirts and his fingers rub together nervously.
In late summer, she leaves her shoes in her bedchambers. The smooth stone floor is deliciously cool against her soles. When she carries her wash outside to hang on the line, the flat brown grass suddenly comes to life, lush and green, soft and soothing against her bare feet. (He's done this with his magic, for her comfort, but he pretends he hasn't. The Dark One has a reputation to uphold. In gratitude, she sighs her luxury as she walks across his lawn, and she bakes him another pie.)
At night, in her chambers on the second floor, so far away from him, she sleeps in her shift but imagines she's sleeping in his arms.
Her experiments are a success. Now all she has to do is wait for those fingers to stop caressing themselves and caress her instead. Barely breathing, she watches from the corner of her eye and waits. Surely he can see her heart throbbing in her throat. She can't take much more of this.
And then suddenly a blast of cool air comes at her from all sides. Her hair flutters, her skin goose-bumps as a chill overtakes her. The confounded man has invented air conditioning.
Oh, but Belle realizes her power now and she isn't about to relinquish it. She raises her arms luxuriously, which raises her bustline; she lets down her hair, shakes it about so that the luscious locks tumble wildly over her shoulders. She lays back her head in surrender to the cool air, sighs in satisfaction as it caresses her (surely now he'll get the idea!).
A soft moan escapes him. She can feel his eyes on her, and she closes her own eyes as though taken by this new sensation. She hears him gulp, then suck in a breath, his silk shirt whispering against his leather vest. She longs for his lips pressed against her ear, whispering promises of delights that a modest maiden dare not imagine. She curls her toes and waits.
Her eyes fly open at the snap of his fingers. He's gone, taken by magic, probably back to that stupid laboratory to manhandle vials and pestles instead of his yearning young maid. She picks up the teacups, one by one, all but the chipped one (because she's seen how he cradles it in his lean hands when she and he would rather he be cradling her face, her hips, her bosom) and she throws the cups against a wall, taking satisfaction in the tinkling of the glass against the stone. Tomorrow she will sweep up, but tonight she has clothes to alter.
And so it is that Belle invents hot pants.