Summary: There's more than one way to dance, and none of them are in their normal routine.
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Diversion
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At some point – neither of them knew when – they had settled into a routine.
There were always deals to be made, but somehow Rumpelstiltskin found himself becoming more selective about whom he dealt with. And if that just happened to coincide with him spending more time with Belle in companionable silence during the evenings while he spun at his wheel and she read, well, it wasn't exactly a hardship.
A pity it was all promptly blown to hell in the wake of the Incident With The Curtains.
Belle had developed the atrocious new habit of invading his personal space all the time. Not even the table was safe. If he was sitting there, she would hop right up on it and start asking him all sorts of questions. Some were innocuous – "what do you do when you're not busy saving kingdoms from ogres" –, some were deeply personal, and some managed to be both at once – he had been rather loathe to reveal the answer to "how old are you" the other day. Lately, however, she seemed to expect him to join her up there.
"I don't bite," she said, patting the spot next to her.
"I might," he quipped. And she smiled.
Well, perhaps atrocious wasn't the right word.
It had gotten to the point where he had started serving his own tea to give his hands something to do during those moments and a place for his eyes to look other than her; to give him something to do other than sit next to her. But then, as with everything else, it segued into an actual conversation. Before he knew it he found himself side by side with her debating the merits of alchemy over magic.
"You're dancing around the issue," she said, wrinkling her nose as she made a face.
"I don't dance," he told her. "Not figuratively or literally."
"Wait, you don't or you don't know how?"
"Never saw much of a point to it," he said, waving his hand dismissively. There never was much of a point with a damaged leg hindering him every step of the way.
"You've been around for hundreds of years and you never learned how to dance?" she asked incredulously.
If there had been tea leaves in his cup, he could have read his future from there. Not that he needed them to know where this conversation was headed. "I lead a busy social life."
"Just think of all the grand entrances you could make," she teased, bumping his shoulder with hers. "Sneaking into royal balls, covertly infiltrating their waltzes…"
The idea had its appeal.
"Come on, I'll teach you," she said, hopping off the edge of the table.
"Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt," he told his cup of tea.
It could. A horrible, wonderful kind of ache passed through him as she arranged his hands on her body of her own accord. It was one thing to touch her when he was in control of the situation – he'd had no problem doing so as he'd escorted her away from her father's castle – but this was something else entirely. It was a terrible idea, as awful as letting her keep the curtains open, but all the same he couldn't stop himself from allowing her to do as she pleased with him.
Then she stepped on his foot. He had to admit that was a surprise; in spite of the preternatural grace he had inherited with all his other abilities, he had rather expected it to be him.
"Sorry, I just…need a moment to remember where everything's supposed to go. I'm a bit out of practice."
"Was my little caretaker a wallflower?" he asked with exaggerated surprise on his face.
She smiled sadly. "There just wasn't a lot to celebrate back home. But," she continued, pushing through the sadness with a hopeful determination, "I expect that's different these days."
The words were on the tip of his tongue – "And what are we celebrating, then?" – when the tap, tap, tap of a beak on glass interrupted him. A bird. And not just any bird, from the look of it, but a falcon of some pedigree. Royalty begging his particular brand of problem solving, no doubt. Reluctantly, he extricated himself from Belle's embrace before unlatching the window with a single wave of his hand.
"You know, sometimes I almost forget that you're not an ordinary man."
"Do you?" he whispered so quietly that he wondered if he had just imagined speaking. If she heard, she made no show of it; he used the opportunity to busy himself by unrolling the message from the bird's leg.
This was what he was interrupted for: The petty squabbles of nobles over a royal succession. They called themselves nobility when not one of them had a shred of it in them; no, as far as he was concerned the only one of their lot who held any of that characteristic was Belle. Belle, who sacrificed herself so that her people might live.
The quality in nobility had dropped considerably since his last encounter with them. Still, the rewards from the deal would outweigh his distaste. And yet he still didn't want to go. The sun was still high in the sky and his usual routine with Belle had been smashed to pieces.
A new routine would have to be developed. Why not now? Why not this? Why not simply set the message aflame and be done with it?
Belle glanced over curiously from across the room. "What was it?"
He wiped the ash from his hands.
"Nothing of importance."