A/N: Title is from a Missy Higgins song.
There was one specific memory that Belle French had always associated with the word wedding: the conversation she and her father had had about Gaston when the engagement had been first arranged. There was a bit of cross language involved in said conversation but it had been mainly tinged with resignation and acceptance. Duty had been important to her back then.
She'd watched her father leave the sitting room and held her book a bit tighter, a bit cross, but knew enough about life to know that you couldn't compact it between two hardened leather covers. There were still beautiful things, she'd reasoned, legs draped lazily on the settee. Things like ink-on-paper, and trees to climb, things like new books to open, shoes that looked like small works of art, evenings when her father would open up to her about her mother and the way the sun shone in her hair. Those sort of things. Little things.
She'd never have imagined herself here, in any case, the happiness around her so big, so all-encompassing that it threatened to fill her too much, to make her burst with hope and possibility. Rumplestiltskin's arms were around her as they danced and he looked at her in that way, his eyes crinkling and his shoulders relaxed, body as graceful as ever.
Those crinkled eyes, however. There was something small hiding behind them, something troubling him. She didn't fool herself into thinking she could get him to reveal everything that went on in his mind; it would be nice, but they still weren't there. They loved one another, though, and that's what counted.
"What are you thinking about?" she said as the music slowed. She noticed that the light shone golden on the surrounding bookcases and cast his hair in the same light, almost ethereal, almost the way he used to look.
His expression was soft as he leaned in and kissed her gently. "How lucky I am," he admitted and she believed him and didn't believe him at the same time.
There was more to it. She took his cheek in her hand, looked him in the eyes. "We're both lucky," she said firmly, even though Belle French (Gold, now) didn't believe in luck. She believed in fate.
"Some of us more than others," he said with a small, self-deprecating smile and it was all she could do not to roll her eyes at him. Instead, she kissed him. Hard. She smiled against his mouth as his hands, startled, found their way to her waist again, and then she kissed him harder.
"Belle," he said, breaking it off, laughing slightly.
"Don't you want to enjoy being…" she drifted off, mind searching for the proper word. She never had a hard time with articulation but he was right there, his costume having faded back to his wedding suit, his body so close to hers and hands warm on her body and suddenly she remembered how much she missed him whenever he left and how much she'd missed him when he'd died and how, really, much of the past few years had been spent missing him. And he was in front of her, still troubled and dark but lighter now, willing to give something of himself to her. "Being lucky?" she finished weakly and laughed at herself but he didn't laugh.
He looked at her very seriously and his eyes seemed to darken a bit, just a bit, and he drew her closer. "Belle," he said again, and the voice was lower this time. She remembered glaring up at him in the Dark Castle, and kissing him by the wishing well, and his hands pushing her against the wall when she was Laci, and the gentleness in his face when he'd married her, when he'd kissed her as her husband.
Then she decided to stop remembering and just act, and maybe his mind was doing the same thing because he kissed her, lightly at first and then deeply. His tongue found hers and his hand traveled lower, touching the edge of her dress with something that was more like veneration than hesitation. This made her sigh and he kissed her more deeply at that, the sigh prompting some sort of reaction. His fingers slid under her dress, caressing her skin through the stockings.
"I want you," he said lowly, meeting her eyes. There hadn't been much time for such things in their relationship before, had there? They'd never been together long enough for their relationship to reach a point of intimacy. Of course, a few things had happened between them when she was Laci, but still. This was new territory and it filled her with a mixture of emotions—happiness, excitement, a little fear. Quite a bit of lust.
"Then have me," she responded, part in flirtation, part in utter seriousness. She wanted him too and as he backed her against the nearest wall, by one of the bookshelves, she wanted him even more. She gasped as his hand bunched her dress up farther and his finger stroked her sex lightly through her underwear.
"Is this alright, Belle?" he muttered in her ear and when she nodded he kissed her earlobe gently as he rubbed circles into her and she tried to remember how to breathe properly.
He kissed his way lightly to her other ear and his fingers slipped under the fabric. "And this?" he whispered.
"Mhm," she said incoherently.
His other hand found her breast. "What about—"
"Rumple," she said, almost sternly. "Everything's alright."
His eyes met hers for a moment and there was a flash of something behind them—and his fingers stilled. She gazed at him deeply. Something was wrong. He wouldn't tell her what, but it was there.
"Everything's alright," she said, softer this time. Whatever was troubling him couldn't make her love him any less. He had to know that.
His face was clouded, as though he were about to tell her what was wrong. "You're so beautiful," he said instead. It was solemn, sad almost, but he punctuated it with soft kisses to the hollow of her throat. He'd removed his hand from its previous location and he held her to him, hand splayed across her waist and thigh.
And he smiled, finally, kissing his way to her mouth, moving back to look at her. She was probably flushed and a bit mussed, she imagined, but he looked at her as though she were a work of art.
"Tell me," he said. "Where's the bedroom in this little place?" He waved his arm to indicate the span of the space and she smiled up at him.
"I'll show you," she said as she took his hand in hers. He kept glancing at her as they climbed the stairs, and it seemed to her that he was reassuring himself of her presence.
Everything's alright, she told herself. With some luck, he'd tell her what was troubling him, unfurl his thoughts like a scroll, trust her. He had to: their feelings were stronger and truer than any issues that could come their way.
And Belle didn't believe in luck, anyway. She believed in fate. And if this wasn't fate, what was?