Writing prompt: Pirate-owl - Are we limited to canon ships or can I request Liam/Belle & fireplace?
He padded downstairs as quietly as possible, making his way softly to the back room. Everyone was asleep at this late hour, his brother snoring softly in the room he shared with Emma.
Finally.
It had been weeks since they returned, and he knew Killian was having a hard time sleeping, though his brother hadn't said a word to him. Liam hoped he was talking to Emma, at least. If anyone could coax his stubborn ex-pirate brother from his shell, it would be her, her persistence just as strong as Killian's, if not greater.
He leaned over the fireplace that Emma had shown him how to use. It wasn't all that hard, and he soon had a small but warm fire going behind the metal grating. He sank down to the floor in front of the couch, just watching the flames dancing.
He had trouble sleeping at nights, now that he was no longer dead. He'd spent so long in that damned place, living in a fog of monotony and boredom - nothing changing, nothing new. Here, though, here was bursting with life, he felt it not just in the people around him, the bustle of day to day living, but in everything around him - the slap of the ocean against the pier, the wind rustling through the trees, dogs barking, crickets chirping as day fell away into night. Even the air hummed with life, the breath of a million living souls stirring in the wind. During the day, he revelled in the life and movement around him, but at night - that was when he truly felt the vitality of it all, the world sleeping but in no way demised, resting and rejuvenating and preparing for another day of change and growth and living.
So he spent most nights here, sitting before the lifelike dance of the flames in the stone hearth. He had hoped to have found a place of his own by now. Living with his little ("Younger," he heard Killian correcting in his mind) brother and his girlfriend wasn't bad, but he constantly felt like an intruder on their lives. He loved seeing Killian so happy - he deserved it, after everything they'd been through, both together and apart. But he knew that, sometimes, everyone needs space, even the only family he'd missed for centuries.
He was so engrossed in his thoughts, he hadn't heard the soft footsteps until a voice quietly interrupted the crackling of the fire.
"Can I come in?"
He looked up quickly. Belle stood in the doorway, her robe tightly wrapped around her small form.
He smiled and nodded. "Of course," he said softly. "Always room for more."
She stepped into the room and settled herself on the floor beside him - not too close, but not too far either. She'd moved into the big house just last week, after she realised she could no longer stay with the man who'd nearly sold her soon-to-be-born child and openly resumed the dark path he'd sworn to her to fight. She had nowhere else to go, the apartment above the library already rented out for the year. This house had plenty of empty rooms, so Emma and Killian had gladly made space for one more in their lives. She was still working at the library during the days, and she tried to appear cheerful most of the time, but often Liam could see the sadness hiding behind her smile.
"Everything all right?" he asked.
She nodded silently, chewing her lip as she focused on the fireplace a bit too intently. She was hurting, he knew, hurting from all the lies she'd fallen for time and time again, all for the man she loved, who she thought loved her enough to change. Something he understood all too well.
He looked away from her, into the red and gold flames that flickered a few feet away, considering his words carefully.
"Did Killian ever tell you about our father?" he finally asked quietly. He waited for a moment, but then continued when she didn't respond.
"Father told us all our lives that he was a sailor with the merchant marines, that he travelled the realms buying and selling goods to all kinds of places. Only, it was all a lie he told to protect himself from getting caught. He was a smuggler, he stole from kingdoms and traded in valuables that were not his own. When he was on the verge of discovery, he sold me and Killian into slavery in exchange for a boat."
A soft "oh", escaped the girl beside him. "I had no idea," she whispered.
"Killian said he found him, years and years later," Liam continued. "Father told him some tale about having been saved from a sleeping curse by True Love's kiss. He swore he'd changed, he swore he was a better man, that he was good now. But it was all another lie to get Killian to forgive him for what he'd done to us. How he survived, we still have no idea, but he managed to add cheating death to his list of stolen goods."
Silently, he reached over and held Belle's hand gently, his fingers stroking hers in the dark. Finally, he turned to face her and saw the tears that were streaming quietly down her cheeks.
"Some people don't change," he said, his voice as gentle as his touch, "not because they don't want to, but because they can't. Sometimes, they love themselves, they love their power or their gold or their treasure, more than they can love anyone else. And no matter how much they assure the people they love that they want to change, or want to be better people, they can't, they can't let go of the things they think they need.
"People who love someone like that, they always get hurt the most, because they always hope for something better, but nothing ever comes. It's not because they failed to love that person enough, it's that they loved too much, they loved something that could never love that much in return."
He touched her face with his other hand, brushing away some of the tears. She watched him silently, her eyes still glistening brightly in the flickering lights.
"You didn't fail him, Belle," he murmured. "You did everything you could. He failed you."
She let out a sob, and he quickly pulled her into an embrace, her shoulders shaking against his chest as she cried. How long he held her, he had no idea, his hand rubbing circles on her back as she let out all the sadness and loss and hurt she'd kept inside since the Underworld.
When she finally calmed, her sobs no more than soft hiccups, she pulled back, wiping at her face with her hands.
"Thank you, Liam" she whispered. "I needed to hear that."
"Of course."
"Can I…" she trailed off, biting her lip again as she glanced quickly toward the fireplace and then met his eyes once more. "Can I stay here a bit longer? With you?"
He smiled gently. "I'm not going anywhere, m'lady, not tonight. It would be my honour."
(She came to sit with him the next night, and the night after that, mostly in silence save the light crackling of the fire illuminating the shadows of night.)
He found a two-bedroom apartment a week later a few blocks away, with a fireplace of its own, and she offered to help him unpack his meager belongings and set it up. It took two trips to Ikea and another three to Walmart to get the basic furnishings on the list Emma made. Killian handed him something called an iPad and demonstrated Pandora ("Not that one, brother, I assure you," he'd laughed) and both Liam and Belle decided they enjoyed the instrumental complexity of what was known as classical music as they struggled to assemble to furniture from the pictorial descriptions.
A bookshelf, a nightstand, and a dresser later, he finally embraced the spontaneity that came with being alive again and asked Belle out on a date, a proper one, not just the take away pizza they ate together on the kitchen floor. She blushed and said it wasn't necessary, but he insisted.
He picked her up at Killian and Emma's house at 8, surprised to find himself nervous, actually nervous. His younger brother was grinning like an idiot as he answered the door, his eyes twinkling with mischief Liam hadn't seen in literal ages He endured the jokes about how nicely he cleaned up ("You look very nice," Emma said when Killian wasn't looking) and nearly gasped when Belle came down the stairs.
"You look stunning, Belle," he managed, his eyes glued to her radiant smile rather than the dress she wore, as he pointedly ignored the low chuckle of his brother behind him.
He remembered nothing about the food that night, only that he'd never seen her so happy and relaxed, and all he wanted was to be the reason she smiled more.
They went out a few more times after that, and two months later, she moved out of the big house and into his small place. Emma and Regina placed a protection spell on their new home, should he try anything, but he hadn't made a move in weeks for her return, and Liam doubted he really would, in the end.
A few months after that, they were once again sitting on the floor assembling furniture together, this time a crib, a changing table, and rocking chair for her. They joked about the pieces they still couldn't figure out, the take away pizza still their food of choice, classical music from the iPad winding through their love and laughter.
And most nights, they'd sit cuddled together in front of the fireplace before bed, mostly in silence save the light crackling of the fire illuminating the shadows of night, watching the flames reflected on the surfaces of the home they'd built together, on the photos of family and friends that now dotted the walls and countertops, and on the tiny life that grew more and more restless in her swollen belly, and Liam finally, finally felt like he was home.