Time is a beast. Both prey and hunter, it has a way of creeping up when you're not looking. Seasons skirt past while your back is turned, the warm brittle colors of autumn bending to ice and cold winds as winter barrels through, then that too fleets away: like a rabbit poking its nose out of its warren for the first time in months and making a mad dash for all its worth across the tundra with a wolf fast on its heels. It happens all at once while you're distracted for a brief moment – nothing more than a rustle and blur of movement from the corner of your eye before you can even look over your shoulder, and then just as fast it's over and done.
Spring is closing in with frightening speed, and with it his remaining window. Already the ice on the thawing river can be heard beginning to crack and groan, and as the snow melts down in the garden to reveal the tips of grass that will soon yield fresh new green buds of wild blossoms, up in the West Wing the rose's petals one-by-one blacken, shrivel, and die.
The severity of the looming timeframe has lent a tangible urgency to these last few days. They have a big night coming up soon, and he's about as excited and nervous as he's ever been for anything in his life. He's spent the last week being measured and fitted, the seamstress insisting the occasion calls for something special. Perhaps in blue, she'd said, to bring out his eyes.
For the most part, the Beast is trying not to think about it, but it's hard what with the flurry and hustle the castle is presently kicked up in: last minute scrubbing and mopping and polishing and dusting. Never has he seen all his staff and retainers so zealously consumed with activity for his sake – for all their sakes, truthfully – all to have him say three little words and to have them said back.
So sure. As if it was fate or destiny. As if it were that simple.
He doesn't believe in fate. If he did, he would have given up hope a long time ago, the instant the enchantress had dealt his out to him on that dark night with nothing more than a flick of her wrist. It is the absence of fate, of preordained plans, and the trust in futures left unwritten that keeps him going.
So while the rest of the castle is in a tizzy, counting down their anticipation in days and hours and seconds, scrubbing and polishing the ballroom back to its former grandeur, the Beast searches out a much needed distraction in the only way he knows how: at Belle's side.
They are curled on the sofa in the warm, fire-lit parlor, working through a copy of The Divine Comedy. His Italian is flimsy at best after years of disuse and her knowledge of the language even more so, so their progress has been slow but has made for a pleasing challenge when tackled together. Her legs are tucked beneath her, curving her in towards his frame, and as he reclines close next to her he stretches his arm out along the settee's back and lets it brush a small amount against her shoulder. He still sometimes can't believe how familiar she allows him to be with her: a soft touch of his massive hand on her back or a furred arm pressed up against her own, much less his fanged mouth hovering so close near her face when he bends in to clumsily read the words on the page aloud.
They had struggled and stumbled their way through the nine circles of Inferno and were almost finished cresting the summit of Purgtorio. It is the journey up the winding slopes of Dante's mountain where he feels that he can most identify, feeling a bit of late like he is stuck pacing about his own private place of limbo – with Belle (not just friends anymore, it seems; not quite something else,) and with his soul – awkwardly navigating the treacherous cliff edge between salvation and damnation.
But despite the heaviness of the text, these times they read together are the moments when he feels the most light. There has been a distinct weight to the air these last few days, like a waterlogged cloak draped around the shoulders of the castle, hanging heavy from the rafters and left to pool along the walls – a gradually mounting pressure bearing down on him that he can taste in his mouth and sense in his nose like the smell of oncoming rain. He finds their quiet evenings spent immersed in the weathered pages of her beautiful books a welcome respite from the delighted gawking and anticipatory whispers of the rest of the castle. A calm before the storm.
Because while his servants mean well with all of their excitement and earnestness, what they don't understand, not really, is that this isn't merely a means to an end for him. He's too far in now, fallen too deep, too fast, and their collective humanity is not the only thing at stake anymore. His eyes pause for a moment where they've been following along in the book and he glances over at this unbelievable woman beside him, all grace and heart and fearlessness that he's not sure he deserves. It twists his insides up.
He understands now why the enchantress set this to be his challenge rather than sending him on some epic quest or charging him to slay some bloodthirsty foe: for besides from it being a spitefully poetic penance for his crime, it is far harder and more frightening than any trial he can imagine. Like the literacy of sounding out letters and stringing written words together that is slowly coming back to him, he can't always read her well – he doesn't know what to expect from her when he tells her. What if she doesn't feel the same? What if she recoils from the truth and from him and everything between them becomes suddenly, irrevocably altered? He can't bear the thought; so as the castle's other residents are excited at the prospect of all they hope to gain in two nights' time, all he can think about is how there is so much he could lose.
They may be three simple little words, but there is nothing simple about them. They could either be the start of something, or cost him everything.
Here though, tucked away with Belle in the privacy of the little den, he feels his mind begin to unburden. It is the spot they have claimed for themselves as entirely theirs alone, without interruption or audience. It's where they come together the most fluidly, sharing in their mutual appreciation of solitude and quiet, with only the soothing sound of her voice entwined with his, lifting words off the page and giving them color and life and transporting them somewhere far away from the unbridled expectations of the rest of the castle – where he is not everyone's last hope, where she is not their unwitting savior, where together they're not some walking experiment in motion. . . where they can just be.
For two more days at least.
"Are you all right?"
The Beast is so immersed in his own thoughts and in listening to her read that when she stops his eyes continue searching the page of text before them for a second, trying to locate where he's lost her. He blinks and looks up. She's eyeing him curiously and he realizes with a sudden awkwardness that he's been absently rolling his left shoulder back and forth without noticing.
"I'm fine," he replies, lowering his arm self-consciously and rubbing at the lingering soreness there with his other hand. "I was moving the piano in the ballroom for Mrs. Potts a few days ago and I may have pulled something. It's nothing."
A sweet little line of sympathy creases between her eyes, and she places the book aside and gestures with her fingers down to the floor in front of her.
"Oh – here, have a seat. Let me take a look at it."
"It's nothing," he insists.
"Don't be silly. Sit down."
Tentatively, the Beast slips slowly from the sofa and eases himself to the floor; he is aware at the same time of Belle getting to her feet, and the next thing he knows her fingers are on his back. He suppresses a shiver. They'd reached a point where they shared a casual sort of intimacy these days, but even so, the feeling of her hands on him still sends a tingle up his spine.
He forces himself to sit as still as he can, trying to not fidget as she begins navigating his left side, her touch gently prodding and probing in an odd, methodical sort of way. He's not really sure what she expects to do, but he's learned she's not easily swayed once she's set her mind to something, and so he holds silent and lets her explore.
.
He looks so unsure and nervous when she moves around behind him, her fingers softly seeking at first, accompanied by broad sweeping strokes of her palm; the joint isn't swollen, that's good, but she can immediately feel the tightness. She canvasses the location for a moment or two more, and then with both hands together she digs in and begins massaging his shoulder. She can see his eyes widen.
"Ungh –" The Beast puffs out a surprised little exclamation, stiffening slightly. "What are you doing?"
"Just hold still."
Leaning into it, Belle kneads her hands a bit further down to a spot right below his shoulder blade and his eyes shoot open.
"Ahh –"
"Right there?"
He grunts an affirmation, hanging his head and rolling his shoulder into her hand.
His entire body goes limp like a puppet that's had its strings cut as she goes to work on him – and what work she has cut out for her indeed. It's not just his shoulder – the whole of his neck and back are a massive gnarl of tension, strung tight like a braid of corded rope. She pities him when she thinks of how long he's probably been walking around carrying so much stiffness, but she resolves to tend to the point that is currently giving him the most grief first before moving on to the others.
Her fingers move over the area with the firm but calculated pressure of an artisan sculpting a mound of clay, working through the deep pocket of knots she finds there with the base of her thumb and reinforcing it under the weight of her free hand, pressing as hard as she dares to get at it through the fabric of his shirt and all that hair and muscle. He's built strong though, and she takes her cues from the way he leans into her touch and pushes deeper still. The effort is rewarded with a low rumbling groan from the Beast, and gradually Belle can feel the tension loosen.
"Where did you learn this?" he rasps, an adorable hoarseness to his deep, soft baritone in response to her ministrations.
With a smile, she tells him how her father used to strain muscles crawling under his various machines and contraptions; how she'd learned to help ease them first with ice and then later with gentle applied pressure.
She does not say how her father has never actually been all that fond of massages at all, or how she'd never found him so endearing a patient as her one currently. She simply bites her lip instead, taking no small amount of private enjoyment out of the contented rumble that stirs from his throat or the way those broad sloping shoulders fall slack under her hands.
It's amazing how much change a little bit of time can bring. To think that just over the course of a few months she's gone from cringing back from his growl to trying to tease and coax it out of him. Her boldness in the face of the overwhelming contrast in size and strength between them has always been there, but the change in the feelings are still new.
They're as thrilling as they are strange and conflicting: stirring her up as if running head first into a wind storm. She had stopped in passing while on her way down to dinner the previous evening, drawn unconsciously to the glow emanating from the opposite end of the main hall and standing politely out of the way of the bustling staff to take in the beauty of the ballroom as it was slowly excavated from its long-neglected tomb; its gleam and sparkle and shine finally allowed to peak through years of dust. As she'd watched, she'd experienced a sensation of fingers tickling like butterfly wings on the inside of her stomach, and a lightness in her head that had made her feel as if she was already being swirled around, even though they hadn't even begun dancing yet.
Yet at the same time, there's a certain. . . wrongness to it, she knows. Like all great fairy tales there is a dark, coarse underlining to this narrative – a nagging call for restraint, of maintaining an appropriate level of distance and level headedness lest she go tumbling head first down a rabbit hole she's not sure she's prepared for. It makes her hesitate. Nothing in the romances she's read has ever warned her about this part of the story: this complicated, messy, unforeseeable part – but she supposes that's the difference between fiction and real life.
It's not that she cares how it will look. She has years of practice not paying attention to what other people think. And even though she'd admit there are times she does find herself worrying about what her father would say – whether this is one odd act of recklessness he might not be able to support. . . inside Belle knows that in the end he would look past even the most unconventional decision or dalliance as long as it brought her happiness.
No, the truth is that for all the world's vilifiers, she has always been her own worst judge and jury. It shames her a little. She likes to think herself past petty matters of appearances by now. Still. . . though his eyes may be unmistakably those of a man, were eyes alone enough? She's only human, after all, and this is such terribly foreign water she's trailing her toes in. . . and while she won't deny the emotions she feels towards him are there, she hasn't fully come to terms with them either.
She's not ready, she tells herself. Not yet.
There is a judicious little voice in the back of her head that argues that maybe it's better that way. Perhaps hesitation exists for a reason.
But deeper down, there's another part of her that hopes it's wrong.
It's a stalemate in a battle of wills between two ruling forces, but eventually that niggling voice urging caution always seems to overrule her though. And so she pretends not to notice the way his breath catches whenever she touches him, or the manner with which his eyes watch her during dinner, as if she was smooth wine begging to be drank down. Feigns ignorance, as hard as it is, when he takes his hand and tucks her hair back with so much aching tenderness, and speaks her name like it's the only thing that matters.
She hates the deception. It's exhausting, and cruel, and most of all she doesn't like to lie, not to others and not to herself, and the feeling of it on her mouth and in the space she keeps between their legs as they sprawl on the floor reading in the afternoons leaves the feeling of something false and heavy in her chest. But while it's a necessary façade she wraps herself heavily in during the day, she sits in her room at night and can't help but stare at the shimmering gold dress standing tall at the foot of her bed. She has never been one to caper to the idea of dressing for the approval of someone else, but when she runs her hand over the full silk skirt she can't help but wonder if he'll like it. She hopes he does.
The light of the gown whispers to her like a promise in the dark. It feels for some reason like a build up to something bigger, and makes her want to throw herself into it with wild abandon – leaving her asking herself, what was the point of restraint if it left you longing for recklessness instead?
Belle's not sure she knows the answer, but it's a question continually on her mind as she works to unravel the tangled war between her head and her heart, just as she kneads out the hard coil of muscles between the Beast's shoulders.
There's a noticeable difference in his upper back already, so much looser now than it was when she'd started, and she has more or less abandoned all efforts of being gentle at his wordless encouragement. She presses the butt of her palm deep into a knot on his other side and he groans again, and as she moves further down to his lower back he curves into it – arching upwards and stretching his arms and torso out long over the floor like a waking cat, claws digging into the carpet. With just a little more pressure she even manages to pull from him what she swears sounds akin to a deep, throaty purr, and the stern voice in Belle's head has to remind her that she shouldn't be enjoying this as much as she is.
So pleasantly engaged she is in her task, it's not until she's busy traversing her way back across the top of his lower torso that she touches a spot on his side and he jumps sharply, startling them both.
Belle's hands fly off him as if she's been burned. "Oh god! I'm sorry! Did I hurt you?"
"No no. . . just. . . tickled."
There's a slightly embarrassed silence, and at that instant she swears that if he could he'd be blushing. After a moment he gradually relaxes out once more, and when Belle slowly returns her hands to his back and resumes her massaging, it's with an indulgent little tug at the corner of her lips.
The Beast, ticklish?
She feels like she learns something new about him each day – it's one of the things she's grown so fond of about him. He is closed and secretive, yes, but it simply gives her some new buried treasure to constantly unearth, and she's always searching for new ways to poke through his armor.
Yet ironically, for all his guardedness, he is still so utterly hapless at times in disguising his feelings. She has only to look over and glimpse his hands fidgeting or note the way he wavers every time he touches her to see his emotions laid bare at his feet, so blindingly vulnerable it hurts. He wears his heart on his sleeve, her sweet Beast, and some days it's all she can do to not take his face in her hands and gently kiss that heartbreaking nervousness and fear in his eyes away; to tell him with soothing fingers and soft lips that she's right there with him, she's not going anywhere, that he is not alone wandering blind and naked in the dark.
The thought is enough that for the briefest moment her hands still on his back and she can feel her own face flush. It's a stumble only though, and she's quick to catch and compose herself once more before he can notice.
In its wake, however, it leaves behind a sliver of brashness: a childish, impetuous urge that threatens to grip her hands as they glide over him, and that she finds herself entertaining thoughtfully. Caution rears in her mind again, but for once she ignores it and is instantly exhilarated by how liberating it feels, like casting off a heavy yoke after months of a long haul. Heavens, how she is tired of restraint; of being sensible and practical and proper. She wants to run and be silly and take chances, even if it means the risk of stumbling over the edge past the point of no return – because more than her fear of falling she likes to hear his laugh, and feel the touch of his hands on her arm and in her hair, claws and all, and most of all she loves to see that light in his eyes. And perhaps that's worth the occasional slip.
So under the guise of pure intentions and with the guile of a fox in a hen house, she meanders her plying hands innocently across his back once more, and then biting her lip, experimentally touches that sweet spot a second time – she's pleased when he jumps again.
"Hey," he grunts sharply and glances suspiciously over his shoulder at her, his mouth cutting up in a crooked smile. "What are you doing back there?"
She says nothing in reply, but a look of unmistakable mischievousness spreads across her face.
.
He can't even remember the last time he has been touched like this, manhandled nearly. She has reintroduced him to all sorts of subtle simple pleasures since coming into his life, but this is the first one where he's felt as if he were melting, like his bones have been turned to butter.
Her tiny hands are surprisingly strong, and he's relishing the way she's kneading her way unyieldingly along his lower back when all of a sudden there's another sharp deliberate poke to his side and a tingly electric jolt that causes him to jerk back in surprise. When he looks around at her, there's a hint of deviousness there glinting in her eye and in that pert little smile that makes something in the recesses of his stomach coil up. His brows arch, but he's too slow to react.
"No. . ." he warns, but her fingers are already ducking under his arms. He barely knows what's happening before he finds himself under siege, the first barrage of tickles to his side laying him open and defenseless and completely at her mercy. The bark of explosive laughter that bursts out of him is wholly undignified and takes even him by surprise. His elbows drop reflexively down tight to his sides in an attempt to cut off access as he grapples with her, fending off her hands, but they dive and delve and poke like a swallow swooping after mayflies; and a moment later her nimble dancing fingers are finding their up incredulously under his shirt, all decorum and remaining sense of decency thrown to the wind.
In normal circumstances her boldness would have taken him aback, but he's having trouble amassing even coherent thoughts amid the fresh onslaught of her attack. No matter how he twists or bows away from her, she continues to pursue him with relentless tickling fingers and a fiendish delight that sends him doubling over, gut aching and gasping for breath.
"Woman!" he threatens, laughing. "I'll have you thrown in the dungeon!"
"Sure, because we both know how well that worked out last time."
God, her cheek.
As if in rebuke he twists around and she cries out as he pulls her onto his lap, reversing the tables, delivering light little jabs to her ribs and sides, all the while carefully minding he does not injure her with his claws. He is searching for her own vulnerable sweet spot and he finds it: right where the soft skin of her underarm meets her side, and that with just the merest touch of pressure sends her rolling up like a spineless hedgehog. The response that it elicits from her is not a high, tittering, saccharine giggle, but a deep unrestrained belly laugh and he loves her for it.
For a moment or two they battle furiously, feinting and parrying with one another in a rolling jumble of hands and knees and elbows, grinning like fools, each trying to claim the high ground until eventually the Beast ensnares her wily little hands and takes them hostage in his own. Grasping her wrists as she puts up only a half-hearted struggle, he wrestles her gently to the floor and pins her arms down on either side of her head. Even in the lightheaded haze of the aftermath of their scuffle, he is conscious to rest the majority of his immense weight on his arms as he hovers over top her, not wanting to crush her.
They stay like that for a minute, her trapped beneath him, faces flushed and close. Their chests are rising and falling heavily in the wake of their laughter and exertion, and when the last of their dwindling giggles and chuckles die away they're left with just the sound of their breathing echoing loud in the silent room.
.
For a moment they both hang suspended in a second of frozen time, a weightless limbo, neither moving forward but neither drawing back.
For Belle, the Beast is a large, indomitable presence above her, strong and solid, blocking out the rest of the room and sheltering her as the sturdy, comforting brick walls and roof of a warm house would in the rain. There is something caressingly tender in the feeling of his claws clamped around her wrists. By nature, they are tools of violence and savagery and death, but she has never felt so safe.
For the Beast, nerves that had vanished in the heat and fervency of their play return once more in strength. The sight of Belle beneath him, so close, so real and so daunting, fills his mouth with cotton while at the same time kindling alive some burning wick in his chest; an excitation rippling through his core as his limbs simultaneously turn to lead.
There's a tautness on the edge of the air between them. How badly he wants to bridge the space and bundle her up in his arms against him – and she wants so much to let him – but fear and doubt get in the way and freeze desire in its tracks.
As he gazes down at her though, there's a breathless stillness in her eyes that almost seems as if she's waiting for him to make a decision – to move. He is reminded that there is so little time left.
Say it. . .
An urgency presses on him from the inside. He can feel his heart ringing in his ears.
Say it.
But he doesn't, because he can't, so he pretends the three little syllables don't mean as much as they do and that he has all the time in the world.
"Truce?" he says instead.
"Truce."
And because she doesn't know what else to do, she just smiles and acts as if she doesn't notice the husky way his breathing hitches and the words that die unspoken on his tongue.
He lets her up and they retreat a respectable distance apart while she busies herself with smoothing out her skirt and he fixes his shirt and brushes himself off.
Somewhere off in the distance the Beast's sensitive ears pick out the sound of Cogsworth and Lumière bickering over the color of the drapes for the mezzanine and Mrs. Potts trying to soothe everything over, and not for the first time he wonders to himself if he's failing them all. If he should be trying harder. He owes his retainers an enormous debt of gratitude for supporting him all the ways they do; for not abandoning him despite everything he'd cost them as the man he once was, and instead raising him up with so much blind faith and hope for the man he could be; that he wants to be – for them and for himself and for most of all her. He wants so desperately to be that man.
But as he's straightening his collar, he steals another glance at Belle from the corner of his eye and can't help but guiltily admit. . . if the truth is to in the end cost him the price of her, to lose her, then he would be willing, he thinks, to remain loving her as the beast instead.
Next to him, Belle is tucking the wild strands of her hair back in place and musing over the pleasant lingering warmth still encircling her wrists. The little voice in the back of her head is scolding her for her indiscretion, asking her what she thinks she's playing at, how she can be so careless – the longing in his eyes and the soaring in her chest had been a slip too much, too close; like closing your eyes and stepping off the side of a mountain. Tread lightly, it urges her. You may feel like you've sprouted wings but you are not ready to make this jump.
She wonders if she'll ever be ready. If they could ever manage to really make this work. She wants it to. Because despite all conventional wisdom, there is something there; and while it may not look like the fairy tale she's always pictured, she knows she's never been all that conventional anyway. So she's willing to wait. Until then, she'll mind her step – even though sometimes she knows she's bound to slip; and other times. . . She sneaks a sidelong look at him and her mouth pinches up. Other times she just can't help herself.
Which is why when the Beast stands and offers a hand out to help her up, Belle takes it – and as soon as he turns his back to retrieve the book from the sofa she immediately pokes him again. He jumps wildly, and she skitters away grinning as his hands reach for her.
"Right," he says decidedly, lifting her up. "Up to the dungeon." His voice is gruff but his eyes all smiles as he swings her shrieking and giggling over his shoulder, spinning her around, the book forgotten.
Perhaps tomorrow they'd finally reach Paradiso, but for tonight they forget the staff, they forget all the fears and misgivings whispering inside their heads, and it is just the two of them. Neither know entirely what will happen two nights from now, only that for better or worse there is some sort of expectation, a pressure building, a deep held breath – they can't control it and so they don't try; like closing your eyes and just trusting in your hold on the cliff face.
Climb or fall though, they are content for the time being in the comfort of knowing they can meet somewhere in the middle. It's not everything, but it's not nothing, and for now that's enough. For now it's everything. And as he carries her from the room and down the corridor, their laughter ringing out and filling up the castle – he knows that he would trade all chance of reclaiming his humanity, and she knows she would risk even the most egregious misstep that could send her tumbling down, simply for a little more time to linger in this sweet, simple moment of just being.
END
Author's Notes:
Yes, I'm aware the 2017 movie says it's supposed to be a harpsichord in the ballroom, not a piano, and while a harpsichord may be a bit more suitable to 18th century France, I chose not to care. You know why? Because a harpsichord weighs practically nothing and the Beast could move it with as little effort as it takes for you or me to kick a football; whereas a grand piano weighs more like 800 lbs which is what I was going for. Also, in the 1991 film it totally is a piano anyway – it has pedals! *VALIDATION* \o/
Much love and thanks to everyone who has commented on all of my stories and sent me such nice messages. Feedback is always welcome and is very much appreciated. Please feel free to check out my other BatB fics on my profile.
And finally, thanks so much to Claudaujay for the beta read!