Disclaimer: So…yeah, the entire relationship of Rumplestiltskin and Belle thus far, so there's a LOT of references and dialogue taken from episodes — which were, needless to say, not written by me. No copyright infringement is intended as I explore this beautiful relationship a bit more.

A/N: I know it's been a long time since I posted anything - I'm actually working on a VERY long AU I hope to start posting as soon as it's mostly completed, but in the meantime, this story hit me rather unexpectedly. A very in-depth look, mixed with an overview of, the Rumbelle relationship. It's three chapters long, and I'll be posting them as I complete them. I hope you all enjoy, and I'd love to know what you think of it!

Touch

Chapter 1

The first time she touches him, it's an accident. She reaches out to take away his plate (still mostly full, but she thinks it's because he's a light eater rather than a statement on her cooking skills) and her hand brushes his sleeve. Her breath catches in her throat, heart pounding in her ears, and only on later reflection will she realize that the leather sleeve is flimsier than it looks.

He freezes, but he is so still anyway that it's hard to tell just exactly how angry he is. She dares to look up, to meet his gaze with her own red-rimmed eyes, and is surprised when he only tilts his head. There is a curious look to his already curious eyes, perplexity evident in the tiny wrinkles creasing his brow, and she wonders what he finds in her to be so surprising (she's only an ordinary girl, after all, in a world full of people just like her).

After an instant, his stare grows too much for her and even though she promised herself that she will comport herself with dignity no matter what he asks of her, she finds herself gathering up his plate with a clatter and dipping an awkward curtsey. He hasn't told her what she should call him so she doesn't call him anything (he's not her master even if she serves him, and he's not a lord even if he lives in a castle, and his name holds power she doesn't think she wants).

She feels his stare on her all the way through the door.

He gives her small things, tiny gestures, but always from a distance. He scoots a plate of food over toward her when he doesn't think she's eating, tosses a pillow at her from his place near the door, tells her she may read the books in her spare time only when he's safely ensconced on his stool at his spinning wheel. There is always an excuse for the kindnesses, an off-hand comment about caretakers starving themselves to shorten their forevers, a snapped retort that her weeping grates on him, a shrug and a remark about reading a book serving to dust them better than cloths when she dares to ask him why he's letting her touch such treasures as his small collection of books.

His wary kindness makes her bold. It makes her curious. At first, she is tempted to think he is not as dark as the stories make him seem, but he is quick to disabuse her of this notion (so quick, so vehement, that she sometimes wonders if he is putting on a show even for her). The blood on the aprons she cleans and the macabre slant to his humor, the puppets that follow her with wooden eyes and the severed hand lying on a trophy table, these remind her of the reason he is known as the Dark One and is spoken of in hushed whispers in dark corridors and over flickering fires.

But he says it is just a cup and he stares at her as if he has never seen anything quite like her, and she forgets to be terrified of him. It is easy to be brave when she is not afraid and hard to be afraid when he has given her no reason to be.

It is in a carriage, chasing down a man desperate enough to steal from Rumplestiltskin, that she first realizes he avoids physical contact. He leans close to her, closer than he has been since that first day when he escorted her from her father's hall with an arm around her waist, and his breath tickles her cheek (it should smell foul, but it does not).

It is in a forest, staring down at a man fleeing with his wife and unborn child, that she begins to think back on all that he has done and said in her time at his castle. He is kind, but only when he can excuse it (and it had taken her only a day or two to realize that his words are his weapons and his cruelty his armor). He draws near her only when it will intimidate her, and he dances away when she stands up to him (and she thinks that maybe he is more afraid of her than she is of him). He watches her when she smiles, when she laughs, and claps his hands in glee when she reacts with the fear or shock or horror that anyone else would (as if he is testing her). He is a strange one, this Rumplestiltskin so feared by all in the land, but beast or man, he is lonely.

So she hugs him. And maybe that was her first mistake, because it is different than she thought it would be. It is almost intoxicating, to put her arms around a man who sways backward in shock. It is almost comforting, to touch someone again after this past week without any physical contact. It is almost…frightening…to feel how warm he is against the chill of the forest and to realize that he is just the right height for hugs and to belatedly notice that she has kept her hand on his chest after the hug is over.

He does not berate her or make some cutting remark that is funny despite its morbidity. Instead, he manages the hint of a smile (as if he must reach far back in his memories to remember how to even form a smile) and he follows her back to the carriage.

It is strange and not at all what she expected, but then, so is everything else involving the man to whom she traded her future. She begins to think she doesn't mind nearly as much as she should.

"Careful," he tells her in a sing-song voice. "If you ruin dessert, there might be a nasty surprise waiting for you when you try to sleep."

"You didn't even have dessert at all before I came," she chides him with a smile. "And if you would stop sneaking up on me when I'm carrying dessert to the table, you wouldn't have to worry about losing it."

He narrows his eyes at her, twists his mouth in an expression that would make her laugh if she weren't trying to keep him from realizing just how much she enjoys his presence, and wags his finger at her. "Bossy caretakers can be replaced, you know. There are plenty of kingdoms with troubles large enough to consider trading away their princesses."

She knows he is teasing (she has learned his signs, his signals, his habits, and if he were truly angry, there would be shouting and pacing and broad gestures big enough to crowd an entire hall and purple smoke to engulf something she cares about and distract her from his unbalanced state), but she still pauses, tries to imagine the Dark Castle with someone else there, a third person to help dust and clean and bring tea to Rumplestiltskin.

It is not a pleasant image.

She likes things as they are. They have their own balance—he works in his tower or goes out on his deals while she cleans and cooks, and he spins while she reads, and in the in between moments, she can sometimes pull him into conversation and he will occasionally keep her company in the garden he now lets her stroll through on nice days. A third person would ruin all of it and make him irritable, make him withdraw once more behind his showy façade and disguising gestures. A third person would not understand why she laughs at him and dares to pour herself a cup of tea after serving him his and sits closer and closer to him when she reads.

No, she likes it the way it is, and she is glad that he is not serious about his threat.

"Yes," she tells him, "but none of those princesses know how you take your tea."

And she sets the platter of pie in his hands, her own brushing over his as if to make sure he has a good grip on the warm plate.

He is silent an instant, motionless, standing where she left him as she turns to pull out his chair at the table for him (he is always still after she touches him).

But when she turns back to him, he is moving again, flourishing with the plate in his hands (somehow not even coming close to dumping the pie, and she finds herself yet again admiring his grace). "Easily remedied," he remarks, his voice sliding into the upper registers as the platter floats from his hand to alight on the table.

"Really?" Belle asks skeptically (because he is still not used to her presence after a month and he likes his solitude).

"Magic can fix the problems of the empty-headed," Rumplestiltskin tells her in a lecturing tone, but then he softens, quiets (something Belle still can't explain, but she loves when it happens), and there is an extra plate (for her) beside his when she reaches out to serve him a piece of the pie. "But," he adds, "if I got a new caretaker, there'd be one less room down in the dungeons for me to use, and then I might have to curtail my activities."

Belle knows it is wrong (she remembers the blood on the thief's chest as he hung from chains), but she laughs anyway (because she has seen Rumplestiltskin conjure up extra rooms with only the wave of his expressive hands). "Definitely unacceptable," she teases him, and she lets her fingers touch his again as she hands him his plate of dessert.

He stares (he always does), but Belle smiles at him, and eventually, he smiles back.

"One caretaker is enough," he agrees, and he takes a bite of her pie and grins as if he knows a secret she doesn't.

She grins, too, because he is her secret.

It is the incident with the curtains and the ladder and his arms that starts her experiments. He'd been there so fast, ready to catch her, but it was the startlement, the incredulity, the struck discovery written across his face (not a mask or an affectation) that really stays with her even weeks after the curtains are all opened. She remembers the soft drift of his hair against her wrist, the feel of his chest rising and falling against her, the strength of his arms supporting her—but most of all, she remembers how he stared at her (like he always does when they touch, but different, new), how he was frozen as if he couldn't remember how to move, and then how suddenly, how awkwardly, he dropped her to her feet.

She remembers the feeling of disappointment when he let her go.

So she begins to experiment. She reaches out to touch his hand when they talk at night. She pats his shoulder when she passes him at his wheel, when she tells him good night. She brushes off the lapels of his coat when he tells her he's leaving the castle. Quick, light touches, companionable and friendly, more and more of them as the days pass, but suddenly they no longer seem like enough.

He flinches away, at first, startled and wary, as nervous and jumpy as the beast she once thought him to be. As the days pass, as she keeps touching him, she feels his eyes on her, always, ready to back away, to disappear in a flurry, to find an excuse to leave should she grow too close to him. Just when she begins to think that she is only scaring him and that she should stop, leave him be (ignore her own rising disappointment), he stops flinching.

She touches his hand, and he tilts his head in that way of his and peers up at her. And the corners of his mouth turn up, just the slightest bit.

She pats his shoulder, and his head turns in her direction, his eyes fluttered half shut.

She brushes off his coat, and he leans, ever so minutely, into the touch.

It's been months since she last thought him a beast, but it's impossible to deny his resemblance to a half-wild creature, drawn to affection, starving for touch yet wary of being hurt. She imagines herself luring him in ever deeper and closer with tiny scraps, breadcrumbs to lead him from his isolation.

Strangely, it is not a comparison she likes.

He is so used to hatred, to fear, and she knows he expects betrayal (expects it so much that he kept her in a dungeon for the first couple weeks of her stay, and watched her closely after the news that her family and friends were safe from the ogres lest she try to flee), and if she touches him only to make him susceptible to her, to train him, then she will be doing to him what others have done. She will be betraying him, and her breadcrumbs of affection will lead him to a trap that will ensnare him in kindness that might destroy him.

But when she stops touching him, when she clenches her hands into fists and stays on the far side of the room and doesn't brush past him, she feels like she's about to come apart. She feels cut off and bereft, listless and sluggish.

And Rumplestiltskin goes quiet. Still. There are no more jokes to make her laugh, funny expressions to make her giggle, wagging fingers in her face to make her roll her eyes, quiet confessions to make her catch her breath. Instead, he hunches in on himself and he avoids her, sits at his wheel without once turning to look at her, and his voice goes flat and emotionless (or as emotionless as Rumplestiltskin's voice can ever be), and when he does watch her, it is with such a lost, bewildered expression that Belle feels her heart writhe inside her chest.

"Rumplestiltskin," she says one day, and she hadn't even realized, but she'd stopped using his name when she'd stopped touching him, so he jumps at the sound of it.

"Yes, dearie?" he asks. His hands are busy on his wheel, but she has watched him spin for countless hours and she can easily tell there's no gold thread emerging from the haphazard revolutions of the wheel.

She does not like him calling her 'dearie,' and she bites her lip in indecision before reminding herself that once, she had wanted to be brave.

"I was wondering," she says slowly, "if you would help me."

"With what?" There is sudden suspicion tightening his voice, and any moment he will burst into manic life, prowling toward her, an intense gleam in his eyes, and she will be nothing more than another one of the endless multitudes of people who come to him for their own purposes.

"A book," she says hurriedly, before he can turn on her. "It's on the very top shelf of the library and I can't reach it."

And it's true, too. She has wanted to read that one tall book with the illustrations curving around the spine evident even from the floor. But more than she wants to read this book, she wants to erase the hurt at the edges of Rumplestiltskin's eyes (wants to quiet the itching crackle in her fingertips).

"Afraid you'll fall and no one will be there to catch you?" he asks with a slight giggle, finally turning to look at her.

She smiles to hear it, to see his eyes, to reassure the note of cautious hope in his higher tone. "Something like that. Will you get it for me?"

He stands (close, so close, that Belle feels small and slight and out of breath before him), throws up a hand in the air with his other hand pointed to his elbow. "And what do I get for this chivalrous deed?"

"It's not chivalry if you expect something in return," she replies, knowing he will like this answer for the wordplay (his favorite pastime besides spinning).

Rumplestiltskin lets out his high-pitched laugh, but his voice is lower, almost human, when he says, "No wonder chivalry is dying!"

But he leads her to the library with his usual quick strides and he magics the book she points out into her hands. And he watches her, wary once more.

Belle smiles down at the book, flips through it to see the beautiful illustrations and the flowing language she taught herself before being betrothed to Gaston, and then she sets it on the table and steps very close to Rumplestiltskin, and she hugs him. "Thank you, Rumplestiltskin," she murmurs with her head on his shoulder. (Once, this had been easy and natural, but now it is perilous and frightening.)

He goes stiff, just like last time. He sways away from her, just as he did before. But this time, she holds the embrace for just a second longer, and this time, she feels his hand flutter up against her waist, her shoulder blade, his fingers dancing along her spine before he finally settles it, tentatively, at the small of her back. Her heart thrums wildly against her ribs, but she feels safe and secure, and maybe she is as much of a wild animal being lured into warmth and kindness as he is.

When she pulls back, the bewilderment is still there but the hurt is gone.

That is the end of her experiments, but it is certainly not the last time she touches him.

She kissed him, and for a moment, it was perfect, and then it was not. It was beautiful and bold and she thought it was the right thing, but when he brings her a tray, to the cell where he's consigned her, with his chipped cup and hot water steeped just as she likes it, she cannot reach out across the divide separating them no matter how she wants to. He is cold and closed off and she is frightened and hurt and maybe even angry, and touching him seems more impossible than taking the kiss back.

When he tells her to leave, she wants to cry. When he tells her he doesn't care for her, she wants to laugh in his face. When he says nothing, when he keeps his hands so carefully clasped in front of him (a wall to make sure she does not come too close), she wants to shake him and shout at him that they were so close to having everything and now they will have nothing and that cannot be what he wants.

But he tells her to go, and as brave as she has been in the past (as brave as she tries to make herself be), she cannot bring herself to touch his hand, to caress his face, to pat his shoulder, to touch him at all.

She stands there, and a pace away, he stands there, and they are separate, broken individuals. It used to be them and us, but now it is him and her and there is no going back.

So he doesn't call her back. And she doesn't touch him (hug him goodbye, to hold them both until they can be reunited again).

Later, she will regret that more than anything.

There is no touch in the cell. The Queen comes in occasionally, asks her questions, taunts her, sneers at Rumplestiltskin. The one-handed man came and he did touch her, his hand brushing against her calves and her wrists as he undid her shackles. His fist left a mark on her cheek that throbbed when she pressed against it (she doesn't know how long it lasted because there are no mirrors in this large, circular room that mocks the library tower Rumplestiltskin gave her as her own).

The days are long, the nights longer. The moon shines through the window in the ceiling and sometimes it caresses her with silver frost as she sleeps. The sun cannot reach past the grasping spires of the castle to touch her heart and thaw the ice.

She tries to remember everything about Rumplestiltskin that she can, her hand over her mouth to make sure she doesn't utter any of it aloud where Regina or the pirate can overhear it and use it against her Dark One.

She remembers his eyes the most, giving the lie to his words, underscoring the intensity of his gestures, showing her the truths he cannot voice. She remembers the kindnesses he showed her, as if he weren't used to having to prove himself evil and was out of practice. She remembers the hypnotic spin of his wheel, the shimmer of the gold he produces, the stiffness of his back and the curtness of his denial when she'd mentioned maybe learning to spin gold one day. She remembers the books he gave her, the extra ones that had showed up without comment or presentation, in places only she would notice them.

But she cannot remember what his hands feel like. The blankets are coarser than his hands could ever be (but his hands do have worn callouses). The blue gown she wears is softer (but the backs of his hands are smoother). The walls are too slick (but his long, black nails possess a sheen of their own). The chill of the moon is far too cold (his hands are always warm, heated and solid).

She cannot remember, and that more than the slop passing for food and the Queen's oppressive visits and the pirate's bruise on her cheekbone makes her break down and curl up and weep for hours (for days, maybe, or months; it's impossible to tell).

She thought it was him who longed for touch and craved it enough to lean into every opportunity to enjoy it, but now she realizes that it is her who has grown used to it, addicted to it, who needs it.

"Rumplestiltskin," she whispers, but there is no answering high-pitched "Yes, dearie?" or husky "Belle." There is no tilted head and large eyes and long fingers weaving pictures in tandem with his words.

Only her.

He wraps his fingers around her shoulder (this Mr. Gold who's supposed to protect her, who stares at her as if she's a ghost come back to taunt him with what he cannot have), and she stares down at his hand on her. She is wearing the coat her rescuer handed her, and the hospital gown beneath that, but she swears she can feel the heat of his palm against her arm. There is a tingling all along her skin, a restless stirring in her heart, a fluttering in the pit of her stomach—and it doesn't make sense, but neither does anything else.

When he hugs her, she feels the oddest sense of déjà vu. She wonders if she knew him, before whatever happened to see her condemned to that basement. She wonders if he hugged her often and long and if that is why she felt so empty and alone when she curled up alone on the ledge of her cell. She wonders if she should be frightened of the tight, clutching hold he has on her, as if he wants to pull her straight into himself and never let her go again.

But he does let her go, and there are tears in large, expressive eyes, and his long fingers are still holding onto her shoulder, and she is not afraid.

She's been afraid so long that it seems odd not to be afraid at all. Odd and exciting, so she accompanies Mr. Gold into the woods and follows him up a faded path even when her legs grow shaky with exhaustion and her lungs burn with the clean, sharp air.

Then she stops in mid-step and she closes her eyes and she remembers who she is.

She remembers who he is.

She remembers what it feels like to be touched by him.

"Wait. Rumplestiltskin, wait," she calls out.

And he does.

He turns, and he is all man now, all pale skin and worried creases and silver in his hair and a cane in his hand, a limp to his step—but those are his eyes. Large and worried and incredulous and scared (always so very scared, and she wishes she knew who put that fear in him) and just that little hint of hope he can never quite extinguish.

"I remember," she tells him, but he only looks more afraid, as afraid as he looked the first time she hugged him, as hurt as he looked when she stopped touching him. "I love you," she says, because she did not say it during all those long evenings spent at his side reading to the accompaniment of his spinning. She did not say it when she kissed him or when he shook her or when they stood on opposite sides of a cell and watched each other leave behind what could have been. She didn't say it during all those long, cold days and nights in the Queen's cell, afraid that saying it would give Regina something to use against Rumplestiltskin. She did not know to say it in this concrete cell, locked away so securely that even her name was denied her.

So she says it now, because she has waited long enough and because she does not like it when he looks so scared and because there is nothing else to say. They are the only words that matter.

And then a miracle happens: he hugs her. He opens his arms and she steps forward, and he wraps his arm around her and curls inward until she is surrounded on all sides by Rumplestiltskin. In all their months together, no matter how many times she touched him, no matter how much he leaned into her caresses, he never once reached out for her. But he hugs her, and there are tears in his voice when he speaks.

"Yes," he says, and Belle is boneless with relief, giddy with delight (she hoped he would believe her, but she did not expect it). "Yes," he says again. "And I love you, too."

She knew he did, but she is surprised to hear him say it. Surprised and euphoric and overjoyed and relieved, and so much more that she can't figure out right now because he is still hugging her and he cradles her cheek in his hand (and yes, how could she have forgotten this? This is what he feels like), and he is staring at her with a look he has never shown her before, something so astonishing and exhilarating that she cannot breathe, cannot move lest she wake herself and find the moon staring down at her from that circular window in the ceiling of the Queen's cell.

He is Rumplestiltskin, though, so there is an interruption and a delay and excuses and magic pouring outward to engulf the world. But he is her Rumplestiltskin, so he turns to her and he calls her sweetheart and my darling Belle rather than 'dearie,' and he has his hand on her arm, on her hand, on her back, on her cheek (as if he has only just realized that he does not have to wait for her to initiate the touch). He is the Dark One, so there are questions and rage and vengeance in dark eyes and fury in the crimped lines of his mouth. But he is her Dark One, so his eyes (so human, so him) shimmer with tears and the lines around his mouth ease into an awed smile and he chooses her.

And then he kisses her, and Belle realizes that every single touch she ever gave him, every touch he has granted her, has been leading up to this.

But it is the hug, afterward, the feel of his shoulder beneath her cheek (the fabric of his clothes different, his scent changed, his skin altered, but still the form and shape she remembers from the Sherwood forest), that convinces her she is finally, finally home, where she belongs.