Remember When?

A Once Father's Day Fic

Gold Standard AU

1

All Tangled Up

Storybrooke, Maine

Gold's Victorian:

"I couldn't think of a gift to get you for Father's Day, Papa," Bae said, carrying a large leather embossed album over to where his father, Rumplestiltskin Gold sat on the couch, with his eldest daughter, Alina, next to him, and his five month old twins, Daria and Dylan, cuddled on his knee.

"So Bae and I decided that we would do something . . .unconventional for Father's Day," Alina said, handing a soft butterfly rattle to Daria. "We decided to make it a . . .umm . . .memorable one."

Rumple looked alarmed. "Okay, what broke? And how much do I have to pay for it?"

Alina laughed. "Nothing . . .not this time."

Bae sat down on the couch with the album. "We decided that the best gift we could give you was our time . . .time spent remembering you as our dad." He opened the album, which contained pictures of the Gold family. He pointed to one of Gold holding the twins as newborns. "Of course, these little munchkins you don't have a lot of memories with yet, but . . ."

"I'm sure I'll have plenty once they start walking and talking and using their magic cohesively," the sorcerer said, jiggling them. "Right? And you'll turn my whole head gray, won't you?"

Dylan cooed at him, his green eyes shining. A rose on the trellis on the wall burst into bloom.

Daria went and whacked her papa in the face with the rattle, giggling.

"Hey! See, she's already giving me one," he teased.

"So we brought the album here so you could tell us some stories about your favorite moments when we were kids," Alina continued, and gently moved her sister's hand so she didn't clobber Rumple again.

"You still are a kid," her older brother teased.

She rolled her eyes at him. "You know what I mean, Baelfire."

Rumple smiled at them. "That's a very unique and lovely idea, you two." There was nothing he enjoyed more than spending time with his family, despite how insane and crazy they sometimes were.

"Because we have a unique and awesome father," Alina returned, leaning her head on his shoulder.

Gold cocked an eyebrow at her. "You trying to get me to raise your allowance, Alina Rose?"

"Papa!" she mock-glared at him. "If I was I'd make a better deal than that."

Bae roared with laughter. "She's a chip off the old block all right!"

Just then Belle came in with some tea and some peanut butter chocolate chips and set them down on the table in front of them. "Here, Rumple. I know you'll need something to . . .fortify yourself for this trip down memory lane."

"Gee thanks, Mama," her son snorted. "We weren't that bad!"

"Uh, most of my gray hairs came from you, Bae!" Rumple refuted. He picked up his chipped cup and sipped some tea out of it, before flipping the album and pointing at a picture of Regina, his little niece, standing in the den with yarn wound all over it and her ankles. "Regina wasn't the only one who got all tangled up in my yarn, mister."

Bae groaned. "God, not this one again!"

"Tell! I can't wait to hear it!" Alina begged.

"I don't know how you didn't hear it," her brother moaned. "He even told Emma one night!"

"She asked. Besides, she needs to know these things, because soon you'll be having a wee one to raise from the beginning," Rumple pointed out. Emma was due very shortly with her and Bae's second baby. He shut his eyes and gathered his thoughts, sending them flying down familiar pathways to a time long long ago, in the Enchanted Forest, when he was mere wool spinner, and raising a harum-scarum little boy by himself.

Then he opened them and said, "Okay, now zip your lips and put your listening ears on, you four."

"Papa, I'm not three," Bae objected.

"Shut up, Bae!" Alina snapped. "Go on, Papa."

Rumple cleared his throat. Then the spinner of spells, tales, and gold began, "Once upon a time, back in our old realm in the Enchanted Forest, I lived with Bae in a simple little cottage, spinning wool to sell at the market . . ."

Fairy Tale Land:

It was gray day, and rain had soaked the ground last night, accompanied by loud thunder booming, which had woken four-year-old Bae from a sound sleep and sent him cringing in terror to crawl into bed with his papa. Now Rumple never minded having his son sleep with him, but last night had been particularly trying, since the rain made his injured leg stiff and sore and Bae had kicked it several times while he slept.

End result, his leg, which had been badly broken after a war horse stepped upon it during muster back when Rumple was drafted into the army in the First Ogre War, was now aching like seven hells. Not just because of Bae, but also because of the weather. Rumple hated when it rained, because the damp got into his mismended bones and set them all to throbbing. It made him feel like an old man of seventy rather than the twenty-four he actually was.

He sat on the edge of his straw stuffed bed, trying to massage some of the pain away before getting up to make breakfast and start his day's spinning, his linen night shirt about his knees, yawning.

Bae, in contrast, was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed that morning, and jumped out of bed like Jack Be Nimble. "Papa, let's have eggs n' nests for breakfast 'stead of porridge today!" he crowed.

Poor Rumple thought he'd rather have a shot of rum today, but didn't say so. "We'll see, Bae," he sighed. "Go and wash up first."

"Yippee!" the hyper little boy raced across the cottage floor to the little crate where Rumple had a bowl filled with water, a sliver of lemongrass soap, and a towel for washing. He quickly washed his hands and scrubbed the sleep from his eyes, getting water everywhere.

Then he jumped behind the rattan screen in the alcove beside the wash basin to use the chamber pot there.

After a few more minutes, Rumple sighed and got up, using his carved walking stick, and limped over to the hearth to coax a flame from the embers there. Then he moved to the battered old iron stove and stirred the coals in it to life. The stove was a new addition to the house, bought with the money Rumple had saved now that he no longer had his faithless wife, Milah, drinking it all away down at the tavern. Milah had run off with a pirate to see the world, abandoning her spinner husband and child. And good riddance to her, the spinner thought.

He put the kettle on for tea and began heating the old black skillet with some butter and he limped over and sliced some bread and took the eggs from a basket beside the cupboard. He carried them in one hand while he made his way carefully back towards the stove, leaning heavily on his stick and gritting his teeth at the shooting pains in his leg.

"Papa! Are the eggs done yet! Are they?" Bae ran right into his path and grabbed his leg.

Rumple almost tripped and fell, saving himself at the last instant by managing to grip his stick. "Baelfire! Watch out! You almost made me fall!"

"Oops! Sorry! But m'hungry!" the child said, giving him a gamin grin.

"Well, you aren't going to have breakfast if you make me break these eggs, little boy," Rumple said testily.

Bae pouted. "I said I was sorry. Don't be a grouch, Papa!"

Rumple frowned at his son. "A grouch? If you don't quit sassing me, lad, you're going to see how much of a grouch I can be. Now go and . . . and play over there while I cook," he ordered, waving the boy towards his spinning wheel and the box of toys by the hearth.

"Okay! I'm gonna play work!" Bae shrilled, and darted across the room.

Rumple heaved a sigh. He wished he possessed a tenth of his son's lightning bolt energy. But today he felt like a snail. One that was stuck in the mud, going nowhere.

As Rumple began to toast the bread in the skillet, Bae went over to his toy box and found a cunningly carved toy jumping jack on a stick, and played with it for a while . . . a while being all of ten seconds before he grew bored and looked around for something else to do.

The little boy was naturally curious and also a natural mimic, and when his eyes lit upon Rumple's wheel, standing forlorn and empty before the hearth, Bae recalled that he had always wanted to try to spin like his papa. But his father had always told him he had to wait till he was older, that he was too little now.

But Bae figured he was big enough now—he was four and a half—and so he ran over to the wheel and grabbed some handfuls of wool and tried to put them on it.

But they fell right off, because he wasn't tall enough to reach the wheel and spin it at the same time. Frustrated, the little boy decided to try and remove the half spun thread on the bobbin and pretend that way.

Rumple had just finished putting the eggs into the indentation in the bread and cooking them with some salt and pepper and sprinkling them with some goat cheese. He slid them onto some wooden plates and had placed them on the table, then turned to call Bae over to eat. "Baelfire, it's time to—holy fu-err—flaming hells!"

The sight that greeted his eyes was one out of a spinner's worst nightmare.

Bae had unwound all the thread he'd spun on the bobbin, which was a fairly large amount, and had tangled it all over the wheel, the floor, the rocker in front of the hearth and himself.

He had thread wound about his ankles, around the waist of his little nightshirt, and tangled in his hands and about his head. He looked up at his father with a mischievous smirk and cried, "Look, Papa! I'm workin! Like you!"

Rumple hit himself in the forehead. It was times like these that he wished he had a club to hit himself in the head with. He couldn't figure out how one small child could get into so much mischief . . . in the space of five minutes!

"Baelfire! Look what you've done! My thread! It's all tangled up!"

"Uh . . .it was hard spinnin' it," the little imp grinned. He held up a thread covered hand. "An' now I'm kinda stuck!"

Rumple limped over to his son, managing somehow to find a way not to trip over the thread wound all over. He grabbed some scissors from his sewing basket and said, "Now, you hold still, Mr. Sticky Fingers, while I get you free of this . . . disaster you've caused! Bae, when will you learn not to touch everything?"

The little boy's lower lip stuck out. "But . . . but Papa . . . I was 'tending I was you. Spinnin' thread to sell at the market . . ."

"Somebody shoot me," Rumple muttered under his breath. "And then tell me why I ever thought I could raise a kid on my own, crippled coward spinner that I am?" Then he looked at his tangled up little imp, who never failed to make his heart melt with his soulful brown eyes, even when he knew he ought to be angry at him, and all of his annoyance faded and he started to laugh. "Gods help you, Bae! And me too!"

"Am I in trouble?" his son asked, slightly worried that he was going to have to find the corner in the kitchen and stare at it forever . . . since four minutes was forever to the active toddler.

Rumple quit laughing then, and adopted a disappointed face. "You ought to be, lad. But . . . well . . .I guess I can see why you did this, so . . .no corner. However, you will be helping me to pick up all this thread after breakfast. As soon as I cut you free," he amended.

Then he set to work with his scissors, snipping at certain points until the tangled thread fell away in a heap on the floor.

"Okay, now let's eat, before our eggs in a nest get cold," he told his son, and Bae took his hand and tugged him towards the table.

The eggs were a bit cold, but neither of them noticed, since both were hungry, and hunger makes almost anything taste good.

Afterwards, Rumple had Bae help him wash the dishes and put them to dry by the window in the sun, and then the two spent over an hour and a half untangling and cutting the thread wound everywhere in the main room of the cottage.

Rumple took the spoiled thread and tossed it in the fire, and tried not to think about a half-day's work going up in smoke. Then he wondered if he had done the right thing by not punishing the boy for his little misadventure.

I'm such a pushover, he thought, rubbing his still sore leg.

Bae tugged on his shirt tail. "Papa? M'sleepy."

Rumple glanced down at the curly-haired moppet and ruffled his hair. "Untangling thread's hard work, huh?" he said.

"Uh huh," Bae said solemnly. Then he added, "An' I ain't never tryin' to spin till I'm bigger, Papa! Like six!"

Rumple chuckled and scooped the little boy up in his arms. "That's a good idea, Bae!" Then he pretended to nibble the boy's nose. "Mmm . . . you taste good!"

"Noo!" he squealed. "No Tickle Monster, Papa!"

"Ohh . . .but I have a plump juicy tender little morsel here," Rumple made his voice deep and growly. "And I'm hungry! Grrrr! And I'm gonna eat him all up!"

Then the spinner playfully nibbled all down the little boy's neck and tummy, making his captive child squeal with pretend fear and then burst into giggles.

"Mmm . . . you taste scrumptious!" the "monster" said, licking his lips.

"Do not! I taste yucky! Like . . .lima beans!" Bae howled.

Rumple tickled his leg, making chomping noises, and Bae's giggles filled the cottage, until anyone passing by would have wondered just what in hell went on in there.

"Are you going to behave?" queried the horrible Tickle Monster. "Or shall I bite off your other leg?"

"No! No! I'll be good!"

"Do we have a deal, dearie?"

"Deal!" Bae nodded and held out a hand.

Rumple took it. "Okay . . .and you know that—"

"—when you make a deal, you gotta keep your word!" Bae recited. Then he yawned. "Papa, I'm sleepy."

"You know what—so am I," the spinner remarked. "So why don't we both take a little nap?"

Rumple went and curled up on his bed with Bae snuggled in his arms and soon the two were fast asleep, while outside rain lashed the cottage, but neither the spinner or his son woke, for both were snug and warm in their homespun blanket and each other's arms.

Gold's Victorian:

" . . .and that's the story of Bae trying to be a spinner," Rumple concluded with a smirk.

"Aww! How cute!" Alina giggled.

Bae rolled his eyes. "I was a pain in the ass, Papa. I don't how you didn't strangle me. I cost us money."

"Because, Bae, money isn't everything. Family is," Rumple replied. "And you gave me plenty more chances to want to beat you like a rug, dearie."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," his sister said smugly.

"Oh, don't act like you were perfect, Miss Gold!" Bae challenged. "Because you got into your share of mischief too! Right, Papa?"

"Both of you conspired on a regular basis to turn my hair gray and give me an ulcer," Rumple admitted. "And never so much as the time you got lost in the supermarket, Alina Rose . . ."

"No! Not this one again!" his daughter cried.

Bae smirked. "Oh, yes! Now it's your turn!"

A/N: this little multi-chapter fic was written for Father's Day to honor Bobby Carlyle and every father everywhere. Hope you enjoy Rumple's tales!