Lacey's not lightness or purity but she drives away sadness. Her bare footsteps wandering his halls are music. Her smile is more contagious than any disease even his magic could construct. Their conversations are deep and easy all at the same time. Sometimes he thinks she's life itself, a goddess of glory.
She adores his magic, revels in his power. She asked which potions did what and if their prices were paid and he finds her now, mixing euphoria and whiskey or earthsea and beer. Protection charms, she says, in a hush, looking past him. Says, again, not asks. The only time she doesn't demand is when she begs, usually when she knows she doesn't have to. He likes it, likes her pleases or the feeling of her fingers on the leather on his arm or the way she says "what's the price?", her voice dripping with suggestion. He wished desperately that he didn't like it
Soon, he finds himself wishing he didn't love it.
It's months later and he's wishing he didn't love a lot of things. He's so terrified he'll hurt her, take advantage of her, treat her like… like the men she ran from.
In his dreams, his nightmares, he forces her. "Don't you want this?" he asks cruelly as he pushes her into bed, magic searing her skin. It doesn't matter how she acts in daylight, in his mind she's scared of him, begs him not to, cries when her kisses don't save his soul.
She doesn't make it subtle, she practically flings herself at him every night by now. Logically, he knows that she wants him, that she… It's obvious and he knows it. But that doesn't stop his myriad of excuses. He has one for every (succulent) looks she gives him. "She treats everyone this way" or "You scare her into pleasing you", or "She's been abused" or "you're imagining it", or anything that'll keep him from falling to his knees and proclaiming love and having her like a ragdoll against the cold stone wall.
She wonders if he has a million more beautiful girls and just never brings them home. She's sure he could have anyone he wants, it's no wonder he doesn't want her. She knows she's beautiful, that she flows blood to men and women's loins, but the world is vast and he's so much more than her. More experienced and more worldly and more powerful and why shouldn't he have partners to match?
It doesn't stop her from offering herself. She's knows it's no use denying it by now, that she loves him, utterly and irrevocably. Instead of smiling slightly when she notices him staring at her, her heart will flutter and her cheeks will go red. She doesn't mind it as much as she'd thought she would, love. Stupid, smiley, head-over-heals love. Even if he, apparently, wants nothing of her.
"Rumplestilskin", she cooed, and he tries to keep a stiff lip as he turns from the plants to face her, but he breaks out in a grin upon seeing her. Maybe not nothing of her.
She spends a night with the man in the dark coat who brings him things that make him look sad. Jefferson's a good kisser and in her past, need and want have always been amazing substitutes for, well, love. But in the morning she felt hollow, and when Rumplestiltskin saw him walking from her room, she was glad he was jealous, even if she had promised she wouldn't be.
Snow builds on the frigid ground and she sits by the hearth and reads to him while he spins. He savors it; like this it's so easy to pretend he is an ordinary man, a human man with… with his wife. He wonders if she'd love an ordinary man (she doesn't love you to begin with, he shouts at himself), or if one couldn't possibly please her.
The chapter she comes to in the book involves a sweet couple and Lacey laughs at the thought of love at first sight. He looks at his work and all that is coming from the wheel is straw. He feels at the edge of an abyss. 'That's alright' he thinks, 'let me fall'
"Come'on" she says, pulling his hand. His claw. "You never come traveling with me. I want to see Teribithia with you" and, despite all the work he has to do and all the plans for the day (or week, who knows how long they'll stay) he lets her drag him from their land.
It's winter at the castle, and the change of pace is calming, kind. He travels everyday but he never takes any of it in, never walks the lands like she does. They wander through the dense forest, something dark and filled with wonder around them, and her fingers feel so right wrapped around his. He follows her in a daze. Her legs are clad in black leather that ends at her navel and she wears nothing above that but a soft silken bra. He breaths in. Oh he is wretched. She is beautiful and he is wretched.
And then the worst of it happens. "Let's stay the night" She murmurs, looking up at the stars from the cliff-side clearing. Different sky. "Come, lay with me" And he is shaking. Did she mean…
She pats the mossy ground next to her and he can't deny her a thing. Gods, she makes him weak. The dark one doesn't need sleep but he pretends all night as she lays, curled into his side, and he listens to her breathing and her heartbeat. The noises from the forest are cruel and all he wants is to protect her ('you're what she needs protecting from', he reminds himself harshly). She says his name in her dreams. He hopes they go home in the morning. He hopes she stops calling it home soon, hopes she leaves. He immediately takes it back, coward as always.
She doesn't listen to wishes, and he figures she's here to stay.
It's the first thaw of spring. He asks her to fetch bushels of straw for spinning. It's such an odd request, and he acts so odd as he asks her.
Walking back from town (no magic for such a common trek), she's stopped by a woman clad in black silk whom she dislikes almost immediately. She doesn't understand why; The woman, (the queen, she later learns), is beautiful and powerful and very much her own, all things Lacey loves in herself but feel somehow so… unsettling here. If there's one thing Lacey hates its feeling powerless, afraid, and that's how she makes her feel.
The woman tells a tale about true love's kiss and it's power to break any curse. Just like the bedtime stories she was told as a girl but… tangible, now. She meant Rumplestiltskin. "All that darkness, all that ever-corrupting power, could be gone", and Lacey thinks that maybe she was right to fear love
She hadn't even considered not coming home, didn't even think of the implication of his request, but it all seems so clear when he asks "Why did you come back?" He'd stopped for so long, and she'd thought he'd got it through his thick head that she was his. This time, though, the question was so genuine. Her breath catches. She tells him, massaging his shoulders and leaning over him, about the enchantress, and she thinks she sees fear in his eyes. She doesn't like that at all.
"Do you have any curses, then, that you plan to break with those petals?"
"Are you saying I have a curse on me, magic man?"
And her palms are so fucking soft. "Lace-"
"No, Rum, I'm not planning to break any curses"
He looks confused as she wanders away, leaving a basket of straw at his feet.
He's surprised when he finds her in his bed that night, but he should have known. She looks at him with dark eyes and licks her lips and reaches her hand out to him. She is a dream. He walks toward her and sits on the side of the mattress next to her, slipping his fingers between hers.
"Sweetpea…", silence hangs in the air for the shortest eternity before she pulls her hand from his suddenly and sits up, blankets falling from her nude chest unceremoniously. He tries to avert his gaze.
She looks forward, blue eyes distant. "You don't… want me, do you?". Her voice is sullen and… angry. She moves as if to leave and he grabs her wrist, harder than he'd meant to.
He doesn't even realize he's speaking, words spilling forth from him as though they had a life of their own; "Of course I do, Lace. I want you like a dying man wants air. I love you darling, you know that, but… Oh flower. I shouldn't. You deserve better, You deserve the sun itself, and Lovely, my curse-"
"I know how to please a man without kissing him, Rumplestiltskin", and he swears the world stops spinning.
When she had said she wouldn't break it, he had thought she'd meant she wouldn't try, or that it was up to him to make a move. But this…
"Lacey, would you really? With a demon?"
She rolls her eyes and a smile slipped past her sadness.. "Yes, I would". She cups his face and her fingers are salvation on his touch-starved skin and her eyes and thin and filled with lust. "Oh magic man, haven't I made it easy enough? Don't you know my heart is yours?"
"Why?", and his fingers are already tracing patterns on her bare skin. She shivers.
"Because I love you. You are everything I have ever wanted. Power and passion and comfort and acceptance and selfishness… and love"
He buries his face in the crook of her neck, hands tangled in her snarled curls. She's in his lap, bare and blushing and beaming. "I'm sorry I took so long sweet"
He holds her tight, like she'll slip away. "You should be" she laughs. He growls in her ear and she feels her blood flow. "Don't take any longer?"
She is desperate and loving, grinding herself against his leathers and furs, undoing his buckles and strings frantically and he pushes his fingers into her. She's sopping and swollen for him. He kisses her skin and then he bites, rough and hard and she cries out, mewling his name. "Mine", He growls in her ear. "All mine". Maybe he's always been possessive, but with her, with all of her not-so-subtle rambling about "taking what was rightfully his" he couldn't help feeling like she belonged to him, feeling like she wanted to belong to him.
"Rumplestilskin, Rumplesti… Please"
Before he even realizes, he's buried himself within her, long magic fingers having moved on to writing red patterns on her back and her thighs and her heart. Looking back he wishes he was gentler. He knows he's not her first, but he wishes her first memory of him was something sweet, wishes he was less beastly with his taking.
She is… compliant, limp and pleasing in his arms, kissing wherever her head falls save his lips. Her moans sound almost uncontrollable, soft things he's pushed out of her as she surrenders her heart and body unto him. Her loving reflects her; she wants to make it easy for him. Still she's a storm, and he won't mistake submission for weakness.
Finished (four times over, once he's had her he couldn't get enough), he wraps his arm around her, her face against his bare chest. He mumbles sweet things into her ear as she hums to him and tells him about all the ways he makes her heart flutter. His hands roam aimlessly over her body, desperate for contact, as they gently and contentedly drift off to sleep. He holds her tight, he hopes not too so much that his claws cut her, needing to hold onto this, still unbelieving that it could last, that it could be real. She slips to sleep and pulls him into the abyss with her. It's the first time he's slept in weeks, and the first time he hasn't had a nightmare since the day his father left.
He's afraid, despite her frequent and ferocious declarations of love, that it might be just the once, that now that she knows she can have him she'll be bored, or she'll realize that she's loving a devil. She doesn't. She asks him, the next morning, sunlight meandering fraily through the thick curtains, her chin on his chest and her hand on his heart if he can make her a trinket, so she could kiss him. It's an oddly romantic request coming from her, but he supposes in some ways she likes that kind of thing.
They lay in bed for hours, just smiling and telling each other about their months of longing. . He's done nothing to be worthy of this. He doesn't deserve her… but that's not the kind of this she seems to care about
"I love you, magic man", she says sleepily. He hasn't looked forward in so long.
