II

The sun was high in the sky when Belle's eyes fluttered open. She took her wand and flicked the curtains open, gauging the time to be just before noon. She needed the sunlight and Rumpelstiltskin kept his castle entirely too dark. Speaking of the wily sorcerer, Belle glanced down, her mouth forming a perfect 'o' of surprise. She hadn't meant to fall asleep, and she certainly hadn't meant for the Dark One to use her for a pillow. Heat rose in her cheeks to stain them a bright crimson at having him in one of the many positions she'd dreamed of so many nights. His arms were wrapped tightly about her torso and his head was pillowed between her breasts, soft snores emitting from him every so often. It made her wonder again when last it was he'd had a decent night's sleep.

She wasn't able to still her hands as they reached for him, her left stroking over his jaw and caressing him with her thumb and her right delving into his soft curls to gently rake her nails over his scalp and nape. She didn't think she would ever tire of touching him. If only he would permit her to do so when he was awake. Her breath hitched in her chest as he began to stir, his nose dipping into her bosom as he rubbed his face back and forth over her skin. He pressed his nose into her palm as she continued to stroke his cheek, unconsciously seeking her touch.

Belle could tell the moment he shook off the last remnants of sleep, his head shooting up and his wide eyes darting to hers before they narrowed in suspicion. "What are you doing in my bed?" he asked, his voice raspy with sleep.

She stretched languorously and yawned now that she wasn't pinned to the mattress by his body. "Good morning, Rumpel. I suppose I fell asleep," she said sweetly, stating the obvious in case he hadn't figured it out for himself.

Rumpelstiltskin rolled to the side and swung his bare feet over the side of the bed, waving a magical hand over himself and banishing his nightclothes to be replaced with his leathers and silks. "Where are my boots? What did you do with my boots?" he asked, his dark bronze colored eyes filled with accusation. She'd cleaned his room? When had she had time to clean? But then she had her own brand of magic and it shouldn't have been too difficult. He couldn't look at her right now, sprawled across his pillows as she was. He needed time to calm his racing heart and cool the fire which had ignited in his blood.

Belle chuckled and left the bed, walking around to the end of the massive structure and retrieving his boots from the floor. She held them out to him and smirked as he jerked them roughly from her hands. "You slept for nearly ten hours. I thought surely you would be in a more amiable mood this morning."

He ignored her as he began lacing up the tall boot he'd pulled onto his left foot. "I told you to go," he snapped with a petulant pull to his mouth.

"Yes, well, I'm not the most obedient fairy in the realm," she teased. He growled a warning low in his throat which she dismissed with a wave of her hand. "You need to face facts, Rumpelstiltskin. I am bound to you until your wish has been fulfilled, so you had best get used to having me around … at least for a while."

His head jerked up to stare at her in horror. "I. Don't. Want. Your. Help," he insisted, growling each word at her.

"Course, you don't," she replied dryly, smirking at him.

"Out!" he roared, anger at having his commands disobeyed coursing through his chest.

"Oh, very well," she demurred. "I must look in on my other charges anyway. But I will return this evening. I want to have a look in the archives to see if there is any information I can find on our plight."

With a quick spontaneous kiss to his cheek, she popped out of being, leaving him with a bemused expression and his hand resting over the spot where her lips had met his skin.

Rumpelstiltskin sat in his tower, his mind distracted from the tome which rested on the work table. She had only been gone for five hours, twenty-seven minutes and … Gah! What is wrong with me? I should be happy to be rid of the little gnat! But he wasn't. Otherwise, he wouldn't be watching the time and waiting for her return. He'd known her for less than twenty-four hours and already she was burrowing under his skin … like a festering sore! He convinced himself it was only her assurances she could help him find Baelfire which stopped him from incinerating her on the spot. It had nothing to do with her lovely cerulean eyes filled with promise or the sweet chime of her voice or how she wasn't afraid to reach out and touch him as if her were a man instead of a monster.

"Blasted rotten fairies!" he seethed, his eyes once again drawn to the open window in his tower room.

"I beg your pardon? Having problems with the fairy population again?" Jefferson asked from the open doorway, his top hat tucked awkwardly beneath his arm.

Rumpelstiltskin whipped around, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth as he waved the hatter into the room. With a wave of his hand, he produced a tea tray laden with all the fixings as well as a plate of sandwiches. The hatter was always hungry and never more so than when he came to the Dark Castle to discuss business with the Dark One.

"Just one particular fairy," he admitted, stirring two sugar cubes into the steaming brew in his cup. "She catapulted herself through the window last night with promises to help me find my son and refused to leave."

Jefferson's brows disappeared into his hairline, his surprise evident, then promptly burst into a fit of laughter. "And just how long did it take you to blow her to little tiny bits of fairy dust?" he asked, sitting back on the extra stool next to Rumpelstiltskin's work table, careful to avoid the potion brewing at its center.

"I didn't."

Jefferson's face fell, and he nearly dropped his teacup, some of the liquid splashing onto his hand and causing him to curse softly. "What? That's not like you, Rum. How many times have you told me fairies can't be trusted?"

Rumpelstiltskin stared down into his cup and sighed. "Belle isn't like any fairy I've ever encountered before. She's … well, she's … oh, hell!"

"By the gods! You're smitten with her!"

"I am not."

"Yes, you are," Jefferson grinned, quaking with laughter as he wagged a pointed finger in his friend's direction. "The mighty Dark One has fallen!"

"Shut it, Hatter," the sorcerer warned. He wasn't going to detail his strange attraction to Belle with Jefferson when he couldn't seem to explain it to himself.

"Is she pretty?" Jefferson asked, waggling his eyebrows lasciviously.

"Beautiful … with long chestnut curls and the bluest eyes I think I've ever seen. But she's nothing like the fairies we know. She's sincere and honest and …"

"… would be so easy for you to fall in love with," Jefferson finished for him, propping and elbow on the edge of the table and resting his chin in his hand.

Rumpelstiltskin arched a dubious brow at his friend. "If I were capable of such an emotion … perhaps. But you've heard Rheul Ghorm preach often enough that Dark Ones are not capable of such emotion. They do not do anything for noble purposes because they are vile and filled with hate, they do not help without wanting something in return and they are not capable of such a noble emotion as love," he quoted, having heard it repeat over and over in his nightmares on several occasions.

Jefferson's teeth gnashed together in anger. "What does she know about it? She's a fairy. They're like dwarves in the respect they aren't capable of love and I've met more than one dwarf who would beg to differ. Remember the story of Dreamy who fell for a fairy … Nova I think her name was? They married three years ago and have two children. You can't let someone tell you who you can love."

Rumpelstiltskin drained his cup and set it aside. "Yes, well, I don't foresee a future between us fraught with true love. Lust perhaps, but not love. I'm more than capable of experiencing that confounding emotion."

"So … when do I get to meet this conundrum of superior fairy delightfulness?"

"You don't!"

"Oh, why not?" he asked with a petulant pout to his full lips.

"There's no guarantee she'll even be back," the imp lied, not ready to share Belle with the hatter quite yet.

Jefferson laughed, swiping up his hat and perching it at a jaunty angle on his head. "Oh, you never know, she could surprise you. Must be off now. Alice is surely wondering why I'm late for dinner."

Rumpelstiltskin snorted. When wasn't the hatter late for something or other? He once again lifted the book of spells in his hand and double checked the ingredients for the potion he was brewing, trying not to dwell on the troublesome fairy who had blown into his life the night before.

Belle, in her tiny winged fairy form, flew through the open tower window and landed daintily on Rumpelstiltskin's dragon-hide clad shoulder, a brown leather satchel slung over her shoulder. "Hello, Rumpel … ahhh!" she screamed, cutting her greeting short as she lost her footing and slid from his shoulder and onto the book which lay upon his lap.

"What in seven hells!" he cursed, glaring down at what he had come to refer to as the bane of his existence. "Belle!"

"Sorry!" she apologized. She took on her more human form and smiled up at him from her perch on his lap. "What do you do, wax that coat? Dragon scales are already slippery enough," she admonished.

Rumpelstiltskin groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. The only thing separating them was the book she sat upon, the thin tome creating a barrier between her delectable rear and his groin. "Dearie, do you mind?" he hissed, refusing to meet her gaze.

"Oh! Yes, I suppose this is quite inappropriate," she replied, climbing off his lap and worrying her bottom lip with her pearly white teeth.

He turned to look at the blush staining her rosy cheeks and frowned. He didn't think fairies were the blushing type and this one blushed like a maid introduced to her first beau. "What are you doing here again? I don't remember inviting you back, dearie."

A gamine-like grin played at her lips as she reached up to brush a lock of hair away from his brow. "And I told you this morning I was bound to you until your wish is fulfilled." She ignored his chagrin and reached into the satchel at her side, removing a large leather-bound book with its title written in the language of the ancients.

"What's with the book?"

Belle hopped up to perch on the edge of his work table, her legs swinging to and fro. "I went today to talk to the keeper of the archives and," she said, pausing dramatically as she presented the book to him. "She said this book would have the information we seek. We should be able to use what we find to open a portal that will take you to Baelfire."

Rumpelstiltskin shoved the book back into her hands and snarled fiercely, his eyes narrowed to slits. "There's just one problem with all of this, little Belle. I don't trust you. This could be some devious ploy you've come up with to get rid of the Dark One. You could be hoping to send me to a realm where I'd never find my son or a way back home."

Belle refused to let him see how much his words hurt her. She was trying so hard to show him she cared for him and his resistance was more than she'd been prepared to face. "Do you really have so little hope, Rumpel?"

He crossed the room and braced his hands on the windowsill, breathing deeply of the fresh evening air. "Hope is for the simple minded and weak."

"No! No, it's not. What do you have if you don't have hope? Nothing but grief and despair. I think it's time you let go of those and took a chance that someone out there cares for you enough to help you," she lost what remained of her self-control, her voice rising in the first signs of temper he'd seen from her. She slammed the book down on his worktable and marched through the door.

He arched a brow at her abrupt departure and set off to follow her. "Where do you think you're going now?" he called after her.

She stopped and glared at him, moisture shining in her jewel bright eyes which she wasn't quick enough to brush away before he could see it. "I'm going to prepare you some dinner. Get back up there and have a look at the potion we're going to have to make. I won't be long," she said, giving him her back and disappearing down the stairs.

"You don't have to fix me dinner, damnit!"

She didn't stop, but continued on. "Potion, now!" she ordered.

"Bossy little minx," he mumbled irritably under his breath as he climbed the stairs to the tower laboratory. He was nearly halfway there when he realized he'd let a pushy little fairy order him about. The Dark One didn't take orders from fairies. He disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke, the tome clutched in his hand and was waiting for her in the kitchen when she arrived.

Belle ignored him as she disappeared into the food locker to find ingredients for a simple lamb stew, thankful a fresh loaf of sourdough bread was available to go with it. She didn't even want to know where the food came from, but she could feel his magic present, so she didn't wonder long. She set the items on the long work surface and removed a shank of lamb from the brown butcher paper it was wrapped in, her knife strokes uneven and sloppy in her anger.

"You're mutilating a perfectly good lamb shank!"

"It will cook faster off the bone and cut into smaller pieces," she argued, still refusing to look at him in her pique.

"Yes, dearie," he said rather dryly. "But if the pieces aren't even, you're working at cross purposes." He strode to her side and took her hand - which was holding the knife - in his firm grasp, pressing his body into hers at her back. "Here, hold your hand here and curl your fingers back so you don't accidentally lop off the digits," he instructed, placing his hand over hers and showing her where to hold the lamb to steady it for their knife strokes.

Belle forgot how to breathe as she felt the warmth of his body seep into her from behind. She was cocooned in his arms and every coherent thought fled from her mind. All she could concentrate on was the fact the man she loved was wrapped about her like one of his dragon-hide coats and there was no place in the realm … or any other, for that matter… she would rather be.

"Pay attention!" he snapped as her fingers unfurled and he nearly nicked her with the knife. She gave herself a mental shake and focused on his instructions once more until the lamb lay on the chopping block in perfectly sized proportions.

He didn't release her immediately as her scent … honeysuckle to be sure and something else, something all Belle … tickled his nose. She smelled better than anything in his vast flower gardens surrounding the Dark Castle, her skin, as his cheek brushed the side of her neck, softer than any wool he'd ever spun. "I'm sorry … for snapping at you earlier," he found himself saying.

Belle fought through the passion-induced haze which surrounded them and sprinkled seasoning over the meat before dumping it unceremoniously into the pot. She reached for several carrots near her elbow and began to chop them into even pieces before her voice returned to something which wouldn't reveal her obvious upset at his nearness. "I won't hurt you, Rumpel. I understand you can't trust me right now."

He straightened and moved to sit on the stool at her right, taking a paring knife and beginning to help her peel the potatoes for the stew. "So … ah … where did you learn to cook anyway? It doesn't seem a common skill for a fairy."

"Sometimes I'm away from home for months at a time and I find I like a decent meal. In some realms, those th which at are easily visited from our own, a good meal can be as valuable a commodity as gold. I thought it would be a useful skill to possess," she told him, moving the pot to the hook over the fire and adding the rest of the ingredients so they could cook slowly.

With dinner on and free time on their hands, Belle urged him to open the book to the page she'd marked for his perusal. It was a fairly simple potion and if brewed correctly would open a portal to any desired destination … even one to a land without magic. "You stole this from your archive didn't you, dearie?"

"I did," she admitted with a weary sigh. "It is a great offense to take something so valuable from the glade, especially the archive. If Blue ever found out, I could lose my wings and my wand."

He stared at her incredulously. "Why would you risk so much for … for me?" he asked, his hand coming to rest over his heart as he frowned at her.

Belle cupped his cheek and smiled warmly at him. "There's good in you, Rumpelstiltskin. I see it; I've always seen it. You just need someone to believe in you."

He stared at her for a long moment, his chest tight with unfamiliar emotions before he had to look away. He focused his attention on the pages before him and shook his head. "I don't have some of these ingredients."

"Oh? Which ones?" she asked, moving to stir the bubbling stew over the hearth.

"Um … red gold stamens from a night blooming purple orchid, pixie dust and bottled rain from a cirrus cloud? How do you fairies come up with this stuff?" he asked, agitation prominent in his features. "And even if we are able to find all the ingredients, it says here it will take two weeks for the potion to be ready."

Belle waved off his worries. "I can get the stamens tomorrow evening right there in the glade and I might be able to find the bottled rain we need as well, but the pixie dust is quite rare and valuable. I don't know if I will be able to get that for you without a price."

"What price?" he asked, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

She brushed her short skirt free of imaginary specks of dust, a blush staining her cheeks. "I'll tell you when the time is right," she said softly, holding her hand out to him. "Come, show me your gardens? I've only been able to look on them from afar and I would enjoy them so much the better if you would join me."

"What about dinner?" he asked, suddenly nervous to venture out into such a romantic setting with the little temptress.

She slipped her hand into his, unafraid of the sharp talons where human fingernails had once been. "It will be ready later. We have plenty of time to enjoy our walk."

Against his better judgment and wary of the feelings he was developing, he took her hand and let her lead him outside.

*.*.*

Rumpelstiltskin was losing his mind and it was all her fault. It had been three days since they had begun brewing the potion which would open the portal and she was slowing aiding him in losing his sanity. He'd watched in awe as she had shot straight up into the sky, her wand in one hand and a clear empty vial in the other to collect the bottled rain they would need, returning to him with a breathtaking smile. Her smiles did funny things to his insides which he refused to analyze for fear of seeing something which wasn't there. He still wanted her gone, but each time she left he suffered anxiety over whether or not she would return to him. She was a bossy little thing, but he had known that from the beginning. He wasn't however, expecting her to run roughshod over his life.

Each day she would leave for several hours to see to her other charges and each day she would return with another stolen … or in her words, borrowed … tome from the fairy archives. She would save them for when they retired. And that was another source of contention between them. Belle insisted she share his bed at night and would dismiss his arguments, though they were many. On the upside, he had never felt so well rested in his life, her mere presence chasing away the nightmares and allowing him to sleep peacefully.

But on the downside, he would wake in the morning, his limbs entwined with hers and find his body hard with wanting. Gods, how he wanted her, and he feared of late it wasn't just her body he craved so desperately, but her heart as well. And that was something he could ill afford. His primary focus had to be reuniting with his son. And if he caught himself thinking about what it would be like to have Belle in his life on a permanent basis, he would quickly squash the idea.

Belle was a fairy, governed by a ruthless ruler who would never let her live happily with him. He couldn't allow himself to feel more than a tentative friendship with her because the pain of losing her would be too great. Yet after three days, it already felt as though she had been with him for years. She spent every moment she could with him. She took over the chore of preparing their meals even though neither one of them needed to eat on a regular basis, but she convinced him a healthy body promoted a healthy mind. He didn't complain because he enjoyed preparing meals with her in their warm kitchen as she opened up to him and shared stories of her life over the centuries.

Belle enjoyed the vast gardens surrounding the Dark Castle and the flowers bloomed under her care. She had but to walk amongst the plants to have them open to the full extent of their beauty as if seeking her approval. Rumpelstiltskin shared the feeling and had to fight with his inner demons to stop himself from doing little things to gain her approval and affections. He would not allow himself to have hope of gaining her heart, afraid of the pain involved when they parted.

She seemed oblivious to his inner turmoil and continued on as she would, taking it upon herself to "spruce up" the castle. And being an enchanted castle, it quickly bowed to her brand of magic. There was no longer any dust covering the many surfaces and the floors shone to a sparkling shine. Everything seemed brighter, the colors richer and it was all because of his pushy little fairy. The many suits of armor which lined the corridors gleamed with a fresh coat of silver polish and he was waiting for the day they would snap to his attention as he passed them on his way up to the tower.

The books she brought from the archives, she read to him at night as he lay stiffly at her side. Her latest endeavor was to show him that light magic was much more beneficial than dark magic if he had but the patience to learn. "The Dark One doesn't do light magic, dearie," he'd sneered at the very thought.

"You don't know you can't unless you try, Rumpel," she persisted and continued on as if he hadn't just scoffed at another of her ideas. He wouldn't let her know he soaked in every word she spoke and would indeed try a few of the spells she shared with him when she wasn't looking.

After three days, he already felt in many ways that he'd taken a wife. She was in his kitchen, in his bed - if only to sleep - and had taken over the domestic side of his home. If it weren't for the raging need firing his blood due to unrequited lust, he'd believe it was true. She needed to go before he lost himself completely, but the very thought caused an uncomfortable ache in his chest in the region of his heart. And the amount of exposed skin by her fairy costume didn't help the torment he'd developed because of her in the least. No, she had to go. As soon as the potion was complete, she would have to leave. The question was … could he survive that long?

A/n: So glad y'all seem to be enjoying this one! Thank you so much for the reviews :D