So, I'll admit, the reviews to the last chapter had me scratching my head. I rechecked the posting three times to make sure I'd not put up the wrong document. Regina and Emma weren't paired with anyone. *scratches head* Also, the backhanded comment about Tink a couple chapters ago referenced their time in The Enchanted Forest, not since they've been in Storybrooke. Don't go hating on characters I haven't even had a chance to introduce properly yet. Apologies if I failed to make that clear. We like Tink, Tink keeps the diner running in Ruby's absence with the wolves.
Anyway, this is about the halfway point in this behemoth. You wonder why the first half was so RB oriented… well, because the second half is SQ oriented. I fixed the easiest couple first. This entire story is about healing of the entire family. Those of you who have read my other stories know that I am not really influenced by bad reviews, I just tend to get super excited that people are really into it and just do what I want… soooooo… have some smut with this double post of awesomeness. (I'm super in love with this chapter)
Enjoy, my lovelies and keep up the deliciously tense reviews. Means I'm doing my job if you care so passionately. Also, about three more chapters (including this one) until we start the SQ portion of this tale if anyone is wondering. Second chapter will be up later today.
Song: Till I Fall Asleep by Jayme Dee (because it's beautiful), Up Here by Terri Naomi (Because… haters)
Belle rubbed her face as she walked into the room she shared with Ruby at the mansion. Her hands hit her thighs, but she stayed still, staring at the bed that offered up so many memories, so many emotions, so much pain. They needed to move into their own place. She needed to move, she corrected in her endlessly cycling brain. Shut up, she ordered her thoughts. Just stop.
Determined to distract herself while Ruby showered, she snagged the book from her nightstand that apparently hadn't been moved the entire time she'd been away from Storybrooke, from Ruby, from the pain she so desperately hoped still wandered aimlessly in the vast world she'd only begun to explore. She caressed the faded dark brown cover, remembering the contents, allowing the meaning of its placement to warm the coldness in her heart. Ruby truly never stopped believing she'd return, she left it there for her. Opening the book to the first page, she ignored the daunting feeling that those whispering shadows of grief followed her home where love and understanding awaited her.
"Belle?" Ruby called from the doorway, toweling her hair with another wrapped around her thin body and tucked between her breasts. Belle stared at the book, but her eyes stayed focused on one point and a warning flag ran up a pole in Ruby's head. Belle's eyes moved faster than any human being could have possibly digested the information when she read. She stared at a solitary word without blinking when she tried to escape the overbearing and inexhaustive thoughts that often plague her brain. No one but Ruby really understood how destructive and terrifying Belle's thoughts really were to the genius, the sleepless nights and anxiety attacks and migraines. She processed information faster than most people acknowledged that there was information to absorb, and it trapped her with effects as toxic as Rumpelstiltskin's brainwashing.
"Belle," she tried again, a bit more forcefully. Wild blue eyes jerked to hers, and Ruby tossed the fluffy blue towel towards the hamper and closed the door, shutting out the rest of the house.
"What?" Belle snapped. "I'm reading."
Ruby smirked and slid onto the bed on her side, long wet hair falling over her chest and shoulders. She snagged the book, closed it, and tossed it back to the nightstand. Belle searched her face with those tempestuous eyes, an animal cornered and ready to fight, run, or freeze. Ruby sighed, pulling back immediately before Belle slammed her emotional doors and locked the shutters.
"Did the kids go down okay?" She asked the safe question and leaned forward, kissing the side of Belle's bent knee, a beautiful leggy barrier between them.
"Bethany took some time with Annabel, but Alexandra nodded off pretty quickly once I'd started her story." She tucked an arm beneath her breasts, clad comfortably in nothing but Ruby's old, ratty work shirt (that probably swallowed her naturally thin lover) that she'd found in the back of the closet. Resting the elbow of her other arm atop, she pressed scarred knuckles to her mouth.
"Henry and Emma?" Ruby pried each reluctant finger loose slowly. Belle shook her head, shaking a few tears loose from her quickly filling eyes. They'd come home for dinner, but Henry acted up so badly towards Belle that Emma decided it best for them to get out for a while.
Belle sniffed and bowed her head, wrapping the second arm around her ribs protectively. "She called. They're staying at Amelia's house for the moment since she's still in the hospital."
"Good, that's good. That boy needs some attention from her." Ruby loved the idea of them camping out in front of Amelia's fireplace, roasting marshmallows and dissociating from the fucked up situation that served as the reality for their lives. "Baby," Ruby started, but the harsh sound that ripped from Belle's throat as the flood finally broke the levy stopped her cold.
"I had to go, Ruby," she shrieked so loudly that Ruby turned her ear towards the door to listen for any signs that she'd roused the children.
"I know. You were hunted and hurting and you were scared for our children. I get it," Ruby empathized, checking her own anger for the moment. Belle went through hell that night with Henry. Though he basically said everything that everyone else wanted to say, the way he'd screamed at her and cut at her venomously with the intention of causing more pain crossed so many boundaries that Emma and Ruby eventually removed him from the house by physical force. It wasn't a very pretty night in the mayoral mansion.
"You don't get it, Ruby!" Belled yelled and pushed off the bed, taking a few steps towards the wall. She stared at it so long that Ruby almost thought she'd retreated back to her thoughts without realizing that she stood in their bedroom. Slowly, she pulled herself up in bed and knelt primly, grappling with the urge to reach out to her wounded lover.
Finally, Belle spun slowly. An icy deadness eclipsed her eyes, and she shook her head, trying to clear the numbing haze. "I'm sick, Ruby. I have a legitimate misfire in my brain that I'm uncertain can be corrected. Those other reasons were valid factors, but they weren't why I left. I didn't need a trip across the country to find something in our love worth believing in."
Ruby swallowed carefully, unable to blink. "Then why?" She asked softly.
"Because when I woke up in this very bed, I wanted to kill them. I wanted to set this town aflame and watch it burn so that no one would ever threaten our family again. I understand exactly where Regina's mind is right now. Violence is much easier than fixing everything. It's why she erased Emma's memories. Something hurt her, so she eliminated it. It's logical and destructive, but it's the way she thinks and it's usually the way I feel. I left the safety of the cabin that day to tell you that I was pregnant, to tell you that… what you did," she swallowed the pooling saliva but kept her eyes carefully pointed towards the comforter.
"Belle, I'm sorry. I'll never…"
"I know," she cut Ruby's apology short. They stared at each other for a moment, and Ruby believed her, believed that Belle had truly found forgiveness in her giant heart for her deplorable loss of control that day. "I came to tell you that I wanted to find a way to move past that. I wanted to help you because that was the logical option. Love has never been an issue between us or Emma and Regina, but we're all screwed up individually and that gets in the way. Logically, I knew everything could work out since we had something to work towards."
Wrapping her arms around her ribs again, she dropped her eyes back to the cover. "But when I woke up, and I saw you sitting there next to me, I wanted to kill you, too." Belle fell silent, allowing the shock of the words to sink into Ruby's scrambling brain. She glanced up again to find Ruby's eyes suddenly distant but honest as the weight of that brutal statement settled onto her heart. Ruby heard the truth in the words.
"Of all the things we've done to each other, emotionally… sexually…" They both recalled some terrifying animalistic nights, close calls. One in particular stood out to Ruby, the one when she'd accidentally choked Belle until she passed out while she fucked her fast and hard with a strap-on without any regards to her pleasure, safety, or emotional wellbeing. "Even that night," Belle whispered and touched her throat, following Ruby's thought as easily as if they'd never been parted.
"I'd never felt like an object until you held me against that freezer." Another pause for Belle to swallow the result of her latest pregnancy symptom. She met Ruby's eyes again, so open and honest that Ruby thought she dreamed the entire conversation.
"I liked it when you hurt me. It made everything quiet." Ruby knew Belle meant her thoughts, her memories. Hauntings might have been a more accurate word. "And it was my choice. That …wasn't. I know you've used me before to quell the anger, but I liked it too much to care that it wasn't about me or us or even you, but your wolf. We used each other. I'm not really sure I knew how to be anything but an object at that point, but we were working on it. When you stopped yourself at Emma and Regina's wedding, I thought… I thought maybe we… I." Belle swallowed the liquid in her mouth and hugged herself tighter. She struggled still, in her heart, with the words that Ruby needed to hear.
"You made me believe that I could be more that night, and then you ripped that away from me. I tried to forget what you said to me, to simply forget that you'd made me feel more human than I'd ever been. For the sake of our children, I was willing to become an object again. I was trained to be one, and being anything else felt wrong. It only felt right when it hurt. I needed your darkness to make me feel right."
Ruby opened her mouth to speak, to tell her how wrong she was to feel that way about herself, but she closed it, opting for listening. Belle seemed oblivious to her internal wrestling match. She swallowed again, gathering her thoughts or maybe her resolve.
"But, I opened my eyes that day with enough anger pent up to blow Storybrooke off the map. And then…" she laughed through a burst of wet exhalation and raised her eyes. "You smiled at me." She shrugged, head moving back and forth like she herself was unable to grasp the concept of that simple gesture.
"You smiled at me, Ruby, and my entire world turned around." She licked her lips, pulling them into her mouth with her tongue and shook her head again, tiny little movements to and fro. "I wasn't the object anymore. You were mine. You turned your back on your people for me, attacked the hospital, found the strength to transform in broad daylight. You'd have done anything for me. You were mine. Do you understand? I'd done exactly what he'd done to me. Why shouldn't I? I learned from the master, right?"
"Belle," Ruby finally breathed and rose onto her knees, walking towards the edge of the bed. She halted when her knees touched the harder strip along the side of the mattress and searched for something to say.
"Just let me finish," Belle pleaded. Ruby nodded but remained as close to her lover as possible. "I left to find a way to make myself right. I knew there would be consequences, and I accept them and the amount of work required to fix them. But I'm not sorry I left. Rather I break a few hearts than kill someone, which was exactly what would have happened. I felt if before Breck and I felt it then.
"I spent the first days of my trip holed up in a hotel room, pretty much delirious from the nightmares and the flashbacks. I'm not even certain how long I stayed there. When I wasn't cowered in a corner from the fear of my own thoughts, I curled up into the smallest ball possible on the bed or floor. Because that's how I felt, small. Every time I tried to stand, I remembered that stupid, beautiful smile and I fell down again. I grieved," she finished, looking almost as surprised as Ruby.
"I grieved," she repeated, rolling the words around her mouth. "It should have been for all of the people I murdered. The child I killed, my child." She touched her stomach.
"But it wasn't because I could live with those choices, the people I took from this world didn't haunt me out there. I grieved for that smile because a part of me… because I killed that smile." She panted hysterically, a wildness in her eyes that Ruby hadn't expected. "I killed your smile, Ruby."
Unable to stand the distance anymore, Ruby grabbed her arms and pulled her bodily until their torsos flushed. She expected Belle to fight, struggle, scream, cry… something other than stand there, a willing victim to what she believed she deserved. Ruby wrapped her arms around shaking shoulders, not from tears. Just shaking, like the rest of Belle's body.
"You didn't kill my smile, Belle. You gave it life. You gave me life, and honestly, as angry as I was, your leaving gave me the strength I needed to finally stand up and stop hiding behind my wolf. To stop denying my wolf. My wolf is not something I should apologize for or be ashamed of. That's the key to control. The key to containing my wolf isn't controlling it, but giving up control, just like I gave up all the control I thought I'd had over my life, over us. I allowed it to become a part of me. I'd always felt violated by it because I'd never wanted it. I was its object, its plaything, but now… I'm glad you left."
That got her attention. Belle jerked her eyes up once more, but this time, they stayed locked with Ruby's chocolate brown. "Was I depressed? Yes. Was I pissed? Yes. Do I still feel those things? A little bit. No one likes to be abandoned, especially when they're hunted by a psychopath. But, you're right. You had to leave. You had to leave for both of us. We were in each other's way. Everyone else can be mad at you if they want, but I feel it, Belle. I feel you again. I carried your heart for two months, and I never once felt you. I tried but…"
Ruby brushed frizzy hair from Belle's wet face and smiled. "I feel you now," she whispered, the words barely audible even to their sensitive hearing.
"I feel you, too," Belle returned just as softly.
Ruby bumped her forehead to her lover's and held it there as she reached between them and loosened her towel. "Ruby," Belle protested, tried to pull away. Ruby grabbed her wrists and held her close.
"Touch me, Belle. Touch me how you want to touch me, not the dark sorceress or the object or the curious woman who stumbled upon a lonely country wolf in a diner. Those are a part of you, but they're not you. I want you, Belle French, mother of my children, love of my life, insane genius librarian to touch me like you finally know what you want because I think that you do." They both glanced down Ruby's scarred and battered body.
"Touch your wolf," Ruby encouraged breathlessly, already flushed from the desire racing through her veins. She unfurled a hesitant hand, pressed a kiss into Belle's palm and then guided the soft fingertips over her bumpy sternum, between her tiny breasts, over every jagged ridge of white tissue standing out on her body between her throat and her destination.
Two sighs filled the room when Belle's fingers grazed the smoothness of her freshly groomed mound. Brown and blue eyes flew open wildly at the first caress of the liquid heat already blooming in the velvety pleats. Ruby's eyes fluttered though Belle only held a hand against her.
"Make love to me for the first time as Belle French, and accept the darkness as a part of your soul as I've accepted mine. I'm a wolf. I am the wolf," Ruby stated without reservation or shame or any of the usual accompanying feelings of guilt that she used to associate with that facet of her personality. "And you're a murderer." Belle gasped at the disinterested tone used with such a harsh and ugly truth.
"No objects, no ownership," Ruby continued, barely stopping her hips before she pressed herself into Belle's hand. They weren't there yet. "I accept you as you are. I want you as you are. I love you as you are. Your incredible compassion, your hauntingly beautiful darkness." Before Belle ran, this moment never stood a chance. Ruby ran from the darkness in Belle, afraid to let herself fully admit the undeniable similarities in them. She hid behind her friendship with Regina, pretended that no darkness touched her beautiful lover. She cowered in the face of what she and Belle might have become if she'd let them. Ruby stopped cowering.
Belle barely jerked the shirt to her chin before Ruby's tongue circled her hypersensitive nipple. She gasped at the mixture of pain and pleasure and grabbed Ruby's head. "No biting. They're really sore," she instructed even as she pulled Ruby tighter against the aching mound.
The wolf nodded and dragged her tongue from the swell of her breast to her collarbone. Adrenaline zinged through her body when teeth and a hot tongue latched onto her throat, and Belle embraced it, embraced what Ruby had given her with her terrifying confession. Freedom.
Unafraid, she shoved Ruby onto the bed, reveling in the shock that registered in Ruby's wide eyes. She licked her lips and devoured Belle's body as the woman stood before her, naked, wanting, the smoky darkness of primal desire in her glacier blue eyes. Belle allowed her an extended gaze and then raised one knee to the bed, revealing the apex of her thighs. Ruby licked her lips, chest heaving. She had allowed the hair to grow back, neatly trimmed in a little triangle, the way Belle preferred it rather than smooth.
Ruby moaned when Belle's heat joined her own, the slight weight of her lover straddling her hips adding pressure in all the right places. Heavy, swollen breasts dragged across her stomach, enlarged nipples tickling the ridges of her ribs. Belle's mouth descended upon hers in a desperate, heavy kiss. The world around them faded, Emma and Regina and their whole fucked up clan. Nothing mattered more than the shared heat of their mouths and muffled moans as their bodies slid together, forging one being as their souls had already done.
A whimper vibrated Ruby's throat when Belle's lips disappeared. An unrestrained cry replaced it the moment teeth clamped onto her throat. She thought briefly of waking the baby girls sleeping down the hall, but that, too, faded away beneath the hot palm on her breast and wet tongue soothing the sting of teeth imprints at her throat.
"Make them quiet," Belle moaned huskily, lips brushing her jaw. Her thoughts, Ruby deciphered easily. Belle desired to be set free.
Ruby followed her lover's lead without missing beat and flipped Belle onto her back. Delicate nails trailed over the scars marring her back, sending a wave of goose bumps over the sensitive flesh. Teeth clanked, tongues slipped and slithered in a never-ending dance. No fear swelled in Ruby's chest, that shaking need to maintain control. No mistrust swam in Belle's smoky eyes. No second guessing.
Belle cried out when three fingers entered her without warning, without preparation. No, not a cry. This was deeper, more primal, and when Ruby thrust into the slick walls again, the sound repeated. Something awakened in Belle, something driven by instinct, need, lust, love. Wild blue eyes locked with an enchanted brown as she shared the very fast but small orgasm with her partner.
"Bite me," Belle ordered.
"What?" Ruby almost stopped, but velvet walls gripped fingers, urging her forward. Fingers pushed into long, damp brown hair, and Ruby thought for a moment that Belle wanted something softer, something closer to the gentle love they used to make before the wolf got in the way. Something they'd done before they accepted who they were and exactly what they wanted. They loved the carnal mindlessness of losing their civility at the hands of the other.
Belle jerked sharply on the strands in her fist and pulled Ruby's mouth to her neck. "Bite me, Wolf," Belle ordered.
"Belle," Ruby warned her, fingers stilling between her legs.
"No ownership," Belle reminded her and raised her hips, fucking herself on Ruby's fingers. "I want your mark on me. I accept you, too, Ruby Lucas. Just as you are, and I want the world to know." She jerked her hips upwards, sighing into the gentle self-stimulation.
"Bite me," she demanded a bit more forcefully. Ruby loved biting, loved marking her. No holding back, not this night, not this moment. She wanted all of her.
Ruby growled, unafraid of herself as the wolf clawed inside of her. She embraced herself and sank her teeth into the supple flesh supplicated before her. Nails ripped at the scars on her back, and Belle stilled outwardly while the taut muscles within pulsed and squeezed painfully in climax. Ruby remembered too late her missing fingernails and pulled at the skin still clamped between her teeth, alleviating her pain by causing Belle's.
A hollow sound of pain and pleasure rang in their ears as Belle arched from the bed with the crash and roll of her third orgasm slamming into her a few breaths after the second one as Ruby fucked her straight through it, taking her to the highest peak possible.
Ruby stayed with her and supported both of them with a strong arm around Belle's back, sucking and pulling at the bruised and aching skin captured in her jaws. Belle clutched her closer, nails pressing crescents into her back. A predator and her prey, but Ruby wasn't sure which of them fulfilled what role in that moment. Belle jerked again, sweating and flushing and pressing into her with each painful arc of her back timed perfectly with each wave of fresh pleasure searing the excruciating thoughts from her mind. She looked possessed. She looked beautiful. The thought slapped Ruby in the face, and she pulled back to fully observe the once timid woman in her moment of true freedom.
Freedom from herself.
Belle barely began the descent from oblivion before her lips found Ruby's again. The wolf lowered them to the bed, reveling in the feeling of sweat-slick skin sticking as they slid and rolled against each other. They'd never get close enough, not nearly enough to feel as close as their souls. Belle pinned her arms above her head, thighs clenching and releasing against her hips. Ruby moaned and pressed into the delicious torture of stimulation a few centimeters off to actually take her to the precipice of oblivion that Belle seemed caught in.
Nails dug into her wrists. Her body throbbed to be touched, taken, marked. "Belle," she managed around the sloppy, demanding kiss. "I need you."
Without a verbal response, Belle scooted lower and captured an agonizingly taut nipple in her mouth. Ruby jerked in response, finally. Finally, stimulation in the right areas. The primal howls within her soul stretched against her insides, churning and swirling, begging to be unleashed in the hands of a woman who had embraced them already in her soul. It felt like the uncontrollable desire to run, feel the forest become one with her senses, except this was Belle.
Belle inspired this feeling, this simultaneously familiar and foreign yearning. She'd never yearned for another as much as she yearned to run. So, she ran straight into Belle's receptive arms. Snagging her hair in a similar treatment she'd received, Ruby removed the torturous stimulation from her nipple and forced Belle to meet her eyes. No fear, just desire. A need to please, to fulfill.
"Now," Ruby growled, and Belle pushed against the bed until her body rested between Ruby's parted thighs. Already, she glistened in the faint moonlight streaming through the window.
Belle inhaled deeply, entranced by the deeper musk she'd previously missed due to her inferior mortal senses. The need to taste that new scent overwhelmed her, and she moaned louder than her lover when it exploded over her newly improved taste buds. Stiffening the muscle, she plunged her tongue inside those already tightening walls and lapped greedily of the undiscovered flavor she found there.
Ruby bucked and squirmed, and Belle tossed an arm over her bony hips to steady her enough to keep up with them if not stop their dance completely. A string of indecipherable curses fell from her lips followed by a series of deep, raspy moans surely loud enough to alert anyone awake in the house to her obvious ecstasy. She cared nothing for their comfort. She'd waited so long to share this connection with her fiancée, her salvation. She'd waited so long to be seen, truly seen. Now that she had, she refused to hold anything back anymore.
Belle replaced her tongue with three fingers, forcing her open despite the powerful clench of her already shaking muscles. With a crook of her fingers and flick of her tongue over her clit, Ruby flew apart and jumped off that terrifying cliff with Belle as her only tether to reality.
Maybe it wasn't reality. Maybe they'd both gone insane and dangled over that edge. Numb. They'd committed suicide together and now resided in a blissfully frozen limbo where nothing existed beyond this moment. As quickly as the thought arose, it shattered when Belle slid up her body. Reality slammed into them and desperate hands sought out the comfort of the warm body that housed the soul to which they'd never get close enough to feel completely whole.
Ruby accepted Belle's weight atop her eagerly and entrapped her in strong arms as lips descended upon hers once more. She tasted herself on them, proof that they weren't dreaming. Belle dropped onto her chest and burrowed into her neck, panting and shaking in tandem with her utterly dumbfounded lover. Ruby stared at the ceiling, waiting for the backlash, waiting for the regret that sometimes came when they'd gotten too rough, which sparked guilt. She waited for the urge to slink off into a darkened corner and hide from her true self.
What came, however, was a tiny sniffle. "Ruby?" Belle whimpered. There it was. Cold fingers gripped Ruby's heart. Belle regretted it.
"Yeah," she answered, forcing the word out with no air left in her frozen lungs.
"It's okay if I still cry, right?" Belle asked, voice strained like she held back the emotion.
Ruby craned her head to the side and studied Belle's face. The librarian rolled to the side and stared down at her, face and eyes still open and honest and there. No regrets, just an overwhelming abundance of emotions that generally exploded within Belle after sex. Ruby suspected that the emotions correlated with her lack of racing thoughts than the act, but if Belle felt good and wanted to purge her tears, she supported that. It's just who she was. "Yeah," Ruby whispered, mouth spreading slowly in a smile. No regrets.
Belle returned the smile and kissed her softly, tasting of Ruby and the salt of tears. "That was incredible," she murmured against Ruby's lips, and the wolf hummed in response.
"You're incredible," Ruby whispered reverently, tracing Belle's lips with a thumb. "I love you."
"I love you, too," Belle answered easily and pressed a kiss to the pad of Ruby's thumb.
It wasn't forced as it sometimes had been. No awkwardness followed. Just the mingled pants of their recovery and two wildly thumping hearts, giddy to travel the new path they'd uncovered in the dense wilderness of their often painful journey.
Belle panted a few seconds and then pressed her lips to the teeth imprint at Ruby's throat. "Ruby," she murmured, "make love to me."
In an instant, Belle's back hit the comforter softly, the fall controlled by Ruby's superior strength. Tender kisses fell over her chest, slid down her stomach, as they gave into each other again without the wolf and sorceress taking charge. Ruby's mouth found her flushed center, and a hand fisted the blanket by her head, the other buried in silken brown and red locks. Acceptance of themselves came easily that night, and they spent the rest of it surrounded by breathy sighs and harsh gasps, strengthening each other for the challenging days to come.
