Deleted Scene 1

A:N So there were always a couple of scenes I had in my head that didn't quite make it into the story. Don't think of these as canon by any means - I couldn't fit them into the story because the situation was too weird or I'd missed my opportunity in the plot or just because the characters wouldn't let me! This one in particular was close to my heart and I was absolutely gutted it didn't work out. Think of this as an alternate version of the scene where Belle and Adam fall asleep on each others shoulders.

TheTeaIsAddictive

Belle had known who gave her the copy of 'Jane Eyre' almost before she read the little card that accompanied it. She'd been wanting to thank Adam in a meaningful way, but she couldn't think of a way to do it without bringing up a conversation about feelings it was frankly absurd to be having the day after they had a . . . date? Not-date? She sighed.

"Hey," Adam said, bursting into the shared living area of the pod with three straining bags of groceries in his arms.

"Hey," she smiled. "Need a hand bringing those in?"

"No, I'm alright," he said. "This is all I bought today - the shops close ridiculously early around this time of year."

"I could have told you that no bother," Belle snarked cheerfully. "Do you want a hand putting them away?"

"Sure," Adam said, and the two of them quickly unpacked the bags. "So where is everybody else tonight?" he asked.

"I think all three of them are out in Inverness for some sort of overnight theatre extravaganza. Or possibly they couldn't be bothered catching the bus back at half eleven. Either way, they're not here." Belle clicked on the kettle, setting down a mug and rifling around for a teabag. Adam handed one to her, fresh from the packet. "Thanks," she smiled.

"No problem," he said. "So, since they're all out tonight, you got anything planned?"

"Nothing exhilarating," Belle groaned. "I was going to go over my folio again for like, the fifth time today."

"That way madness lies," Adam said, only the faintest hint of teasing in his voice - although his eyes told a different story. "Believe me when I say you can only go over coursework so many times in one day before you actually make it worse."

"Well, I didn't have anything else planned tonight," Belle said, sipping at her freshly-brewed tea.

"I have an idea," Adam said. "Want to watch either an atrociously bad movie or an epically timeless one on a low-quality laptop?"

"Which movie?" Belle asked.

"We have Mamma Mia," Adam said with a frown, "or Beauty and the Beast."

"Disney's Beauty and the Beast?"

"But of course," Adam said, a twinkle in his eye.

Ten minutes later the two of them were settled on Adam's bed, his old laptop balanced precariously on their laps, and a careful cushion wedged between them. Adam had picked it up from the floor and handed it to Belle, and for reasons she would have been hard pressed to justify she placed it between them. Of course, that didn't stop their shoulders and legs coming into close contact. Nor did it prevent Belle from feeling the heat radiating off Adam, or practically hearing his heart beating in his chest. But if she could feel his heart, which was fairly quick, she didn't like to think about the fact he'd be able to feel the irregularity of her own.

"Did you know," Belle said as the opening music began to play, "the original design for Beauty and the Beast was completely different?"

"Really?" Adam asked, turning to face her.

"Uh-huh," she nodded. "One design had Belle with brown hair and a blue dress, not the black hair and red dress here. And I think her dad was supposed to be an inventor in that one, not a merchant."

"This one's more like the fairytale, though, isn't it?" Adam said.

"It is," she agreed, and apart from general ribbing on the Disney 'style' of fairytale, they were silent for the rest of the movie. At some point, Adam's arm had ended up propped over the back of Belle's pillow as it had started to develop pins and needles. At another indeterminate time, Belle's head had started to rest on Adam's shoulder. It was a very nice shoulder, she thought. Warm, and comfortable, and just generally a nice shoulder. Adam smelled nice, too. Mint and lemon and a strange unlabelled scent Belle could only describe as 'boy'. His heartrate had evened out more than when she'd first sat next to him, Belle noticed. But she couldn't really bring herself to care about that fact at the moment. Not when her eyes were so heavy, and Adam so comfortable to lean on. She barely even noticed when he closed his laptop and curled his arm a little tighter around her pillow. If it was any closer to her body it might encircle her shoulders. How nice that would be, Belle's last conscious thought was. How nice it would be to have Adam's arms around me . . .

When Belle eventually woke up, she found herself in that exact situation.

The cushion had been abandoned at some point in the middle of the night, and she was tightly wound up in Adam's arms. Her face rested perfectly in the crook of his neck, and she could feel the slow regular breathing of sleep on the top of her head, gently running over her hair. Her leg was slung around his waist - When did that happen? Belle thought anxiously - and her arms hooked around his chest. Her left hand rested mere inches away from Adam's face. His own hand was a comforting warmth on the small of her back, and to her surprise Belle realised she was happy, here in his arms.

But it was too weird for her to think about the niceness of sleeping next to Adam when they'd only just gone on a first date. Quietly, she disentangled herself and padded to her room, but not without a parting glance at Adam, still sound asleep. A new emotion stirred in her chest, but Belle chose to ignore it. The time for feelings of that nature would come later, she told herself. So she scurried back to her own room and tried to go back to sleep in her own bed. But for some reason, her sleep didn't come as easily as it had when she was in his arms.