Storybrooke, 2005
Gold didn't like to invade Lacey's personal time, but occasionally it was just too tempting. She never turned him away when he would drop down onto the sofa next to her on Sunday evenings while her show was on. It wasn't necessarily the sort of thing he would have chosen, but he could usually find some way to interest himself in it while she was there. He hadn't quite managed to learn all of the characters' names yet, but Lacey liked the show and he liked Lacey, and that's all that really mattered when it came down to it.
He was sitting on the sofa with her head in his lap and stroking her hair while she watched the show. Something was going on with one of the characters cheating on her husband with the gardener who had just taken his shirt off when Lacey made a weird little cooing noise.
"Are you okay?" he asked, watching the way her hair slipped over his fingers as he ran them through it.
"Yeah," she replied quickly, sitting back up. "Sorry. Just got a little distracted."
He glanced back to the television, where the shirtless gardener and the wealthy housewife were now kissing heavily on the screen.
Oh.
"Not like that," she said, following his gaze to the screen. "Don't be so self-conscious."
"Do I have something to be self-conscious about?" he said as coolly as he could, leaning back against the arm of the sofa and watching her intently.
"Not at all," she replied, slipping into her girlfriend role so smoothly he almost missed the transition. "Let me show you."
She was in his lap before he knew it, with her fingers in his hair and her lips on his neck.
"Lacey," he groaned as she pressed her palm against his rapidly hardening cock. "Do you have a crush on the gardener?"
"We don't have a gardener," she reminded him, leaning back a little bit.
"You know what I meant."
She scowled a little bit.
"He's an actor, Gold," she said sharply. "The entire point of the character is to be eye candy."
"And?"
"So he's attractive," she replied. "So what? It's not like you to get jealous about this."
It really wasn't, which was what made this even worse. Not only was he overreacting, he was drawing way too much attention to it. He didn't know why he was so upset, either. It was somehow different when it was men in town. None of them dared to even look twice at Lacey, and they both knew it. If anything, it was entertaining watching her lead them on knowing there was no hope in it, knowing that she was primarily interested in her ability to tease.
This was different, though. It wasn't someone she was enjoying taunting, or anything they'd really dealt with in their relationship before. This was Lacey finding someone attractive purely for her own pleasure, and for some reason it scared the hell out of him.
"Forget it," he snapped, turning back to the television and hoping she'd leave it alone.
It was on commercials. Damn.
"Hey," she said, touching his jaw with her fingers to turn him back toward her. "You know what I really like?"
He did not want to be having this conversation - it was far too embarrassing - but he also needed to hear what she would say.
"I like silver foxes," she said with a mischievous little lilt in her voice that always distracted him no matter what. "In nice suits."
"You don't have to do this," he replied. "It's nothing. Forget I ever said anything."
"But it's true," she purred, climbing back into his lap and pressing herself into him. "Don't you believe me?"
He wasn't really sure what he believed. He wanted to believe her, but they both knew that Lacey was an accomplished liar.
"Fine then," she said, grabbing his hand. "See for yourself."
She guided his hand into her shorts and under her panties, where he could feel she was soaking wet. He let out a groan, knowing there was no way to maintain his poor mood in the face of all this. Someday, she was going to be the death of him.
"Come on, Gold," she teased, pulling her hand away and running it through his hair. "Don't leave me hanging."
Her lips crashed into his, and the last thing he was consciously aware of was the little whimper she made when his fingers dipped into her the way he knew she liked it.
Storybrooke, 2011
Belle didn't want to be angry anymore. She knew Rumplestiltskin was sorry, and part of her was still upset he hadn't trusted her. But it hurt her to be upset with him, and she was just so sick of it. He'd made an awful mistake, but she had accepted his reasons for it. She didn't really understand yet why he'd believed Regina and not her, but to him it had made sense. Anyway, it wasn't helping anyone for her to continue to be angry.
She could feel Lacey whispering the words make-up sex somewhere in the back of her consciousness, and maybe that's what this was - a last ditch effort at fixing things between them. Belle wasn't really sure, she just knew she desperately wanted him. Her hormones had been going haywire for weeks, she was pregnant, and all she could think about was that she'd never had sex before and it just seemed like an awful injustice that she'd give birth before choosing to sleep with a man she loved. And she did love Rumplestiltskin; she'd loved him for years and she would love him until she died. How had no one ever thought to tell her when she'd been a little girl that true love could be this? That it would hurt and be so very, very hard sometimes and that she'd never feel whole without him?
Rumplestiltskin was pulling back from the kiss, but she wasn't quite ready to let him go yet. They'd never done this, and yet they'd done it a thousand times before and it had been too damn long. Her hands were on his lapels before she could stop herself, and he paused, letting her deepen the kiss before she wound her arms behind his neck and leaned against him as much as she dared.
He seemed a little shocked for a moment at her forwardness, but Belle wasn't sure how else to ask for what she wanted. Lacey had left her with an extensive vocabulary, but none of the words belonged to Belle. They were Lacey's things and using them somehow didn't feel right, regardless of the pieces of her that were still a part of Belle. Not for this man in this moment.
Rumplestiltskin still seemed terrified to touch her, but he was becoming more confident as they kissed, letting fingertips on her sides slowly turn into palms on her hips. He was still tentative, but he'd always been tentative when it came to her.
She was at a point where if he didn't stop treating her like he was terrified to touch her, she was going to chase him around a table until he got over it. This time, at least, she knew things about men that she hadn't known before the curse, and she remembered tricks that made her blush now to think about. She tangled the fingers of one hand in his hair while the other one made its way down to the waist of his trousers and started working his belt free.
It may have been a testament to how starved they both were for affection that he hadn't noticed (or cared) what she was doing until she had his zipper down and her hand inside his boxers. He pulled away from the kiss at that point, staring at her like a deer who'd heard a noise while wandering through the woods and hadn't quite decided if it should run away or not yet. She didn't take her hand away, but she didn't move it further either. Instead, she let it settle against his belly with her fingertips just brushing the curls below.
"Rumple," she whispered his name into his neck, hoping to soothe him before he could overthink this. "I miss you. I miss you and I'm sick of being mad at you." She punctuated this with a brush of her lips against his neck. "Anyway, I'm already pregnant."
She felt him stifle groan at her innuendo, but he didn't make any move to touch her still. It was driving her absolutely insane.
"I need you," she blurted out, hearing Lacey in her words if not her tone of voice and changing tack. "I want this to work."
He was looking at her with disbelief in his eyes, but he didn't argue. Instead, he raised a hand from her waist and brushed it across her neck, leaning into the crook of her neck when she turned into his hand.
"I want it to work, too," he admitted in a soft whisper. "More than anything. I'm afraid of what happens if it doesn't though."
She knew what he was afraid of - he was afraid she'd hate him, afraid she'd leave with the baby and he'd be alone - she just didn't know how to reassure him that she wouldn't do that. Even if she did leave him, she wasn't going to take the child with her. She wanted her daughter to have a father - to have a family - for as long as could be arranged.
"Rumple," she murmured as his lips skimmed across her neck. "Look at me."
He pulled away, and she placed her palm on his cheek to keep him facing her.
"I'm not taking her away," she promised him. "She's ours, not just mine. No matter what happens, you won't lose her, I promise."
His eyes darting between her face and her belly confirmed that she'd correctly guessed the source of his anxiety. Then all of a sudden he was kissing her again, his arms snaking around her waist as she pulled him down so that his lips met hers.
She wasn't sure which of them made the first move, but the next thing she knew they were next to that damn cot. Lacey had a lot of good memories about it, but it was time for Belle to make her own. They didn't quite collapse - he was far too aware of her belly for that - but she had her arms around his neck and was pulling him down over top of her and sliding off his jacke t to get at the shirt underneath. This was what she'd been missing, she decided. His touch and his lips, his acceptance that she could want him. They'd never had that, though, not really.
Rumplestiltskin was hovering over her, seemingly unsure of what to do. She couldn't really blame him for that, at least, she didn't know what she would like either.
The only thing Belle could think to do in that moment was touch him, and hope he would do the same. She brought her hands up to his chest and started working open the buttons on his shirt, feeling nothing but relief when he in turn gingerly placed his hand on her thigh and skimmed up under her dress, hovered slightly over her belly, and then moved on to her swollen breasts.
Whoever Dr. Whale was now, he had assured Lacey she wasn't really lactating yet but that her breasts would just be like that until the baby came. Belle wasn't entirely sure how she felt about that, but apparently Rumple didn't mind them, dragging fingertips across the swell of her breasts before slipping his hand into her bra to cup one of them gently.
Belle had been warned that there would be an increase in sensitivity during pregnancy, but she hadn't been prepared for the blinding shock of pleasure that shot through her the moment he touched her. Her hand shot to his wrist to hold him in place for a second, and when she finally recovered there was a look on his face somewhere between shock and terror.
"Sorry," she managed to gasp out. "Pregnancy. I hadn't realized I'd be so sensitive."
"Oh," he said, relief flooding his voice. "In a good way?"
"Yeah," she replied. "Very good. Just...be gentle."
He nodded, and she released his wrist, bringing her hands to his chest to work his shirt off of him as he continued teasing her with his fingers. She was near to frantic now, and needed him closer - all of him.
"Take your shirt off?" she asked, finding her fingers far too shaky to manage the buttons. He nodded, bringing his hands up and finding them just as unsteady as hers.
Belle bit out a groan of frustration before reaching up and ripping. The buttons went scattering around, and he was looking at her with a completely awestruck look on his face, and that was all she needed to see.
It took him no time at all to realize she was serious about all of this, pulling her dress over her head completely and tossing it aside. Between them, somehow they were able to remove his trousers and her bra and panties and then he was hovering over her, still tentative after all this time.
"Are you sure?" he asked, reaching down to stroke her between her legs. "We don't have to do this. I can…"
Belle whimpered as his fingers found a place inside of her that had always driven Lacey wild, and she knew exactly what he meant. He would get her off, offer her whatever pleasure she wanted, and never go any further than that. But that's not what she wanted. She was desperate for more than a release, she was desperate for him - for Rumplestiltskin and all his flaws and fears, and his inability to ever understand how she might want him.
"I want you," she replied. "I want this. Please."
He nodded, ducking his head to rest against her neck as she felt him line himself up with her entrance, felt the hardness of him brushing against her inner thighs as he thrust once into her and he felt so good she could have cried, except that would probably scare him. Instead, she twined her legs behind his knees and whimpered as he thrust in and out of her. He was glorious, and she loved him.
She loved the way he looked at her like he were afraid this was all a hallucination, she loved the way his fingers moved down between her legs to stoke her pleasure higher and higher as his mouth lay kisses across her chest and neck. She loved the way that he was whispering little affirmations to her as she came closer and closer to orgasm, the words she couldn't make out except for her name and things ike 'beautiful' and 'my love' and 'my dearest.' She loved the way he was careful of her abdomen, keeping his weight carefully off of her as she thrashed and cried out in ecstasy, and the way that he rolled carefully to the side after his final thrusts and her own climax finally sent him over the edge. She loved the way he held her close under a blanket that he may have called up magically as she dozed in his arms.
Things weren't perfect between them by any means, but Belle took comfort from the fact that they were closer than they had ever been before.