Summary: Ruby takes Belle shopping for something very important.

Note: Because for all these shorts are called 'cupcakes', we haven't had 'cupcake' as a chapter, and this scenario sort of cheekily demanded it.

On the risqué side, as the chapter is devoted almost solely to the discussion of underwear and forthcoming bedroom shenanigans.

(I would also like to state for the record that I have no idea what size bra Emilie de Ravin and Meghan Ory take. I am going from height and body shape and comparing them to women whose bra sizes I do know.)

Vanilla Cupcake

"Belle!" Ruby's voice was on the verge of becoming absolutely despairing and she buried her head in her hands with a groan. "I can't believe I'm hearing this. I'm almost ashamed to call you my best friend."

Belle merely raised an eyebrow at her friend.

"Anyone would think I'd admitted to drowning puppies in my spare time," she remarked drily. "I simply said that, given that I have been sleeping with my future husband for over a year, I don't see why I need to go out and by a lot of white lace lingerie for my wedding night."

Ruby gave another mournful moan and did not move her hands as she replied. "Belle, this is going to be the most important set of underwear you will ever buy. Ever."

"Is it? If I was a virgin bride I could understand it, but I'm not." She thought back to their recent rendezvous on the kitchen table; she had not got very far in her attempts to make dinner and they had ended up eating ordered-in Chinese on the sofa, still only half-dressed. "Definitely not."

Ruby finally took her head out of her hands and surveyed her friend. The two women were sitting in Granny's, after Ruby had turned up on Belle's doorstep at nine o'clock on that bright Saturday morning and cheerfully announced to Gold that she was taking his fiancée shopping and he was absolutely categorically not allowed to come with them. If he had been alarmed by this, he had not shown it, and he had simply wished Belle a good time before going back to the paper. Belle, who was used to going on shopping trips with Ruby where menfolk were banished, had not thought anything of their unexpected trip at the time, believing that she was simply being dragged on another excursion to buy baby clothes. Since finding out that she was, as she had always suspected, expecting a boy, Ruby had gone slightly mad in the buying of blue hats and rompersuits, and Astrid's old knitting circle – who still used the cafe as their meeting place – had gone overboard. Belle surmised that there were several cold sheep wandering the hills of Devon and cursing the imminent Lucas-Hopper baby who would soon be wearing all their wool.

As it was, Ruby had not mentioned buying baby things once. Her mind was set on a far bigger goal. Today's trip, she had announced, once they were safely sitting at their table in Granny's with hot chocolate to get them stoked up before the shopping began, was to get Belle's wedding night lingerie.

"Belle." Ruby reached across the table and took one of Belle's hands in both of hers. "I am not quite sure that you grasp the magnitude of what is happening to you. You are getting married. You are getting married to your lawyer-with-a-limp from over the way, as Emma so quaintly described him when this tentative flirtation began, and you are doing this not from a sense of duty but simply because you love him to pieces, and he loves you. This is a momentous occasion. A celebration. You're wearing a white wedding dress, are you not?"

"Yes," Belle conceded. "But that's different."

"How? Traditionally a bride's wedding dress was always white as a symbol of her virginity, just like her wedding nightie was. You have other white underwear sets; I've been there when you've bought them. And when you've bought the replacements because the first set was literally ripped from your petite little frame by a man who definitely appreciated it."

"And a bride having a white nightie had nothing to do with the fact they used to show the bloodied thing off as proof that the marriage had been consummated," Belle said drily. She sighed, tracing patterns in the cream on her hot chocolate with the tip of her spoon. "I don't know, Ruby. I'm wearing a white dress because I want to wear a white dress. I found a wedding dress I liked and it happened to look nice in white, and I never got the chance to wear a proper white wedding dress on my first time round. But whilst I like my white lingerie…"

"As does Gold," Ruby interjected. Belle glared at her and Ruby shrugged, popping a spoonful of cream into her mouth. "Just saying."

"… whilst I like my white lingerie, it's not my favourite. It's not that I don't want special lingerie, Ruby, it's more a question that I don't see why it has to be white. If it's going to be special, then it should be special. And to me, white isn't that special."

Ruby nodded her understanding, and stayed lost in thought for a long while, sucking on her chocolate spoon, before a wide grin spread over her face.

"Oh, we're going to have so much fun."

Belle gave her friend a worried look. "Ruby, whenever you say that I get rather scared."

"It will be brilliant. I promise. Drink up! We've got so many shops and so few hours!"

Belle sighed, wondering just what she had let herself in for.

X

"Belle! What size bra do you take again?"

Belle cringed as Ruby's voice carried across the boutique. Certainly, she and Ruby were the only people in the shop aside from the cashier, but that didn't mean that she wanted to shout out her measurements. She came over to where Ruby was pawing through a rack of ivory coloured satin basques and pulled out her own size.

Ruby paused and turned to look at her, eyebrows knitting together.

"Are you sure?"

"Ruby, I'm fairly sure I know my own bra size."

"At least eighty per cent of women wear the wrong size," Ruby pointed out. "Belle… Before I got pregnant and my chest ballooned, I took a C-cup, and your puppies were bigger than mine."

Belle looked at the basque that Ruby was holding and traced her finger over the underwiring. "But I'm so little," she said. "I'm short, and I've always been fairly in proportion."

Ruby put an arm around her friend.

"Come on. You need to be measured. There's a brilliant little place just round the corner; I've had three fittings in the last eight months there."

Belle let Ruby steer her out of the shop, still wondering what she had let herself in for.

X

By the time she let herself into the house in the evening – the shopping trip had turned into an impromptu dinner date – Belle was fairly certain that she and Ruby had been into every single shop that sold underwear in the town and tried on pretty much everything that could be classed as lingerie. At least their trip had definitely borne fruit. Belle peeped into the bag that held her prize purchase, and after popping her head round the living room door to say a quick hello to Gold, rushed upstairs to hide the underwear in question, ready to be laundered in secret and shown off on its grand unveiling. It gave her a little thrill of excitement to know that this particular lingerie set would not be worn until she was a Mrs.

She emptied her bags of the rest of her purchases and spread the lace, silk and cotton over the bed. She would admit, she might have gone a little bit overboard, but wearing the wrong size bra never felt like the wrong size until you'd worn the right size, and having found out that she was indeed wearing the wrong size, Belle wanted to start wearing the right size as soon as possible.

She started to sort out the new things, pulling off tags and labels, and she wondered if Gold would appreciate a fashion show. He wasn't exactly in the middle of anything she might distract him from – when she'd looked in on him he'd been playing Minesweeper with a large glass of wine for company.

Scratch that, she knew that Gold would appreciate a fashion show, but perhaps it would be best to reveal her new purchases to him a piece at a time. One could have too much of a good thing.

Belle ran her fingers over a peacock blue lace bra, and an idea came into her mind. She felt a little guilty for abandoning Gold for rather longer than planned, and she knew exactly how to make it up to him. She quickly undressed and changed her underwear before redonning the dress and beginning to make the descent back downstairs.

"Did you enjoy your day?" Gold called from the living room.

"Oh yes," Belle replied. "It was most enlightening and useful. I had a boob job."

There was the sound of spluttering and Belle rushed down the rest of the stairs in case her casual remark had left her fiancé choking to death. Luckily, he was no worse for wear, but the same could not be said of his laptop, which was now sprayed with droplets of peach-coloured liquid.

"Pardon?" Gold said, his voice sounding rather strangled.

"I am returning to the house two cup sizes bigger than I left it," Belle said.

Gold just blinked at her. "Why?" he finally managed. "How?"

"I had a proper fitting," Belle explained, coming over and taking the glass of rosé wine from his hand before he could upend it and cause any further damage to his electronics or, indeed, himself. "You've spat wine on your laptop, by the way."

"Screw my laptop," Gold growled, without giving the item in question a second glance.

"I'd rather screw you," Belle replied conversationally. "Anyway, it turns out I've been wearing the wrong size bra and my breasts are in fact two cup sizes bigger than I thought they were."

Gold's eyes travelled from her chest, where they had been transfixed, up to her eyes, and back down again.

"They look just the right size to me."

Belle bent down and kissed him. "Correct answer," she said, and she took a sip of his wine. When he didn't protest, she knew that she had officially floored him. She grinned, wondering just how far she could tease him before he decided that it would be a good idea to relocate to the bedroom Right Now This Minute.

"Of course, you know what this means," she purred. "I'll have to go out and buy an awful lot more underwear now."

Gold gave a mute nod.

"Would you like to see what I got today?"

"Does my Aunt Elvira drink gin?" Gold replied weakly.

Belle smiled and arched one eyebrow. "I'll take that as a yes."

She slowly unzipped her dress and pushed it off her shoulders, watching Gold's eyes widen as he saw what she was wearing beneath it.

"I loved this bra so much, but they didn't have any matching knickers in my size, so I had to do without…"

Gold's response was to pull her down onto his lap and begin to smother her skin with kisses, wine-spotted computer completely forgotten. Belle rephrased her earlier bet with herself.

They were not going to get as far as the bedroom.

Note: If anyone has any strong thoughts on what Ruby and Archie should (or should not) call their baby, speak now or forever hold your peace… ;)