Chapter 8

"Papa, can Chip come over to play tomorrow?" Bae asked the question during dinnertime, without so much as batting an eye, being more occupied by trying to get his peas to stay on his fork.
Across from him however Gold froze, his eyes growing wide.

His mouth moved silently for a few seconds until he was able to clarify: "You mean Charlie Potts?"

"Yes!" Bae replied after successfully swallowing his vegetables. "I told him about the treehouse and he said that it sounded really cool, so I asked him to come over. Is that all right?"

"Yes… yes, of course…" Gold stammered, gripping this fork so tightly, his knuckles turned white. "I'll give Mrs Potts a call later tonight to make arrangements."

"Thank you, papa," Bae beamed at him and returned to his dinner, still looking wholly unperturbed. Belle however noticed that his father seemed rather dazed for the reminder of the meal.

"Is everything okay?" she asked him later in the kitchen, as they were putting the dishes away together, quietly as to not be overheard by Bae.

"He's never had a friend over before," Gold replied, still in shock.

"Never?" Belle asked, genuinely surprised.

Gold shook his head. "Apparently Milah never let him. And from what Dr. Hopper and I could gather, he never went on play dates or anything like that either. Bae never had much opportunity to interact with other children, so now making friends is hard for him. He struggled a lot last year when he was in kindergarten and preferred to keep to himself.

I've been worrying about it for a while now because he needs friends… he needs other kids to play with. Dr. Hopper kept saying that I shouldn't push it and that Bae would let me know when he was ready… and apparently, he is now."

Once again Belle's heart cracked a little at hearing how much Bae had been deprived of things no child should have to go without, but she smiled encouragingly up into Rowan's worried eyes.

"That's great, isn't it?"

But to her surprise he gave her a grim look.

"That remains to be seen…" he answered tersely. "Bae is still vulnerable… if this doesn't go well, he might have a setback. What if Charlie changes his mind tomorrow, or what if does come over but they don't have a good time?"

Placing her hand on his upper arm, Belle could just feel how tense he was. "I'm sure it will work out fine…" she said reassuringly. "Bae said himself that Charlie was eager to come. It didn't seem like a big deal to him, so that means he must be truly ready for it."

He heaved a deep sigh, his worried expression only lightening marginally. "I suppose you're right," he conceded eventually. "It's just… this has to go right."

"And it will," she soothed him. "Bae is a wonderful kid, he's great company. His friend is going to love it here…"

"You really think so?" he asked anxiously and Belle fought the urge to wrap her arms around him and kiss the worry from his face.
He was so determined to make up for everything Bae had been deprived of in his short life and so terrified he would end up causing his son more pain.

"I do," she insisted firmly. "Kids are a lot less complicated than most adults are… Everything will be all right, you'll see. They'll spend most of the time up in that treehouse pretending to pirates and it will be a great experience for Bae."

He gave her a small smile, his eyes softening at her words. "I'll give Mrs. Potts a call first," he decided. "She might have objections and before Bae gets too excited, I want to make sure she's on board."

"Do you know her well?" Belle asked.

"I bump into her every now and then when I'm picking up Bae," he told her. "She's a single mother… somewhat older than most of the other moms… She had Chip when she was already in her forties."

Now that he was no longer looking so stressed out, Belle dared to voice the question that had her wondering since Bae made his announcement. "Is Chip really his name though? It's very unusual…"

Rowan chuckled at her baffled expression, more of his tension evaporating. "His name's actually Charlie, but at the start of the school year he ran face first into a door and chipped his front teeth. Everyone just calls him 'Chip' ever since. Apparently he's still the hero of the playground."

She joined his laughter, happy to have been able to ease his worries. Having a friend over to play was the single most normal thing in the world and the both of them would soon find out that it was nothing to fret about.

With his mother's permission easily gained, Chip Potts came over the following day and twenty minutes after both boys had stepped inside the house, Gold already felt like tearing out his hair in anxious frustration.

Once again it was pouring outside, heavy rain pelting the windows, making him believe that even though the first week of May had already passed, they would never get a proper summer.

Standing in front of the tall, glass doors, both Bae en Chip stared miserably at the sodden garden and the equally dripping, inaccessible treehouse.

"We could play a game on my DS?" Bae offered half-heartily and from Chip's slow, hesitant nod Gold could tell that the other boy was less than enthusiastic about the idea.

It hadn't even been half an hour and the afternoon was already an utter failure. No doubt any minute now Chip woud ask him to call his mother to come and collect him.
Bae would be devastated and it would take many months of intensive counseling before his son would feel confident enough again to invite another child over.

He looked over at Belle, who was sitting on the couch, her feet tucked up under her and shot her a desperate gaze.

She gave him a reassuring smile before biting her lower lip thoughtfully, her brow furrowed in concentration. Then her face lit up and she turned towards the two boys.

"Hey guys, if it's too wet outside to play in the treehouse, how about we build a fort right here in the living room?"

Two, almost identical looks of excitement crossed their faces as both boys skipped over to the couch, their eyes wide with eagerness.

"How would we do that?"

Uncurling herself from the couch, Belle grinned, looking almost equally enthusiastic. "We need lots of blankets and pillows… and perhaps a couple of chairs… And your father needs to approve of course…"

Over the children's head, she shot him a slightly apologetic look, but in light of his son's and friend's obvious joy at her suggestion he would probably have agreed had she suggested a game of paint ball in the living room.

"I'm sure we'll be able to find those items," he conceded as Bae and Chip let out a whoop of happiness.

Fifteen minutes later, the living room was an unrecognizable mess. Various fauteuils and the coffee table were pushed aside to create more space and Bae and Chip were arranging dining room chairs next to the couch to create a wall for their fort.

"If we put blankets over them and the back of the couch, we'll have a fort that's big enough to fit all of us," Bae said, looking at the arrangement critically.

"We should put cushions inside as well," Chip suggested and next thing he knew, Gold watched the two boys pulling seating cushions from various chairs and arranging them on the floor.

Their enthusiasm was rather infectious and as Belle helped them to drape the blankets over the couch and chairs, effectively creating their fort, he ransacked a storage closet for anything that might be helpful and when he came across a box of Christmas ornaments an idea sprang to mind.

"How about some twinkle-lights for inside the fort?" he called over his shoulder. Bae and Chip cheered and Belle gave him a beaming smile and for the first time that the afternoon he began to feel that the play-date could actually become a success.

With the help of a few extension chords the boys hung the lights inside the blanket fort while Belle disappeared into the kitchen to prepare some drinks and snacks.

At long last everything was settled and the boys crawled inside, Gold happily listening to their excited whispering and laughing.

"Papa… Belle… aren't you going to come inside too?" Bak called from inside the fort.

Belle shot him a surprised look and it took him exactly one second to make up his mind. "Of course we will, son!" he answered, looking questioningly at Belle.

The confusion was still clear on her face, even as her eyes softened and she nodded.

Making their way to the entrance of the fort, he winced in sympathy as Belle gingerly sank to her knees and alleviated her weight as much to the right as possible as to not further aggravate her injuries.

"Will you be all right?" he asked quietly as he crouched down besides her, ignoring the sharp pain in his own ankle.

"I' m fine," she whispered back, carefully scooting forward. "I just need to go slow. What about you? How's your ankle?"

Her question startled him, unaccustomed as he was by people caring about his comfort.

"No worse than usual," he was quick to reassure her, watching her with hawk-like eyes as she slowly crawled inside.

For all her insistence that she was all right, he wasn't fooled. Her posture was tense and she moved very carefully, biting her lower lip every time she had to move her left arm or leg.

"You don't have to do this, you know," he told her quietly, unable to keep the worry out of his voice.

She gave him a wary smile, scooting forward another few inches.
"But I want to," she insisted. "It isn't so bad, honestly… I just feel like a hundred years old."

He huffed derisively at that. "Easy now… some of us are already half way there."

To his surprise she snorted at that, her giggle filling the small space and when he caught her gaze, her eyes were sparkling at him, the light of the twinkle-lights reflected in the deep blue.

"Yeah, I think you're fine," she informed him with a teasing smile and he couldn't help but reply with a grin of his own.

It was amazing really, he reflected as he settled down on the cushions. With Belle he never felt old or battered and even if he did, it didn't bother him. Her warmth and easy acceptance making it easy to just joke about things that before had been such painful subjects to him.

Carefully he turned his head and watched her profile in the semi-dark as she was lying flat on her back on the cushions, gazing up at the twinkle-lights. "It looks really amazing," she said quietly.

"Yeah it does," Bae agreed quietly, lying only a few inches away. "They look just like stars."

"It's a shame you can't see the signs," Chip volunteered, equally sprawled out on the cushions.

"Of course you can," Gold replied good naturally, while stretching his bad leg out in front of him.

To proof his point, he pointed lazily at the blanket roof.

"Over there you have 'Big Chunk of Lights…' he indicated a particular stubborn knot of lights that they hadn't managed to untangle, before pointing to a dark spot where a few of the lights had refused to work. "And over there is the 'Unfortunate Gap'."

Besides him, Bae and Chip dissolved into giggles, especially when Belle pointed to a shimmering light on top of a row of five, its light slowly fading in and out.
"Look, and over there is 'The Misleading Lighthouse…'"

For the next twenty minutes or so they entertained themselves with thinking up names for the various patterns created by the twinkle-lights, all the while munching away the popcorn Belle had prepared earlier.

It was simple and perfect and Gold couldn't believe just how easy it was to lay there and joke around and laugh like a completely normal, stable family.

Belle was laying only inches away from him and the urge to reach out and intertwined his fingers with hers became almost impossible to ignore.
They were having a wonderful, peaceful afternoon and he was inclined to contribute it all to her. Being Bae's father was the single most fulfilling role he'd ever had, but there was no denying that it was difficult to be a single father at times. Until Belle had come into his life, he'd never had a person to share those responsibilities with and he was rather overwhelmed with how good that felt. For some reason she made everything more easy and all within the realm of possibility and not for the first time in the past ten days he allowed himself to pretend that this was a permanent situation.

That Belle was his wife and Bae's mom and that their perfect family was not just merely an illusion, but a very beautiful reality.

It was with a heavy heart that they eventually crawled out of the fort and put the furniture back into its original place.

The closeness and intimacy of the make-shift fort had him longing for more, but he pushed those thoughts away with single-minded determination.

Once the living room was tidy again, he looked outside the window, noticing to his relief that it had finally stopped raining.
"How about we go for an ice-cream before I drop Chip off," he suggested.

Both Bae and Chip cheered enthusiastically and even Belle's eyes lit up at the idea.

"Will you be joining us?" he asked quietly, as the boys stormed into the hallway to get their coats.

"It will be nice to get some fresh air…" she said hesitantly, her eyes darting towards the window with a longing look.

She'd been coped up inside for almost two weeks now, without even as much as a hint of irritation, but he could well imagine how much she must be yearning for a change of scenery.

"We'll take the car," he offered. "And if it becomes too much for you, we can head straight back."

The worry left her face and was replaced by an excited grin. "It does sound very tempting," she conceded, "I'll go and get my coat too."

Ten minutes later they were on their way and even if Belle occasionally winced when they drove over a bump in the road, no matter how carefully he tried to navigate the car, her eyes were still beaming.

He managed to park the car only half a block away from the ice-cream parlor and he offered her his arm as they made their way to 'Any Given Sundae'.

Even though she was still leaning heavily on his arm as they walked, she was chatting and joking happily and her obvious joy managed to dissipate most of her worries.
Even though her body was still fragile and she tired easily, she was enjoying herself immensely and he vowed to himself to protect her to the best of his abilities.

Once inside the ice-cream parlor he settled her into one of the booths and enlisted Bae and Chip's help in getting the ice-creams.

Ingrid, the owner of the shop merely lifted her eyes at the sight of them entering together, but to his relief made no comment.

It wasn't until they were all sitting down and enjoying their ice-cream that he realized that this was perhaps the first time since Milah had left them that he was out and about in public without worrying what the reactions of the town would be. The first time he didn't feel the need to hurry Bae along in attempt to protect him from curious or scornful comments.

The family he had so longed for for most of his life was finally shaping around him.

If only it was a reality.

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