ctdg said:

Adoption!verse: is there a chance we have another tiny little kiss between them at the end of the vacation? Maybe on the pier, the last evening, in front of a beautiful romantic twilight... ?

It was July third, and it was their last day at the beach. Belle was surprised at how much she was going to miss it. Tomorrow, they'd make the drive to NYC for the fourth, spend the night at a hotel, and then go to a cottage in upstate New York for another week. The cabin was supposed to be a practice run at keeping a household in a more traditional sense for when they returned home so Arthur would be better prepared for actual parenting. Theoretically, he'd been practicing this all week, though with varying amounts of success. Bae would usually comply with directions, but still defaulted to asking Belle for permission to do things even though she had maintained a steady policy of instructing him to ask his father. Hopefully, they had at least laid a groundwork for Arthur to be an authority figure in his own home if nothing else.

"Can't we just stay here another week?" Bae asked (yet again) as he and his father built a sandcastle while Belle provided suggestions and chatted with them. "What are we going to do in the woods for a whole week, anyway?"

Arthur looked on the verge of acquiescing, which she was fairly sure would always be a weakness of his where Bae was concerned. She raised her eyebrows at him when Bae wasn't looking and he deflated a little before answering.

"You'll have fun," he reassured their son. "There's a lake, for one thing, and we can go fishing there – we'll just have to set them back in the water after."

"But there's an entire ocean here!"

"And there's a boat at the lake," Arthur reminded Bae.

"Bae, stop pestering your father," Belle finally scolded. It seemed to be physically painful to Arthur to not be spoiling the child and Bae knew it and was taking advantage. "We're going to the woods and you're going to have fun. Anyway, you're most certainly not the one paying for this trip so you should be grateful your father wanted to do something nice for you."

Arthur seemed a little startled by her outburst, she rarely had to actually yell at Bae in front of him and had never scolded him for his treatment of his father before. On the one hand, it did indicate that Bae had become used to Arthur but on the other she hated to see his overwhelming need to please his son taken advantage of.

"I think you should apologize for acting like a brat," she continued when Bae just looked down at his hands and fidgeted in the sand.

"I'm sorry, Dad," the boy mumbled.

Arthur looked completely stricken, knowing he needed to be on Belle's side but completely unsure of how to handle being the source of his son's discomfort. Belle just held his gaze levelly, this would not work unless they were a team and part of that was backing each other up.

"It's alright, son," he finally said. "You'll have a great time at the cabin and we can always come back next year."

Bae nodded a little and forced a smile. He hated being scolded, especially in front of people, but if he was comfortable enough with Arthur to beg like that then he should damn well be prepared to be yelled at in front of him as well.

The silence became awkward as Bae sulked and dug in the sand quietly. Arthur was about to crack, she could see it. He was going to give in to whatever Bae wanted to make him cheer back up. No, that wasn't going to work. She had raised this boy for ten years and he was not about to turn into a spoiled brat because he suddenly had a father who could afford to buy him nice things.

She moved closer to the sand castle father and son had been working on, picking up a shovel and quietly digging out a moat.

"You know what?" she said to nobody in particular, "I think this castle needs seashells."

"Yeah?" Arthur replied, clearly happy for the distraction from his discomfort.

"I do," she replied. "If we got enough little ones and broken pieces we could make the outer wall resistant to attack and the big ones would be good decorations for the buttresses and sides of the castle."

Arthur hummed as if considering her statement, and Bae had become distracted from his poor mood and was watching his parents as they discussed designs for the castle.

"If we found some really good ones," Arthur finally said. "We could pave the paths, too."

"That's a really good point," Belle replied, packing sand from the moat down into her bucket. "Bae, do you want to go see if you can find seashells while your dad and I work on this or would you rather I did it?"

"No, that's okay," he said, scrambling to his feet. "I'm kind of hot anyway."

Belle smiled at him in thanks as Bae took a bucket and dashed down to the surf to dunk himself in the water before he began scouring the shallows for shells for his parents.

"Well," she said as soon as Bae was out of earshot, "you held up a lot better than I thought you would under that kind of pressure."

He grimaced but continued to dig the moat.

"He's getting more comfortable with you, if that helps any," she added.

"I know," he sighed. "It's just so hard. I have no idea how to handle that. I was damn close to offering to move us out here – if you hadn't been here I just might have."

"Well then it's a good thing I was here, because I am not moving to New Jersey for you or any man."

He smiled a bit at that, glancing up at her before continuing the moat.

"I'm sure I could make a tempting offer, for one thing think of how much well Bae has been sleeping since we got here."

She narrowed her eyes at him, but couldn't maintain even fake annoyance in the wake of his teasing.

"Regardless," she replied, flipping her bucket over onto the wide base of the castle to make a turret. "I am rather fond of the climate in Maine."

"You mean rainy and cold?"

"Yep, rainy and cold. Like God intended."

"You're Australian," he pointed out.

"And I ended up in Maine," she said smugly. "What does that tell you?"

He just smiled at her and shook his head disbelievingly.

"You're a strange woman, Belle French."

"Says the man who I know for a fact owns Spider-man boxers."

He glanced at her with shock on his face.

"How could you possibly know about that?"

"I've been spying on you in your bushes," she replied perfectly deadpan. "No, actually you just left them on top of the bathroom hamper last time you had us over."

He buried his face in his hands, hiding the broad smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes.

"You really almost had me with the bushes," he confessed. "Good lord I'm never letting you in my bathroom again if you're going to snoop."

"Well I'll just have to take to your bushes then, won't I?" she said with a wink.

Bae returned with his bucket of shell fragments for the walls, proudly pouring them onto the sand so he and his father could begin covering Belle's tower with the tiny pieces.

The three worked in relative silence for awhile, but this time it was companionable rather than stifling. Once the castle was assembled, Belle found a nearby family who was willing to loan a parent to take a photo of the three of them posing with their hard work, and then Gold took a series of photos of Bae demolishing said work, as well as his body completely encrusted with sand afterward.

They spent the next hour or so playing a modified version of keep-away from Bae, tossing a ball back and forth in the water until all three were worn out. They then adjourned to their room to wash up before returning to the pier for one final evening and one more awful deep fried meal.

"He really is grateful to be on this trip," Belle whispered to Arthur as Bae wandered around the perimeter eating his food and tossing the occasional fry to the fish that swam below.

They were sitting near the place they had lost him earlier that week, though this time she noticed that Arthur's eyes darted over to Bae nearly constantly and that Bae was careful to keep in view of both parents, not leaving a small area between the end of the pier and the trash bins that he seemed to have decided was his.

"I'm grateful you both came," Arthur said softly. "It's hard not to envy you his company, but I do appreciate that you went to every length you could to make this easier for all of us."

"You're his father, what else was I supposed to do?"

"You could have poisoned him against me completely," he pointed out. "There is no way that child would ever love anyone who hurt you."

"That would have been completely counter-productive for everyone," she reminded him again. They'd had this conversation before and honestly, he didn't need to thank her for allowing him to be affectionate towards his own son. Bae's love was something he should be able to take for granted was his.

"Still, I wanted to thank you," he said as he reached into a pocket and removed a small parcel.

"Did you get me a present?" she fake scolded. It was against their rules to get presents for each other, after all.

"It's a souvenir," he corrected. "It hardly counts. And anyway, it wasn't expensive it just reminded me of you."

He handed her the paper and she unwrapped it carefully to reveal a blue and green bracelet. It was a series of small squares inlaid with blue and green sea glass, tiny shells, and beads that caught the twilight beautifully. She turned it over in her hands a few times, admiring the craftsmanship that must have gone into it. It was clearly handmade, not something he picked up at one of the tourist traps along the beach.

"Where did you find this?" she asked him softly.

"It wasn't hard," he replied. "There's a lady who makes them locally and sells them through one of the boutiques."

He'd been in her company damn near every minute of every day unless one of them was asleep. He must have made a special trip to find her this bracelet first thing in the morning before she woke up one day. This wasn't something he found on a whim – he had no reason in the world to be going into one of the high-end boutiques that dotted the shore and catered to the wealthy locals except to buy something for her. Belle wasn't sure what to make of his attention, still staring down at the bracelet in her hand.

"Do you like it?" he sounded nervous and she realized she'd been quiet for a long time.

"I love it," she said, offering him a smile. "It's beautiful, thank you."

"I'm glad," he seemed relieved, taking the bracelet out of her hands and gesturing towards her wrist. "May I?"

She nodded and held out her arm, letting him fasten the clasp and adjust the chain so that it sat perfectly against her skin. It sparkled, the glass picking up the last rays of light.

"The blue reminded me of your eyes," he confessed, still holding onto her wrist and looking at the bracelet.

Her body was on high alert. She wanted to say something to diffuse the tension that she felt coming off of him like electricity before a storm, but another part of her needed to know where he was going with this. She'd been half on edge since her dream the other night, and maybe it was her overactive imagination or the fact that she hadn't been this close to a man in ten years, but Belle was aching for him to keep touching her. His fingers were tracing the outline of her bracelet and she wasn't sure he realized he was doing it, but the gesture still raised goosebumps up and down her body all the same.

"Why did you do all this?" she finally asked, not just meaning the bracelet but the entire trip right down to his touching her now and the way he sometimes almost preened under her attention. Something was changing between them and it was terrifying and new and oh so wanted.

"I just thought the mother of my child deserved something special," he said with a sweet little half grin that had her stomach in knots. "Something to remember the trip by, at least."

He bowed his head to her hand and suddenly his lips were on the pulse point of her wrist, in the open space between the square charms provided by the clasp. Her every nerve tingled as he did it, and suddenly she felt like her entire body was on fire. She'd not dated anyone seriously since Bae had come into her life, but Belle had never wanted a man to touch her quite as badly as she wanted Arthur Gold to never release her wrist ever again. His head was bowed in supplication over her hand for just a few seconds, but the brand of his lips on her skin remained after he lifted his head up shyly, as though afraid to make eye contact. She had kissed and been kissed (she'd even kissed him), but this feeling was new. She had never felt so cared for as when bent over her hand.

The tension between them was palpable, and she knew that whatever this was it was so delicate that the smallest thing would break it – yet, Belle was powerless to even try. She opened her mouth, meaning to speak, but couldn't think of words and so she let her mouth close again. Her lips were slightly parted and she knew it was an invitation to kiss her, but damn she needed it. She needed him. She needed.

"Hey Mom!" Bae called out from his place near the railing. "Guess what!"

Arthur dropped her hand like she was contagious and Belle leapt to her feet and dashed over to her son before either one could acknowledge what had almost happened.

"What's up, Bae?"

"The rays will eat fries, too!"

"Okay, but I think they're supposed to eat fish so how about you don't give them too many potatoes, yeah?"

Bae nodded, turning back to the bench and nearly skipping over to tell his father what he'd just done. Belle took a moment to watch them, Arthur returning effortlessly to the role of doting father. If he spared more than a few glances towards his child's mother standing alone on the pier as the child in question regaled him with a tale of aquatic life, then that was something the mother was just going to have to figure out on her own.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.