A/N: I don't know, guys, this might be edged into M-rated, but I hate to change a rating mid-story. If you think it needs changed though - or if you think I'm being paranoid - just let me know! I really did enjoy writing this chapter, so I hope you all enjoy it too!
The shop is small, unassuming, camouflaged so well with its surroundings that only the name emblazoned over its sign (and the countless whispers, the hushed murmurs, the fearful updates spoken from mouth to mouth in an already frightened town) sets it apart. It sits there, like an island rising from the sea (and Bae knows how dangerous, how terrifying, those can be, doesn't he), and it is only one street away. It would take him less than a minute to cross. Take him only an ounce of effort to push open the door. Require everything of him to face what lurks within.
Neal stares and stares. He paces and loiters. He does everything but erase a single inch of distance between him and that glass door that is all that stands between this life he's carved out for himself and the life he ran from (gave up a whole world for).
"Henry," he whispers to himself, as incentive.
That's the kid's name. His kid. (Maybe. August didn't exactly have a lot to say that could clear things up.)
Henry. With shaking hands, with insomnia that even a thousand dreamcatchers couldn't have cured, Neal googled that name. Just because (because now that it's his son's, it means everything). It's a regal name, one more suited for life in a castle or a throne, foreshadowing a life of prosperity and power. Which means it's everything that befits him on Emma's side (with Snow White and Prince Charming, with the Evil Queen who's somehow also his mother, with that old world of monarchies and thrones and powers-that-be subjugating the poor and defenseless beneath them). And nothing that has to do with him.
But he's Neal's nonetheless. (Probably.)
"Henry," he says again. In his mind, he thinks Henry Swan, but he's picked up enough from Ruby and Archie and the seven men he still can't think of as dwarfs in Granny's Diner to know that it is Henry Mills.
Neal's only known about him for coming up on twenty-four hours, but there is a fire inside him. An ember that has caught alight and is now spreading, glowing inside his heart, rippling out through his veins, filling him with the surging desire (the need) to see his son. To know him. To meet him and tell him that he is loved, he is wanted, he will be protected (and Neal will never become Rumplestiltskin).
But how can he? How, when Henry is young and vulnerable (and dependent on his father's protection), and Rumplestiltskin is powerful and manipulative and willing to do anything (once upon a time) for the son he himself threw away? It was one thing to consider approaching Emma, even knowing the Dark One is in the same town, because she's an adult and fiercely independent and so much better at looking after herself than Neal has ever been (he risks his heart too freely, loves too destructively, taints whatever he touches with longing)—and because she'll never forgive him, never accept him permanently back into her life (he's long since accepted that, many times come to term with the fact that his trip here is only about a long overdue apology, not forgiveness; not a redo; not a second chance).
But Henry… No, Henry is too young. Henry is his, and he will have to protect him, and Neal can't do that until he knows for certain what danger Rumplestiltskin will pose him.
He has his plan all worked out. Every step of it unspools in his mind's eye. He will walk across this simple street and enter that unassuming shop. He will look his father in his eye, in this too-human guise (this man who should look like his papa before the curse but instead looks like a stranger), and he will tell him he is there on behalf of a friend. August is getting worse, after all, and scarcely moves at all. If Rumplestiltskin is the powerful force that rumors (that nightmares repeated through centuries) have made of him, he can surely help a man turned into a puppet. And when Neal asks for this boon, this one simple thing, he will see what his father's reaction is.
Whether he chooses to help.
What price he chooses to exact.
How much he will sneer at the helplessness of a man caught as much in more powerful people's webs of manipulation as Rumplestiltskin himself once was, centuries (lifetimes) ago.
And then Neal will know, once and for all, if his papa has changed at all.
It's a good plan, a solid plan, a doable plan…except that in three hours, he hasn't taken the first step.
And he won't. He can't.
Neal turns his back on that unassuming shop and flees to the other side of town. A relieved breath escapes him when he sees that Belle's bookstore is open, and this time, he has no trouble at all crossing the street, pulling open the door, and entering the store.
"Hello, Neal!" Belle says before the door has even closed behind him.
Something tight and hot and old pinches behind his breastbone, and for the first time in years, Neal recognizes the burn at the back of his eyes as tears—like he might actually cry. He thought he'd given up that weakness decades ago. Blinking fiercely, he smiles back at this kind woman with her quiet shop and her peaceful presence.
"Hey, Belle, how's it going?"
"Great!" she chirps, coming around the counter to lead him to the couch. He forgot how tiny she is, and something about seeing her nearly skipping in tall heels, her lips curved up into a wide grin, her eyes so bright and excited, makes Neal's smile turn genuine.
"I'm glad," he says. "I was a little worried yesterday, when I saw your store was closed."
A light flush pinkens her cheeks and she ducks her head. "Oh. I…" Abruptly, her chin firms and she looks straight at him. "I decided to spend the day with my husband," she says, almost defiantly. "We're getting to know each other all over again. I want to know the real him."
Neal nods (thinks back on a blonde thief who knew him better than anyone but couldn't have told anyone a single truth about his real past). "I get that," he says, and Belle's face nearly crumples. Her sudden move to pull him into a half hug has him freezing mid-step.
"Thank you," she whispers, and then she pulls away, all smiles and quick motions as she shows him where his half-started book still rests near his seat. "I didn't touch it," she says. "It's all just as you left it."
That burning returns to his eyes (because nothing ever stays exactly as he left it; everywhere, at all times, everything is changing, and he alone remains stuck in time, unaging, never learning, doomed to always repeat the same mistakes).
"Uh…Neal? Are you okay?"
Blinking, he realizes that Belle has been talking away without him registering a single word. "Sorry," he blurts. "Sorry, I…I guess I'm a bit out of it today. I…" He hesitates. Now that he knows (or thinks he knows) that he has a son, he can't think of anything else. Can't be anything else but a father (potential father), and one who's already failed so badly there may never be any coming back from it.
"Belle," he says so suddenly it startles them both. "Have you ever been blindsided by something so big, so huge, that it changes everything about your life and you just know that nothing's ever going to be able to go back to the way it was?"
Her smile is wry and amused as she holds up her left hand to show off the band of gold wrapped around her ring finger. "Uh, woke up from a curse with a husband I'd never met before, remember?"
The laughter they share is so cathartic, so necessary, that Neal slumps down into his seat and lets out a heavy sigh.
"Why do you ask?" Belle says, sitting an arm's length away from him. He can't help but think of the last time they did this, when she was the one crying and he was the one trying to comfort her (the tables are turning in all facets of his life, it seems).
"I just…" He angles more toward her. "How did you decide what to do, when you woke up to that life-changing thing? How did you know that you wanted to make a go of it?"
"Because I love him," she says simply. "I may not have known him before, and maybe it was a curse that brought us together, but I love him anyway. Despite it all. Because of it all. I just…I really love him. And he loves me. It's in everything he does, everything he says, the way he looks at me, the way he pauses before he touches me, the…" Her eyes flutter shut and she takes a deep breath before looking back to him. "I just knew that I wanted him in my life."
She just knew. She loves him. She wants him in her life.
And Neal just knows. He loves this kid already, without even having met him, simply because he's Emma's and his. And…and he wants Henry in his life, no matter what it costs (no matter who else it brings into his life with him).
Neal opens his mouth—and the door bursts open as a kid strolls in. The kid. His kid.
"Hey, Belle!" Henry says cheerfully. "Gramps said I could stay here till lunch if that's okay with you."
"Of course!" Belle pats Neal's hand once before getting up and bustling over to chat with Henry.
To chat with his son. Apparently, the kind bookseller he's befriended and the boy who is his son are already friends. Of course, it's a small town, made even smaller by the rearranging that's been happening since the curse-break, and…and this is an opportunity. This is serendipity smacking him right in the face (he only hopes it's more akin to his discovery of how to capture shadows and less to do with a blue fairy showing up to hand him a world-hopping bean).
Neal marshals his courage while Belle leads Henry to some back section, the back and forth of their voices a comforting hum. As soon as Belle comes back toward him, leaving the kid with a stack of books, Neal says, very quietly, "Do you think anyone can be brave?"
Pan didn't. Or rather, Pan had a skewed definition of the word brave, assuming it to mean only that everyone obey him no matter how dangerous the order.
Hook didn't. He thought only himself and whoever he chose to bestow his favor on at the moment were worthy of the definition.
But Wendy and her brothers…they'd thought anyone could be brave. They'd depended on Bae, and he'd been brave because of it.
(And maybe, even if he doesn't know it yet, Henry is depending on Neal to be brave too.)
"I think," Belle says slowly, "that if you choose to do the hard thing, then bravery will come to you along the way."
Neal's halfway to his son, his hand still warm from where he briefly clasped Belle's, before he realizes that there's another person in his life who always thought he was brave. Who'd been terrified of Bae's perceived bravery.
Papa. Papa, who'd scrimped and bowed and groveled so they could survive, but when it came down to it, had strode alone into a flaming castle to save his son. Papa, whom the soldiers had called a coward, whom Bae's mother had forsaken because of his timid reputation, but who had struck down the greatest darkness in their world to keep his boy from the battlefield.
For the first time, Neal thinks he understands (in a way that lonely boy Baelfire had been never could) why his papa chose to do those things rather than trust his kid to fight off an army of ogres. For the first time, he feels the vast, overwhelming protectiveness that must have influenced every decision Rumplestiltskin once made (until the curse swallowed him whole).
Because Neal is a papa now too, and he can't be that scared boy hiding from the specter of Pan, shrinking from the name of Rumplestiltskin, avoiding all mention of that pirate who sold him to a monster. Not anymore. Not now that he's a father.
"Hey," he says when he approaches Henry.
The boy looks up, and smiles, and says, "Hey."
The first word his son ever says to him (it's beautiful).
"Good book?" he asks, inanely.
Henry shrugs. "I think so. Belle said it was. I haven't really gotten that far."
"Yeah?" Inwardly, Neal winces. Has making conversation always been this hard?
"It's kind of strange," Henry says. "I've been reading my book for so long that I kind of forgot about all the other stories out there. But now that the curse is broken, maybe there's room to find more."
The rumors around town aren't super clear about what happened to break the curse, but the one thing they all agree on is that Emma was the savior and Henry was the catalyst.
"What book?" Neal asks.
Henry frowns at him, his expression so speculative that Neal can all but see Emma trying to puzzle out a way to get them a shower and a night's stay in a hotel without paying (Henry looks just like her, but his eyes…oh, those are Neal's). "The book about where we came from," he says. "You know, I don't think I've seen you around before. Did you have to move when you remembered who you are?"
"I moved as soon as I realized the curse was broken," he says, not wanting to lie. "You like to read, though?"
That's actually a surprise to him. He never saw Emma crack open a book (though it's been a long time, he thinks, and who knows, maybe in prison, books were her only escape from the fate he'd condemned her to), and he himself has only become a reader in the past handful of years (it took a while to learn to read here, and even longer before he felt comfortable with the strange, too-simplistic way they shape their letters in this land).
Henry looks down, for the first time seeming a bit uncomfortable. "It helps, at night," he mutters, and there's a tone to his voice, one Neal (Baelfire) knows all too well.
Something twists in his gut. His son has nightmares. Already. (Of a father who let him go before he was even born? Of a mother who gave him up because she was herself abandoned? Of a terrible Queen trying to be a mother without a role model to follow?
Of shadows that creep into his room and dance on his walls and trick him into hell?)
"You know," he says, hopefully casually (hopefully not creepily, preying on an unsuspecting kid, giving Emma more reason to hate him), "when I have trouble dreaming, I like to use a dreamcatcher."
"A dreamcatcher?" Interest sparks, bright and clear, in his son's eyes, looking up at him as if he trusts him. As if he wants to talk to him.
"Yeah." Neal has to pause and clear his throat. "It's flypaper for nightmares, you know."
"Mr. Gold gave me something," Henry confesses. "It lets me control my dreams so I don't have to be afraid. But they still come."
Every muscle in Neal's body wants to tense. Every urge he has screams at him to grab up his kid (his son!) and spirit him far, far away from whatever the Dark One wants of him. "Mr. Gold," he says, too cautiously, he's sure. "What…what did he want for it?"
"Nothing," Henry says with a quizzical tilt to his head. "He just gave it to me."
And now Neal can't move again. (Is this his sign? Is this proof that his papa really is in there? Or just another move in the long game?)
"Well," he says. "Maybe the dreamcatchers can stop the nightmares before they get in."
(They did for him. Or maybe that was Emma, because nowadays, even the sentimental one he keeps in his pack isn't too effectual.)
"I'll have to try it," Henry says thoughtfully. "Thanks. I'm Henry, by the way."
Neal's smile is involuntary, sincere, and thick with the tears he hasn't shed since shortly after escaping Neverland. "I'm Neal," he says. "It's good to meet you, Henry."
I'm your dad.
The confession doesn't slip out (not yet, not without approaching Emma first), but Henry shakes his hand, and the feel of his son's palm against his own is worth every single bit of pain it's taken Neal to reach this moment.
The tea is an excellent blend, flavored just as she likes it, her book is comfortable in her hand, and the lamp creates the perfect cocoon of comfort and intimacy between them. Belle can hardly think of a better night, not least because Rumple hasn't even picked up his book yet, choosing instead to sit, his chin in hand, and stare at her as he drinks in her every word.
"I don't know, it's like he and Henry just clicked. They stayed back there together for probably an hour, though Neal left just as David and Snow came to collect Henry for lunch."
"Interesting," he says, and for all the word could so easily be a nothingness, thrown out to pretend he is listening to her chatter about her mundane day, there is just enough of a lilt to it that makes her think he means it literally. "So you have regulars now, it seems. Soon, you might be too busy to bring lunch to your husband every day."
If there's a hint of insecurity to that question, Belle can't focus on it past her relish at hearing him refer to himself as her husband (he is shy, and frightened, and too used to solitude to wholly believe in what's growing between them, but there is a piece of him there, no matter how small, that accepts it). "A lunch break is a legal requirement," she teases him. "What kind of business owner would I be if I didn't allow my employees time to eat?"
"Is that so? Perhaps I should speak to my business owner, then," he says dryly. "I didn't take a lunch break for over twenty-eight years."
Belle ignores the shiver down her spine at this reminder of how much time was stolen from them all. Instead, she smiles at Rumple and reaches her hand toward him. "Why are you so far away?" she asks. Her fingers are easily able to brush over his elbow, up to nearly his shoulder, but still, she dislikes that he sat in his chair rather than next to her.
A pleased flush darkens his cheeks as he sets aside his chipped cup. "I thought you wanted to read."
Without a second thought, Belle sets her book aside. "I'm more in the mood for a mystery tonight," she says lowly. "One I'd love to uncover."
If the rest of the world knew how easy it was to get the Dark One to blush, Belle doubts they'd cower at his coming anymore (which is probably the whole point). So she tucks the surprising knowledge away like the secret it is and clasps his hand in hers. There's a tiny tug to one corner of his mouth, as if he wants to smile but can't quite dare to fully commit to this being reality rather than a trick. Which is such a heartbreaking thought that Belle, without letting go of his hand, stands and stumbles over into his lap. The quiet whoof of air he lets out has her murmuring an apology before the feel of his arms moving to her spine and her hip to stabilize her steals the last of the breath from her own lungs.
"I'll come to you, then," she murmurs, and twines her fingers through his hair to guide his mouth up to hers.
This. They should be doing this all the time. She loves the way he devours her one moment only to then just barely touch her the next (the two sides of himself, the coward and the Dark One, she thinks, though which one holds and which one hovers seems to change from day to day). She adores the taste of him, the feel of his chest beneath her fingers, the shudder he makes when her hands graze the tendons of his throat or slide back through his hair. She's addicted to the way he makes her feel, and the hazy desire in his eyes, and the unexpectedness of his tongue delicately flicking against the roof of her mouth.
"Rumple," she murmurs, a sigh mixed in with the name, and he clasps her tighter, pulls her closer, devours her more fiercely. When they have to breathe, when his mouth drifts down along the underside of her jaw to her throat to the hollow there, Belle feels herself being swept away in the deluge. It's so much (overwhelming, really, next to the numbness that those twenty-eight years were), and she seeks an anchor, a way to slow herself, to pace the rate at which they lose themselves to each other.
"You…" She gasps at the way he kisses high up on her throat, near the hinge of her jaw, then tries again. "You didn't tell me about your day."
"I opened the shop," he says between kisses, gradually wending his way back toward her lips (not quickly enough). "I attached Dr. Whale's arm back to his body after it was torn off by the zombie he foolishly raised. Then a beautiful woman brought me lunch—"
"What?" Belle pulls back, blinking down at him. He's beautiful, so dazed and mussed and the happiest she thinks she's ever seen him. "Did you say a zombie?"
"Whale wants to go home," Rumplestiltskin says impatiently as he lifts a hand to play through her hair. His other hand is firm against her spine, pressing her most distractingly against him. "He thought if he brought back Regina's dead lover, she'd do whatever he asked. I warned him ages ago it was a ridiculous notion, but he's always been one to stumble his own way through. It didn't work, naturally—dead is dead—and for his pains, he was short a limb."
"But you helped him." Belle smiles and drops a kiss to his lips (it was supposed to be quick but gets away from her rather easily).
"Oh, he paid," Rumplestiltskin mutters against her mouth. "He was forced to make the admission that he was wrong."
"What a terrible price," she mocks him (his affectation of unconcern, his mask of coldness).
"For him, it was," he says, and then his fingers caress just beneath the collar of her shirt, and Belle decides that conversation is wholly overrated.
It's not until later, when their kisses have turned to fire then banked back down, slowly, and they are sitting curled up next to each other, her still half on his lap in his overstuffed chair, that she draws out the coupon she's kept with her all day.
"So," she says. Her voice is nearly unrecognizable to herself, slurred with happiness and the aftereffect of what they just spent nearly an hour doing. "What do you want us to do with this?"
Rumplestiltskin blinks down at her. "What?"
"The coupon. What is it you want of me?" Even now, tired and content, Belle finds it tantalizing to flirt with him so openly, her hand rising to hook her fingers through the v of his shirt where she'd undone a few of his buttons. He's so warm beneath her touch, and the way he squirms has her tilted even closer to him, plastered against his side. She thinks he minds it about as much as she does.
"I thought…" His bewildered frown has her cooing and tracing the shape of it on his beloved face. "Yesterday, you made me dinner. You stayed with me the whole day."
"Yes, because I wanted to." She laughs at him (his genuine confusion is so endearing that she can actually feel her heart doubling in size to accommodate the way she's falling even more in love with him right this very second). "But this coupon…you didn't give it to me until after all that. Besides, this is for what you want us to do. Yesterday was…it was a sick day. One of the fake ones, where you call in just so you can laze around all day doing whatever you want. Haven't you ever had one of those before?"
He's silent for a good long while, his hand stroking down her hair, the other playing with her fingers. She never realized what a fiddler he is, but now it seems so obvious (and she'll never discourage him from it, not if it's her he wants to stroke and caress and savor with his calloused hands).
Finally, in a low voice, he says, "Once, maybe I did. After my wife left us, it was hard for me and Bae. As little as Milah had done somedays, she was still an extra set of hands. So it was almost impossible to grieve at first. I tried to give Bae time, but…there were sheep to herd and water to draw and wool to card and meals to make. But one day, I don't know, a few months afterward, when he'd started smiling again…one day, I let him sleep in. I did as much spinning as I could while he slept, and when he woke, I gave him the new clothes I'd made him and the berries I'd found in the forest. And we spent all day just playing together. We had to bring the sheep back in, but even that was a game. Bae loved playing hero—not the lords or the knights, just the unlikely heroes that helped the lost lamb or the wounded duckling or the trapped dog. I was his loyal steed, or sometimes his brave sidekick, and once, I was the dragon he tamed. He laughed so hard at my attempt to pretend I had wings that he fell over into the grass and the sheep startled and nearly bolted."
His voice trails off, turned tight and reedy, and Belle's not surprised to feel the slow trickle of tears against the side of her face. She squeezes his hand tight in hers (does her best to tuck away every staggering revelation uncovered in that treasured memory; she'll take them out and examine them more closely later, find ways they explain her love while also making him even more of a mystery).
"That's beautiful," she says. "He sounds like he was happy."
"He was," Rumple says, as if just realizing it for the very first time. "We were both happy. Most of the time. When we weren't starving. When the nobles weren't trying to throw us at the ogres as deterrent. When the rest of the town forgot I existed."
Belle reaches up to lay her hand over his wet cheek and angle his head toward her. "Thank you for telling me," she whispers, and kisses him. It's a different kiss from the ones before, just a timid press of their lips together, but it trembles at something inside her, as if there's been some cataclysmic shift in her heart.
"I didn't find a way past the town line today," he whispers, brokenly. "The potion failed."
"You'll find it," she tells him. "You'll keep trying."
"I will," he vows (or maybe it's a warning, as if he thinks she will soon lose patience with him; as if he has no idea how his devotion and his determination and his perseverance only make her love him more).
"I know you will," she says. "You'll find a way and you'll be reunited with your son."
The kiss he places against her lips matches exactly the one she just gave him, an equal give and take that soothes the insecurity inside her (he's an immortal sorcerer and she nothing more than a lost little girl who was only placed into his life by near accident; what does she possibly have to give him in return for the ways he's already saved her?).
"Is that what you want of me?" she asks, sincerely rather than flirtatiously this time. "I can help you with your research. You can give me books to read, passages to look for, or I can just help you brainstorm. You can bounce ideas off me."
"I was going to give you a coupon—before," he says. "I thought we could have a picnic on the balcony and watch the meteor shower. But there isn't supposed to be another one for a long while."
"It sounds lovely," she encourages.
He doesn't quite meet her eyes. "What do you want us to do, Belle?"
Interweaving their fingers, she smiles softly. "Oh, no, these are for you. You get to choose."
And now he does look at her. "I know you caught what I said about my wife, Belle. Ours was a pragmatic match, and though I thought for a while there was love…there wasn't. Not on her part. And why should there be? I could offer her nothing save the ignominy of her association with me. I don't blame her for leaving me." His mouth twists (Belle doesn't miss the qualifier there, and it takes no cleverness at all to know that her leaving Baelfire is another matter entirely). "There…there was one other. A woman I thought I could love. Who I thought could love at least the dark parts of me. But even that was only a means to an end, and she went to dire extremes to separate herself from me."
"Why are you telling me this?" she asks despite her better judgment. Her love is a close man, a man as used to solitude as he is to keeping his secrets to himself. Belle has long since come to terms with the fact that she will have to be patient, be trustworthy, be accepting and encouraging rather than nagging and judgmental, to coax his secrets and his past from him (even Isabel expected it to take years just to get Mr. Gold to open up, let alone Rumplestiltskin).
"You should know what you're getting yourself into," he says. "I'm a difficult man to love."
"Really?" Belle arches her brows at him and clasps her hands behind his neck, trusting the rest of her weight to him. "It seems easy enough to me. In fact, it's so much easier to love you than to try to run away from it."
That look. That wondering, wonderstruck, wonderful look in his eyes as he stares at her. That is the look she never, ever wants to lose. That is the look she will risk everything, dare anything, to ensure remains hers (and hers alone).
"What do you want of me, sweetheart?" she whispers.
"I…I want you to be happy. I want to do what will make you happy."
The shy, bashful slant to his words convinces her that this one time, he needs her to be a part of this. Which isn't hard to do, really.
"I was thinking," she says slowly, "that there are an awful lot of empty picture frames in this house. And I know…well, I imagine…that some of those are waiting for pictures of your son. But I thought…maybe we could take some photos of ourselves to put there. This house is our home. It should show anyone who comes in how happy we are here."
He kisses her for that, and Belle thinks that means he agrees.
Upstairs, by unspoken agreement, they avoid kissing, not wanting to start something they're not sure they're ready for (well, she thinks she's ready, now, but Rumple is cautious and more of a planner than Belle has ever been and she will give him time to accustom himself to the idea), but they sleep in each other's arms, and in the morning, when she comes down for breakfast, there is a polaroid camera sitting beside her tea.
Belle laughs, and twines her arms around Rumple's neck, and kisses him deeply, and after he reclaims his voice, he tells her (with a twitter to his voice she's never heard before but that makes something dark and wanting stir in the pit of her belly) that he'll pick her up after he closes the shop.
The day drags by. Neal comes in after lunch, and whatever he sees in her face makes him grin and observe that things must be going well with her new husband.
"New?" she retorts. "By my count, we've nearly reached our thirtieth anniversary."
For some reason, that makes him go sad, or at least melancholy, but then Henry comes by and tells Belle he needs a book on how to make dreamcatchers, and Neal brightens and offers his help, and soon the two are huddled together on the couch, bent over a book about dreamcatchers. Belle makes a mental note to look into it herself (it seems interesting, and maybe it will help Rumplestiltskin; he never wakes her, but she knows that he has nightmares most nights, causing him to rise earlier each day).
"Where's August been keeping himself?" she asks Henry when he puts down a handful of crumpled bills and pocket change for the book on dreamcatchers. Under his collar, she spots the gleam of the necklace Rumple made for him.
Henry's face crumples into a somber frown. "I don't know. Emma said he disappeared as soon as the curse broke."
"You know August?" Neal blurts from behind him (he'd been pulling out a few bills himself, looking as sly as Rumple sometimes does, and Belle suspects he's thinking of a way to buy the book for Henry).
Henry looks back at him. "You know him?" he retorts.
"We're…friends," Neal says, a bit uncertainly if Belle is any judge. "I…I didn't realize that Emma was worried about him."
"We can't find him," Henry says. "Do you know where he is?"
Neal hesitates. He's a hard man to read, really, for someone so open and genuine and friendly (his mask, Belle thinks, is paper-thin and so malleable maybe even he thinks it is a part of his face now). "I'll look into it," he finally says.
This cheers Henry so much that he doesn't even seem to notice when Neal trades out his own money for Henry's. Belle smiles at the sight of Henry's backpack so full of books, and of the way Neal claps his shoulder, tentatively, before slipping away. A few moments later, Emma shows up outside and Henry's gone with a wave back to Belle.
As soon as the silence hits, Belle's excitement returns. In half an hour Rumplestiltskin will arrive to take her on a date. In twenty minutes. In ten. At five 'til, Belle slips from the store, locks it, and then waits, breathless and feeling giggly already, for Rumple's arrival.
She doesn't have to wait long. His car pulls up, and before he can get out and pull her door open for her, Belle is already sliding inside and leaning across the seat to kiss him.
"I couldn't wait," she says, breathlessly, and Rumple actually laughs, kisses her back, and then says, "I hope it lives up to your expectations."
Of course it does (he could never do anything else, she thinks, although this isn't a story, so maybe he will fail her occasionally, but she'll find a way to forgive him because she doesn't want to lose this feeling, that look in his eyes, the knowledge that she is the only one he feels comfortable with being himself with). He takes her to a well in the woods where grass is lush and green, and below, through the trees, she can see Storybrooke sprawling out toward the sea. There's a bouquet of roses lying atop a quilt spread out over the grass, and a picnic basket waiting to be unpacked, and a beautiful shawl he wraps around her shoulders, and the polaroid camera within easy reach.
"Did you open your shop at all?" she asks, laughing.
Rumple ducks his head. "Dove helped some."
Belle lifts the camera and snaps a picture before he can turn guarded and uncertain. "This is perfect," she proclaims. They played around with the camera a bit at breakfast, and it's simple to use (and she's not surprised to hear that Rumple has brought along extra rolls of film just in case), so between dinner, Belle takes pictures of Rumplestiltskin and herself. He steals it from her after the dozenth candid photo she takes of him, and begins snapping pictures of her instead.
"You're much more camera-worthy anyway," he says, and he's smiling, but he's telling the truth as he sees it, which Belle can't let stand.
"Don't be silly," she says before she comes to his side and tells him, "We both have to be in the pictures anyway. Those are the ones I want up on our walls so we can see them every day."
Trying to take a selfie with the polaroid camera has them both laughing and nearly overbalancing a few times, so Belle finally digs out her phone and gets some better shots (though she treasures every one of the others, no matter how blurry or off-center they are; she has real, solid proof now that Rumplestiltskin can laugh as openly, as joyously, as if there is no curse trapping his soul).
As the sun begins to set, the air grows cool. Belle draws the fringed shawl closer around her shoulders, and Rumple scoots closer to rub her arm with his calloused palm. "We can head back," he says cautiously. "Or I thought…maybe we could stay at the cabin. It's only a few minutes away."
Belle looks at him. He's nervous, but not scared. He meets her eyes and there is something there, something in his eyes, that she doesn't think she's really seen before.
(Hope, she thinks. Hope without the expectation of disappointment. Or not much of it at least.)
(He's ready, she realizes.)
"I'd love that," she says, her heart like a flapping bird behind her breastbone.
He hesitates. "The…the coupon was only for the picnic. This…it's all entirely up to you. It's not about what I want."
Belle bites her lip to keep from laughing. "Well," she says teasingly, "I hope it's at least half about what you want."
"Oh, I want," he says, low and dark and so new that Belle's breath catches in her throat.
They can't reach the cabin quickly enough. If they ended up leaving half their picnic and maybe the quilt they sat on, then she's sorry, but not too sorry. The sight of the cabin strikes her with a sudden surge of homecoming. She loves their house, and their bedroom, and their library with their books. But this cabin…it's where they first looked at each other as the people they truly are. It's where they first truly kissed (Belle and Rumplestiltskin, not Isabel and Mr. Gold or Isabel and Rumplestiltskin). This cabin is where she told him she loves him and he told her about his son and they decided to make a real go of this (to consider their marriage as true).
Instead of taking the hand he offers her, Belle loops her arm through his and hugs it to her chest. Together, they make their way inside, and the shawl he gave her (made for her, she is absolutely sure) is beautiful and warm, but it's in her way and her arms are tangled in it and she lets out a soft moan of frustration as she tries to arch up and wrap her arms around his neck.
His chuckle is low and rich and vibrates against her throat, and Belle feels nearly wild.
"Rumple," she gasps, and shakes the shawl to the floor, and then she's in his arms (or maybe he's in her arms; either way, she's happy), and his jacket joins the shawl, as does his waistcoat, and his tie, and their shoes end up all muddled together, and then they're at the couch and Rumple isn't laughing anymore. Belle's giggles have all died away (though she's still breathless), and when their eyes meet, there is a weight to the moment.
A last gasp before they give in. Their decision balances on a knife-edge.
"Belle," he says (question and worry and plea and absolution all rolled together).
"Rumple," she says, and bites her lip to contain her smile, and takes his hand. "Sweetheart."
He shudders and pulls her into him. "Shall we adjourn to the bedroom, Mrs. Gold?" he asks.
That name in his voice in this moment with all these implications…it tips them over into the after of this decision.
"Please," she breathes.
He hauls her up against him and they stumble backward. Her mind is barely working coherently, but she thinks he's lost the cane somewhere, and she wraps her arms around his waist to be his support, and together, they tumble into the bedroom and down onto the bed. There's fresh bedding laid, and flowers (bright red carnations) in vases on the nightstands, and a few books stacked there waiting, and Belle nearly cries to see how much hope Rumplestiltskin placed in her this day (he's so afraid of rejection, her dear sweetheart, but so brave to try for the best anyway).
"I love you," she whispers. He's laying atop her on the bed, his weight such a comfort (such an enticement), that she never wants him to move. She frames his face in her hands and makes sure he looks at her, sees her (recognizes her choice in her eyes). "I love you more than I've ever loved anything in my entire life."
"Oh, my darling Belle." With his elbows supporting him, he cups his hands over the top of her head and presses his brow against hers. "I love you too."
(He doesn't love her more than anything in his life, because he has Baelfire, out there, somewhere, waiting for his papa to come and find him, but Belle doesn't care; in fact, she thinks it only makes her love him more, this proof of his constancy, his steadfastness, his unconditional love; it is, after all, the same that he offers her.)
"My husband," she says (because this is it, the moment there is no going back).
"Mrs. Gold," he says back, his lips curving up in a sly smirk (as if he, this ridiculous man, thinks he's somehow tricked her into being here, choosing him, accepting him, loving him).
Belle kisses him (to prove that this isn't a trick or a trap or a joke; it's real and it's her choice and she wants him). She kisses him until his smirks have vanished into moans, deep in his throat, and her fingers are busy with his shirt buttons, and his hands are sliding up the blouse she wishes she could remove without losing any of his so-pleasing weight atop her.
"I choose you," she vows, when his shirt is gone, and so is hers, and there is nothing between them anymore. "I'm yours. Forever."
"Forever," he repeats, his hands shaking where he touches her.
And this time, neither of them are crying, neither of them stop the other, and nothing interrupts to break the moment.
This time, the night is theirs, and there is no going back (and Belle will never, never regret this choice.)
By the time the sun rises, Rumplestiltskin has been awake for hours, staring down at Belle, curled in his arms, her face nuzzled up against his chest, tiny snores escaping her on every second or third breath. Even like this, so close she's out of focus, one cheek patterned with lines from the sheet, her hair a mess, she's beautiful enough to make his long-dormant heart ache. His teeth ache from the force with which he grits them in an effort to keep inside all the words boiling within him.
(Don't leave me. Don't hate me. Love me, really, truly, forever. Don't abandon me. Don't ever look at me with fear or scorn or distrust.)
Weak words. A coward's words. A monster's words.
So Rumplestiltskin holds her close, and lets her sleep, and doesn't say a word.
Until she stirs (stretching so delightfully against him) and yawns and wakes. He waits for the sudden tension as she realizes that while they've passed many nights pressed so close, this time there is nothing between them. He waits for the tiny gasp, the withdrawal, the gathering of the sheets and the searching for the clothes—for the regret to seep in.
Belle is good and pure and lovely…and she gave herself to an evil, tainted beast.
But there is no gasp. Instead, there is a soft, contented sigh.
Instead of any tension cording through her limbs, Belle rolls closer into him so she can lay her palm flat on his chest and then rest her chin atop that. She meets his eyes—
And smiles
"Good morning, sweetheart," she says. And there is no fear in her voice. There is no distrust. No regret.
Nothing but happiness, shining outward from her (and he doesn't wonder that she didn't need a light on the night before, because she is light enough).
"Belle," he breathes (a single word in place of all those he kept inside him all night long that now fizzle away to nothing). There is a brief moment of worry, when he moves to kiss her and she turns her face aside, but her giggles reassure him, as does the way she slides her free hand into his.
"It's morning," she says, cheeks flushing. "I haven't brushed my teeth."
"Is that all?" Rumplestiltskin's lips curve up. "Good thing you're married to a sorcerer then."
A wave of his hand (a burst of magic that seems to come more easily, more readily, today than it ever has before) and he tastes mint on his tongue as Belle's eyes widen, her hand flying to her mouth.
"That's convenient," she says, slyly, and then, before he can tie himself up in knots again, she pulls herself up his chest and kisses him.
It's a long while more before they're ready to leave the bed, and even longer before they reluctantly leave the cabin. They will both be late opening their shops, but Rumplestiltskin can't find an iota of concern about it. The bulk of his worry is tied up in his thoughts that this cabin is like an oasis. Belle's haven. The place they first connected—and now, so much more. Leaving it feels like shutting the door on all the joy they made together there (and he didn't deserve any of it, of course he didn't, but he's selfish and covetous and he wants more).
But staying here will do nothing to get him across the town line. It won't help Belle find friends and allies (the very ones she'll need, one day, when she realizes what he really is). So, finally, stealing whatever last kisses and caresses he can, Rumplestiltskin drives them back to town. Something soft and bright pierces his heart at the sight of her sitting in the passenger seat, her hands buried in the shawl he made for her (on late nights spent waiting for this potion to brew or that spell to simmer, all of them useless to get him what he truly wants) as if it is precious to her.
When he parks outside her store, Belle smiles at him. Even now, here in town, she doesn't seem to feel regret (yet) for last night (and this morning). "Thank you, Rumple," she says. Her kiss to his cheek isn't enough, and Rumple turns his face to catch her lips. (It might not be their last kiss, but then again, it might, and why risk it?)
She giggles and kisses him again, then again, before she tears herself away. "I'm going to wear your shawl all day," she says. "See you for lunch?"
"Yes," he manages to get out through his stunned disbelief (never, in over three centuries, has he ever encountered anything like Belle).
In a bright series of motions that have his lips quirking into a smile instinctually, Belle enters her store and gives him a last wave and smile to send him off.
All day, Rumplestiltskin does his best to focus on his seeking spells (if he can tweak them, strengthen them, he hopes he can turn himself into a seeking talisman that will not lose any purpose—any memories—even when crossing the town line), but there is a part of him that mourns the closeness of the night before. Tonight, things will go back to normal. They will drink their tea and read in the library, and because Belle is so much better than he ever knew existed, she will probably curl up with him in bed, but here, back to routine, it will be just to sleep.
(And he treasures every moment with her, but now that he knows what it is to feel more, it will be a wrench to return to the milder affection between them.)
But at lunch, Belle sits nearly in his lap, intersperses bites of their soup with kisses, and as she goes, there is a promise in her blue eyes that has his heart beating madly in his chest.
That afternoon, the magic is closer than ever, very nearly as responsive as in their old world.
True Love, a voice whispers in his mind, but Rumplestiltskin forces it aside.
Until that night, anyway, when he and Belle don't get much reading done in the library on account of the way she pulls him down onto the couch where she stretches out over him and kisses him until he doesn't even mind that she deserves a bed and silk sheets and a knight in shining armor rather than this quick, messy fumble in the library. But then, upstairs, they have the bed and the silk sheets (and when she looks at him like that, says his name like that, he could almost fool himself into thinking she really does want him over any good-hearted hero), and she responds exactly the same.
The next morning, the magic comes almost too easily and Rumplestiltskin is nearly overwhelmed by the burst of power he didn't mean to unleash just for breakfast. Belle teases him for the burned eggs, adds a bit of sugar to his weak tea, and kisses him (not on the cheek now, but fully on the mouth) before she heads for her store.
"I might stop and see Ruby at lunch," she tells him, "just for a minute. She's seemed distracted lately and I want to see if there's anything I can do to help. But I'll be by your shop afterward to eat with you."
"I could come to Granny's and meet you," he offers. He means only to help her (to not possessively keep her with only him rather than out there with all the people who are surely more than willing to reveal his darker deeds to the innocent woman cursed into being his wife), but the minute the words are out, he regrets them.
Out in the open. In public. In front of everyone. As if Belle wants to parade her relationship with the Dark One before the whole town.
But Belle's smile widens until Rumplestiltskin nearly squints at the shine of it and she throws her arms around him. "That sounds wonderful! I'll see you there—half past noon?"
He nods, steals another kiss before she slips away (it probably won't be the last), and heads to his shop himself.
If his magic is back to normal, then he has a few more spells he can try on the town line. Thus far, he's been limiting himself to trying to affect only himself, but perhaps now, with his bloodstream crackling with power, he can do his experiments on the town line itself.
While he works, before and after lunch at Granny's with Belle (people stare, but none dare say anything), feeding what magical objects he can bear to part with into his experiment to heighten the reach, he notices a man loitering outside his shop, across the street. It's not the first time he's seen the man, but it is the first time he's realized that the stranger is doing anything more than just passing by. In fact, now that his attention has been caught, Rumplestiltskin realizes he's seen the man several days in a row.
And he doesn't recognize him.
Of course, there are many in this town that he doesn't know on sight. The curse caught up a whole world, along with a few extras, and for all its seeming smallness, Storybrooke has a great many more nooks and crannies than a regular town might. Now if he knew this stranger's name…well, then Rumplestiltskin could decide just who this man is and whether he lingers because he has a desperate soul or because he's planning an attack on the Dark One (perhaps the mob has finally gotten past their initial uselessness and is now thinking of killing the beast that helped bring them all here).
The man leaves before Rumplestiltskin can decide whether to go confront him, and his latest experiment burns away to nothing, distracting him with his frustration.
His son is so close. So close—and still Rumplestiltskin cannot reach him. He's useless, just as much a failure now as when he first let his son's hand slip from his.
Belle seems to sense his mood that evening, and in lieu of her giggles, she provides him comfort. This time, when she pulls him down to the couch with her, she has him lie back until his head rests in her lap. Her hands are soft and soothing through his hair (each touch, he imagines, is like a miracle, wiping away a bit more of his cloying, suffocating darkness).
"How's your search going, sweetheart?" she asks in the quietest, gentlest tone he's ever heard.
It still makes him want to either break down into sobs or lash out until everything in this cursed town is in splinters. He does neither (he can't; any movement at all would stop Belle from petting him, would banish this glimpse of Isabel, and that's the last thing he wants).
"Still nothing," he admits. "I'm disappointing him all over again. As if I could ever do anything but."
"He loves you," she says.
"How do you know that?" he asks, almost helplessly.
She smiles at him. "Because he wanted to save you. Because he included you in his games. Because he laughed with you when you played with him. Rumple, I may not know much about Baelfire, but everything you tell me about him proves that he loves you. So he'll forgive you."
Rumplestiltskin shakes his head involuntarily, and is sorry for it when it momentarily jars her hand from his brow. "He won't. How can he? What I did is unforgivable."
"Nothing is unforgivable."
His scoff has her giving him the closest thing to a scowl she's capable of.
"I want him to forgive me," he tries to explain. He suddenly feels too exposed, lying vulnerable like this, her hand so close to his heart, to his throat (her eyes so intent on him, stripping away all his facades). "I would do anything for that. But that's not the most important thing. He should know—I want him to know—that I love him. That I'm sorry. That I never forgot him."
"Of course you want that. But once he knows those things, surely he'll—"
"I know he can't," he says with as much finality as he can muster. Grasping for his cane, he rolls off her lap and to his feet, nearly stumbling before he finds his balance. "Believe me, I know exactly how impossible it is to forgive a parent that abandons you for power."
"That's not what happened," Belle says, softly. "You were afraid. It was a single moment of hesitation."
"It doesn't matter!" he snaps. "A parent who lets go when it matters most…there's no greater crime. Bae and I both know that. The way he looked at me… You want to know the last thing he said to me, as he slipped away into another world? He called me coward. He saw me for exactly who I am. There's no going back from that."
"Then why try so hard?" Slowly, Belle stands (he's grateful that she doesn't try to approach him). "Why spend so many hundreds of years and make so many convoluted plans to find him?"
"Because I'm sorry! Because I didn't mean to let him go! Because I remember him every second of every minute of every hour of every day—I'll never forget him! He deserves to know that!" Feeling the treacherous tears rising, Rumplestiltskin turns his back on her and strains for composure that doesn't come (his father is too close, too near, too real in his memories, snickering at him, gloating over him, letting him go).
Belle's hand on his shoulder, when it comes, is so light that Rumplestiltskin sags back into her. Her arms catch him, her small form bears him up, and clumsily, he turns until he can hold onto her, bury his face in her shoulder (take every bit of comfort she offers while she's still willing to give it to him).
"I'm sorry," she whispers, and he thinks she really is. She knows (she's intuitive and wise and so easily able to read between the lines of what he's said to the truth buried inside the part of his soul that's still that lost little boy), and she hurts for him, and this all on its own would make him love her if he weren't already whole (Truly?) in love with her. "I'm so sorry, Rumple."
"He didn't deserve this fate," he breathes. "It never should have happened, not to him, not to my beautiful boy."
"You didn't deserve it either," she says (he wishes he could believe her).
"I have to find him. I have to try to make it right."
"Of course you do. It's who you are," she replies.
There is something about Belle (a clarity of mind, perhaps, a purity of heart, brighter and sharper than even Isabel's) that has Rumplestiltskin nearly convinced he can be brave. It's probably a mistake (he'll doubtless regret it eventually), but he finds himself telling her about a night under the curse, when the puppet pretended to be his son, and he dared to think this could all be that easy. It means also telling her about the dagger, at least the basics of it, but when he leaves town, he'll need someone to look after it for him—and Belle is the only one he can (probably) trust.
She doesn't say much in response (though her eyes, he thinks, are more shadowed than they were before), but she pulls him closer against her on the couch and that is enough in its own way. What is better is when they both stand to head upstairs, and she takes his hand in both of hers and looks straight into his eyes. "I won't tell anyone, Rumplestiltskin," she says. "I promise. I choose you."
He dares not embrace her (he would clasp too tight, hold too long, forget to let her free), but he draws a knuckle down her cheek (she stays; still real) and Belle seems to read answer enough in that single motion.
That night, there are no kisses and they both stay in their nightclothes, but the way she holds him close, the caresses of her hand through his hair, the way she helps him breathe in tandem with her…it's more intimate, in its own way, and the closest he's ever felt to another person.
It makes him think again on his theory about magic in Storybrooke being sparked by True Love. Makes him stare at Isabel's brush, the next morning, at the spare hairs caught in the tines, and wonder.
(If a True Love potion cut this town off from the rest of the Land Without Magic…then another True Love potion, from a different True Love, what could it do?
But that's presumptuous. It's impossible. Not for him.)
If pressed, Rumplestiltskin would insist, as he heads downstairs to the kitchen, that the hair in a tiny vial in his pocket is the Dark One's doing. His darker impulses, enshrouded in his long curse, willing to go to any measures to accomplish his own ends. But if forced by a truth potion, he would have to admit that it is the cowardly spinner that has him tucking away a single strand of Belle's hair, the weak and helpless version of himself that long since learned that no one can ever love him.
Sending Belle off with a kiss, Rumplestiltskin shuts himself away in his shop, heedless of the fact that the strange man is once more hovering nearby. Let him wait. Whatever request he wants to make can't be as important as the answers this strand of hair might contain.
He stays too late, past dinner. Blinking at the darkness that has fallen around him while he hunched over his worktable, Rumplestiltskin realizes that he has a text from Belle, sent before noon, saying the dwarfs and Ruby had pulled her into the diner for some celebration involving fairy dust being found. Rumplestiltskin rolls his eyes and wonders at the slowness of the townspeople. Sure, he wrote the curse to bring them to a Land Without Magic, but at what point since the curse broke has it seemed that he didn't ensure magic would be brought with them?
A stroke of sentimentality has him diverting to the diner himself with the plan of picking up some pie for their teatime. It will make Belle smile (and hopefully relieve some of the darkness he put in her eyes last night), and that is reason enough to face the disdain of Granny and whatever other customers are eating a late dinner.
"Pie?" Emma asks, her brows arched high. With her coming in and him trying to leave, he doesn't have much choice other than to let her stand there and make small talk (as if she didn't let the Evil Queen go to threaten Belle). He does consider, for a brief second, bringing up their non-interference deal to make her move aside, but in the end he only smiles thinly at her.
"You have a problem with pie?" he asks.
She narrows her eyes. "No, just didn't take you for the sort with a sweet tooth."
"Well, I'm sure the things you know about me could fill a…well, what is smaller than a thimble?"
"Yeah, yeah, give me a break, there's a lot to pick up on since your masterplan played itself out," she says with a roll of her eyes, and despite himself, Rumplestiltskin actually smiles. There's something about Emma's brashness and in-your-face skepticism that (occasionally) overrules her heroic impulses enough for him to see something more in her than the usual do-gooder drivel.
"I think you mean the Queen's plan," he says with a mind for the eavesdropping townspeople behind him. "After all, it was her curse."
Emma backs up through the door so they're standing outside, away from prying ears. "Henry's book says you gave the curse to her."
"I don't give people things," he corrects fastidiously. "I make deals."
"Yeah, I got that." Emma hesitates, then says, "Look, I'm sorry about what happened with Belle, okay? I don't know how Regina got out, but—"
"Did you touch her?" It's curiosity mixed with a healthy dose of professional interest that has him asking the question he's sure he already knows the answer to.
"What?"
"Regina. Before she escaped. Did you touch her?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I was trying to get her to listen—for Henry's sake."
"Yes, well, you're all mixed up with the curse, Sheriff Swan, so a touch from you must have sparked her magic awake."
"Well, it didn't do a good job of it," she says, trying (and failing) to mask her discomfort with their topic. "She can't get it to work all the time. Mother Superior—"
"The Blue Fairy," Rumplestiltskin says, both so he can sneer at the interference of fairies and also make Emma squirm.
"Whatever. She said with—with fairy dust"—Emma shudders— "she can keep Regina from accessing her magic for a while."
"That's a finicky spell. It would require Regina's cooperation. I'm surprised she went along with it."
Emma frowns, which only makes her look more stalwart. "She did because I told her cooperating would allow her short supervised visits with Henry."
"The things we do for our children," he says, and despite the twisted smirk on his lips, he is totally sincere.
"Speaking of. Are you and your wife planning on pressing charges against Moe French?"
"I'll ask Belle."
"Belle." Emma studies him with a focus he doesn't appreciate. "That's not…Belle Belle, right? Like, you know?"
"No, Sheriff Swan, I'm afraid I don't."
"You know…Beauty and the Beast?"
Rumplestiltskin feels his shoulders drawing in, tension ratcheting through him. "Excuse me?"
"Cut the crap, Gold, we both know she's too good for you. I'm not insulting you by calling you a beast, I'm just saying there's a lot there that fits the fairytale."
"And a lot that doesn't," he says tightly. "But if you must know, I didn't know her in the old world."
"What?" Emma's look of startled confusion never fails to make him simultaneously amused and impatient. "If you didn't know each other, how'd you and she end up—"
"You'll have to ask your friend Regina. Though if you value the lives of Henry's mothers, you'd best keep her well away from Belle."
"Gold, if Belle doesn't want—"
"Belle makes her own decisions," he says shortly. "No one decides her fate but her. So if I were you, I wouldn't even think of trying to follow the same path Moe French did. Aside from Belle's wrath, you'd also be breaking our deal. You remember the one? Something about leaving me and mine alone?"
"That's not the only deal I remember," she says. "Gold—"
But he's not listening anymore. His attention is caught by a figure across the street, shadowed in the dusk light but still clearly recognizable. It's the man who's been loitering outside his shop day after day. He's average height with dark hair and rounded shoulders, and still nothing about him rings a bell in Rumplestiltskin's memory.
"You know people, Sheriff Swan," he interrupts whatever she's saying. "Who is that man there?"
"If this is a distraction—"
Rumplestiltskin narrows his eyes at her. "It's an honest question for the officer of the law. That man—"
Unfortunately, when he turns to point and Emma looks, there's no one there. The stranger must have slipped away in the moment he looked away.
"This seems familiar," Emma says. "You sure it's not August?"
"Not if he values his life," Rumplestiltskin mutters under his breath. At Emma's look of suspicion, he says, at a more normal volume, "Whoever it is has been hanging around outside my shop for the last week or so. Never comes in, never speaks, but he's always there."
"Maybe you have fans," she says sarcastically before a sudden gleam enters her eyes. "You know, speaking of deals, I do still owe you a favor. I could find out who this guy is for you. Be a nice way to clear the books."
Adjusting his stance, Rumplestiltskin studies this woman who was savior. "Oh, I don't need reminding that you owe me a favor," he says in his silkiest tone (the way her hackles immediately go up has him feeling more like himself). "But when the day comes that I call it due, it'll be for more than just giving me the name of a nobody who more than likely wants to make their own deal with me. Now, if you'll excuse me, Sheriff Swan, I'm sure my wife is wondering where I am."
Belle's exclamation of delight over the cherry pie is well worth the detour he took, and Rumplestiltskin savors each smile she gives him. Each touch she allows him. Each sweetheart she directs his way.
Regina is having trouble with her magic, Rumplestiltskin's own magic is entirely under his control, and Belle (for the moment) is happy. (And if his work in the shop today is any indication, he's closer than ever to breaking through the town line, meaning he's closer than ever to finding Bae.) All in all, he has a hard time remembering a better day.
"Cherry might be one of my favorite," Belle says. Her kiss tastes of cherries and vanilla, and Rumplestiltskin can't help but chuckle and say, "It's mine too now."
Her cheeks pinken as she catches his meaning, but she only kisses him again (not the last, though, because he takes her upstairs and they share dozens more that he refuses to count down).
At breakfast the next morning, she seems tentative, almost unsure.
"Belle? Sweetheart, what is it?" His heart threatens to lift from his chest, fear rising up (he hasn't kissed her this morning, not yet, and what if their last kiss has already happened, already passed him by?), but he sits at her side and takes her hand and tries not to look like the coward he is.
"I don't know how to bring this up," she says. "But…Rumple, ever since you told me about this dagger of yours…it scares me."
There's a knot in his stomach.
(She'll ask for it. She'll want to hold it. She'll see it as a contingency plan for the day she stops pretending he's anything but a monster.)
"Please, Rumple," she says. "Please tell me it's safe."
Rumplestiltskin stares at her, waiting for the rest. But there isn't more. She just looks at him, and the longer the silence stretches, the more afraid she looks.
"Rumple," she says in possibly the most broken tone he's ever heard from her. "It is safe, isn't it?"
"Yes," he says. "Yes, it's safe, my darling Belle."
There's an icy hand gripping the base of his spine.
(She'll ask to see it. She'll reach for it. The darkness that emanates from it will taint her pure soul, and he will not be able to save her from the lust for this one thing that can protect her from him.)
But Belle only sighs and leans into his chest so that he has to lift his arms and hug her to hold her up. "Keep it safe," she whispers against his throat. "I can't bear the thought of someone holding that much power over you."
"You do," he says before he can think better of it.
She stiffens.
"Belle, whatever you want, if it is anything that doesn't harm my quest for my son…it's yours. Don't you know that?"
"Because you want to give those things to me," she says, shifting so she can meet his eyes. "Because you want to make me happy. Because…because you love me. Not because I'm forcing you to. You don't think that, do you? I don't want to be another dagger to you, Rumple. I want to be the thing—the person—that makes you happy. That makes you feel safe. That helps you and gives back to you. That you can trust. And controlling you or forcing you—or holding the dagger—none of that would make you feel safe."
"It could make you safe," he whispers.
"No, it wouldn't," she says so firmly he cannot doubt her. "It would make me afraid of you." Before he can feel sick, she places her hands on his chest, holding him close, protecting his heart. "If I held it to control you, it would mean I saw you as less than human. As something that needed controlled." Her shudder rolls through them both before she slides her hands up to clasp behind his neck. "But I would never do that to you. If no one gets to make decisions for me, then the same holds true for you. I love you, sweetheart, and I trust you, and I want you to be safe."
"I love you too," he says, a single breath expelling this truth that not one individual cell within him can deny anymore. Pulling her close, he bends his head, hesitant, afraid to want too ferociously. But he needn't have worried: Belle lifts her face to cover the last inch herself and kisses him until he nearly forgets his own name (forgets, for just a second, that his name is branded on a dagger darker than any other talisman their world ever produced).
"Maybe," he dares to say (brave, for the first time since a castle burned and a boy waited at home for him), "maybe you could help me find a hiding place for it. For when I go."
"Because you want me to?" she checks.
"Because I trust you," he admits, and hopes this truth will not destroy him like so many others have (hopes that the kiss she gives him in answer is not their last).
