Fic: Harmless - Chapter 8

AU: Belle arrives, bruised and bleeding, on the doorstep of a lame spinner and his son. On the run from the war and its causes, her short stop-over becomes something else entirely.

A/N: I’m sorry this update took so long, but this chapter was one of the hardest I’ve ever tried to write. And it wouldn’t have come out in any form I like without Marchie’s help, so she deserves all the thanks for that. It also denotes a rating change: this chapter is M-rated. I have put asterisks where the M-bit starts and ends, if anyone wants to skip it.

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14

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Harmless
Chapter 8

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For all that their differences have been brokered and sorted through, Rumpelstiltskin still feels an odd current of tension hanging in the air through the rest of the day.

He spins with Bae outside, and the boy is wise enough to keep his mouth shut and not ask about the knight he met on the road, or his parents’ conversation inside the house. He knows better than to ask for answers that he doesn’t want to hear.

Rum sees nothing of Belle, and is somewhat glad of it. Their conversation that morning had been a little too intense, too personal, for him to want to talk again so soon.

But, of course, the sun sinks like the bastard it is, and it’s too dark to spin soon enough. Bae draws him away from the wheel when Belle calls for supper, and almost reluctantly Rumpelstiltskin follows his son inside.

She has prepared a small feast - very small, but a feast by their standards at least - and her smile is almost apologetic when they sit down to eat.

“Is there an occasion, dear?” he asks, as he helps himself to some of the meat she has cooked. She just shakes her head, blushes. He has never seen her blush before, and with the smile still in place she looks years younger. She looks her age.

“No, I just… I went a little mad, I think. Stress tends to make me over-productive.”

“Not complaining,” Bae says around a mouthful of food, “Was hungry.”

Rumpelstiltskin laughs, watches his boy shovel food into his mouth as if it’s his last meal on Earth. Bae’s growing fast, soon he’ll be tall as his father and more, especially if he eats at this rate.

All the better for the fighting, a traitorous voice in Rum’s mind whispers, but he ignores it. Whatever will happen will happen, he knows, and if he is to be branded a coward either way then why not simply enjoy what he has now? A wife he is coming to care deeply for, a son he loves more than life, and a home that is warmer than it has been in decades.

Belle giggles, “Slow down, Bae! You’ll choke!”

Bae just swallows his mouthful and gives her a look, “Will not.”

“Will too.” Belle counters, “And then we’ll have Morraine over to see your bright red face!”

Bae’s face does, indeed, go an interesting shade of crimson, and he looks back down at his food fixedly, eating slower with his stepmother’s eyes on him.

Their meal is shared with talk of nothing in particular, weather and work and the laundry that needs doing for tomorrow. They do not discuss the knight who is looking for his wife; they do not mention their activities of earlier, or the promises made.

It is not until Bae has gone to bed, and Rum and Belle are alone by the fire, that he dares to ask the question, “Will you ever wish to tell me?”

She looks up from her cat’s cradle, frowning, “Tell you what?”

“All that happened between your childhood with the knight, and your arrival here. I understand keeping the past where it lies,” he adds, hurriedly, “I just wish to know if there is more around the bend to worry about.”

She stares at him a moment, and her eyes are so young and lost and scared that she could be a girl of Bae’s age, facing war and loss for the first time. He wonders when they got this close, when it became possible for her to look at him so unguardedly. He wonders if he is such an open book to her eyes as well.

“I… I don’t know.” She admits, finally, “Why would you wish to hear such a story?”

“I would wish to know my wife.” He says, “And this story is such a part of you. But if you do not wish it told, then consider the matter dropped forever.”

She gives a little laugh, half-broken, and he is almost unsurprised when she rises from her chair beside him and wraps her arms around his shoulders. He holds her close, as close as he ever has in the middle of the night, and feels her trembling although no tears fall from her eyes.

“One day,” she promises, nodding, “One day you’ll know. You have my word.”

He nods in agreement, and just holds her closer.

Finally, she pulls away, and on impulse he pulls her back down again, so she is sat in his lap. She is a small, slight thing, still underweight from starvation, and even at her fullest he imagines she’d be a tiny slip of a woman. Even with his leg, his weaknesses, he can cradle her close as he used to Bae, and wrap his arms around her middle to hold her tightly.

He expects her to sigh and move away, to be reminded that she is broken, perhaps even beyond repair, and that his arms are not wanted here. That she is here in body but not yet in spirit.

And yet, when she does sigh, it is breathed against his neck, and her arms come to wrap around his torso, to help to hold her in place.

It is the best place in the world, he finds, sat watching the flames dance in the grate with his wife curled in his lap, and his feet stretched out on the stool she normally occupies, warmed by the fire. He has not felt content since well before the first war, before he returned home a coward rather than a soldier, before everything was sent to Hell in a hand-basket.

But here, now, in this place, with his son asleep in his bed, safe and sound, with the door locked and he closely pressed to a wife he is coming to adore, content is exactly how he feels.

At some point, she presses her face against his shoulder, her lips to his skin, and he nearly jerks out of his seat in surprise. They have never gone further than kisses to the mouth, hands safely rested no higher or lower than the waist or shoulders. Belle drew boundaries, and he was happy to keep to them.

But now she nuzzles his neck, kisses twice more before she looks up at him, as if asking if he is alright with this development. As if seeking permission.

*He cannot form words, not with her so close, not with so much of what feels like longing - an emotion long buried, useless to a man who must always wish for nothing more than what he has - burning in his blood. And so he simply leans down and captures her lips with his, kisses her softly and sweetly, showing her in actions that he will follow where she leads.

He wonders if that irrefutable fact will extend beyond this very domestic kind of magic. He wonders if one day he will follow her into battle, and do so willingly with her as his guide.

The idea should terrify him, but he has never trusted someone not of his blood so much as he does her.

She deepens their kiss with a tiny little moan, and he is lost. One hand comes from her waist to cradle the side of her head, as her tongue plays with his, and one of her hands drifts lower, to brush against his chest in smooth circles.

“Belle,” he chokes, when they part, “Baby-steps, remember?”

She looks up at him, and presses a kiss to the palm pressed against her jaw “Maybe it’s time to try running,” she answers, her voice quiet but steady, clear and resolved.

He leans back down to kiss her again, a little harder, deeper, the hand on her cheek moving up to comb through her hair, softer than most peasants’ and smooth, the dark waves slipping through his fingers. They sit there for what feels like the best kind of eternities, just kissing in the firelight, as her hand explores his torso through his rough shirt, daring as it sweeps low across his stomach, and then back up over his chest.

He can hardly breathe, hardly move, his hands fluttering between her hips and her ribs, trying to find a safe space; trying to touch her everywhere.

His heart races as her kisses move from his mouth down his jaw, back to where she had so tentatively kissed his neck before, but with more confidence, now, and something almost akin to passion. He has no idea how to respond: to kiss her back could involve hurting her or betraying his own incompetence, but to push her away could ruin everything they’ve worked to build.

His body betrays him; her tender caresses and tiny, stifled noises awaken something he had thought long buried by fear and by time, and he feels himself growing hard even as he wills himself to remain calm. He could so easily revert to how he was with Trassia, to releasing himself too early and disappointing her.

 When she finds and sucks oh so lightly on his pulse point, he cannot help but groan and shift in his seat.

Her lips are at his ear, and she whispers, “Bae will hear.”

“We can stop,” he says, “Go to sleep.”

But she shakes her head, “No, not this time.”

“Oh?” he brings his hand to cradle her chin, and raises her head so that they are face to face, “And why is that? Why tonight?”

“Because-“ she stops, sighs, looks down in thought, “Because you let me go, and it made me realise how much I want to stay. How little this scares me, now.”

He nods, but there is a knot forming in his stomach. The idea of being together, of taking his wife to bed, may no longer frighten her, but he cannot boast the same thing. “Rum?” she asks, pressing a soft, reassuring kiss to his jaw, “What’s wrong?”

“What if it doesn’t work?” he breathes, and he doesn’t know where he finds the courage to voice his fears, but perhaps he can steal some of her bravery to fill the space where his should be, “What if-“

“Rumpelstiltskin,” she murmurs, cutting him off, “Do you want this?”

“Yes,” he replies, because it is impossible to lie to her, because he’s too afraid that she’ll see through his lies anyway, or worse, that she’ll believe them, “But-“

“Then that’s what matters.” She says, a little note of firmness in her voice,

“I’m not…” he swallows hard, smiles in well-worn self mockery, “I’m not very good at this. You’ll most likely find me lacking.”

She lets out a little laugh, quiet and a little broken still, “And you think I am what? A trained courtesan?”

“You’re doing well so far,” he admits, and she giggles. He knows how to smile with her far better than he knows to kiss and caress, but even this little moment feels too new for his fragile nerves. Still, it is more comfortable to sit and talk with her than to imagine all the very many ways he could disappoint her this evening.

“I snuck books,” she admits, “Back… well, before. When I was younger.”

“Do you miss them?” he asks, as she draws him to his feet, and he follows unthinkingly, his hands clasped in hers, “The books?”

She looks at him, frowns, and then nods, “Yes. More than papa or my old friends, or even life as a Princess of the realm, I think. Yes, I miss the books.”

“My intelligent, educated wife,” he murmurs, fondly, and squeezes her hand, “You must know so much about such a very many different things.”

“Hmm,” she smiles, and although the sadness in her eyes does not fade, there is a laughing little crease beside her eyelids as she pulls him backward across the room, toward the ladder to their bed, “Yes. I could tell you the exact traditions for the extraction and keeping of Agrabhan vipers, and the folklore surrounding their poisons. I could tell you the names of all the children of the King of the Southlands, and to which foreign prince or princess each is betrothed. And what good is any of that to me here?”

They have reached the staircase, and stopped. Once they climb the ladder, Rum knows, then there is no going back. She will kiss him, and he will fumble and fail and be unable to do anything but disappoint her, or worse, drive her further back into the fears she has so bravely escaped.

But she is smiling at him, and behind the grief that never leaves her gaze, there is the kind of courage, of self confidence, that he has never managed to gain. If she can be willing to do this, even with whatever dark and awful memories lurk in her past, then surely he can set aside his own petty little fears.

They have managed without this and been happily married all the same. The worst that can happen is that it doesn’t happen at all, and what loss would that be?

So he allows her to lead him by the hand up to their straw bed, and they lie side by side, foreheads almost touching, breathing the same air.

“It is all knowledge.” He murmurs, in answer to her previous question, and she frowns in confusion.

“What is?”

“Everything you have in your head. You know of lands I have never even heard of, and even if we will never see them, it’s something to be valued.”

“It can’t keep us safe.” She murmurs, and he can see the tears threatening to fall, and kisses her to keep them at bay.

“Nothing can,” he replies, his hands tracing circles against her hips, needing movement to offset the nervous tension coiling in his stomach, “But if we don’t look outside, we can pretend otherwise for a while.”

“That sounds good.” She nods, and shifts closer, so they are pressed together without an inch of daylight between them. She kisses him again, her hands shifting and unsure at his waist, and he knows what comes next. They’re already half past the point of no return, and refusing to go further would only be at least as bad as continuing and failing. Better that she know what kind of incompetent coward she married; better that at least here, in their bed, there are no secrets between them.

With shaking hands - and amazed he can move at all to help her, when this could go wrong so very easily - he covers hers, and together they shift his loose trousers and underclothes from his hips, and he wriggles his legs to shift them off over his feet.

His tunic is long enough to preserve some modesty, but it doesn’t stop him from almost turning crimson as her eyes meet his. “Me next,” she says, voice quiet and more timid than he’s ever heard it, “Right?”

He nods, hands still shaking, eyes wide, and swallows hard as they do the same for her, her trousers and underwear joining his at the end of the bed.

They are still mostly covered, as modest as they usually are when they curl in their separate blankets in their shared bed and sleep side by side, and yet Rumpelstiltskin feels all at once entirely naked, vulnerable.

He takes some comfort from the fact that she appears the same, trembling as he is and swallowing hard when she meets his eyes.

From what he remembers, in a dim and distant past of the few village girls before his wife, and what Trassia had tried to impress upon him in their marriage, nervousness in a woman does not help things along. He is doomed to failure as a husband, at least in this area, but the least he can do is make her comfortable as he fumbles and falls apart.

So he kisses her again, slowly, and tries to find all the little hidden places he has learnt in her mouth that please her, that make her shiver and hold onto him. A month of practice has given him this much skill, at least, so she is breathing heavily when they part, her full lips swollen.

His mind is addled, from fear and from the very sensation of her skin against his, but he gropes for any knowledge he has of this at all, anything he can remember from his youth or his first marriage that could help.

He rolls them over, so that she is on her back, and tries running one hand down her front, cupping her breast through her tunic and kneading it gently with his palm and fingers. Perhaps he presses a little hard, or not enough, but when he looks back at her face and pauses she is staring at him.

“Is this all right?” he asks, “Tell-“ he pauses, swallows, “Tell me if something… If it feels good or doesn’t.”

“That… yes,” she nods, and lies back, her head on the rough pillow, “That feels good. Keep going.”

He does as she asks, repeats the motion, and is certain that he doesn’t imagine the little gasping sound she makes when his thumb brushes the tip. Emboldened by her response, he tries once more, and her eyes flutter closed.

He moves his hand across, does the same on the other side, brushing her nipple with his thumb through her tunic and massaging the soft flesh with his palm.

He leans down to kiss her, every movement of his hand and his lips tentative and soft. He wants to be able to stop the second he does something wrong, and figures that if he never does anything too much, the chances of failure decrease.

He has almost exhausted, even at this early stage, the very few bedroom acts he has any practice in, but there is one more thing he can try before giving up entirely. He trails his hand lower, from her breast and down her stomach, over the ribs he can feel even through her tunic and across the flat expanse of her belly, to rest on her hip.

He remembers the scandalous tales the boys had told when he was a lad, knows where he is supposed to place his fingers next. But in this moment, he is too nervous to move from this safe space, to touch lower, where it would be so easy to do something painful or just uncomfortable, and break the warm little spell that has been cast over the pair of them.

Her eyes flutter open at his stillness, and he rubs calming little circles on her side with his thumb, trying to summon whatever courage he has ever had and move further.

Somehow, the uncertainty in her bright blue eyes is what causes him to finally take action. He is comforted, perhaps more than he should be, by the fact that he is not alone in fearing whatever next step they are supposed to take. They are in this together; perhaps they always have been.

And so he brings his only-slightly trembling hand still lower, and up under the hem of her rough tunic, to brush the warmth between her legs. She goes still all over, rigid and tense, her legs clamping around his wrist to prevent him from going any further. “Belle?”

She stares at him, but her eyes are wide with incredulity more than fear, however present the fear may be. He curls his fingertips back, away, shifts so that all he can feel is her inner thighs and nothing higher, nothing more private than that, “Are you alright? Do you want to stop? I’m so sorry, I told you that I had no idea what to do…“ His apologies come in a useless babble, awkward and miserable. They should never have done this, and coward that he was he was too scared even to say no for the good of their tender little marriage.

“What…” she breathes, “What’re you doing?”

“I…” it dawns on him - how did he not know this before? - that through all that she might have done, or had done to her, there may be things in the martial bed that he knows better than she. “It’s supposed to help.” He finishes, lamely, “With… you know, the rest.”

“Oh.” She nods, but the fear in her eyes is wild and bright, “Right. Did…” she’s about to mention his first wife, before she stops herself, “I mean… it’s okay?”

“Let me try,” he says, summoning a soothing, almost sure tone from somewhere he cannot name. “I can’t promise anything, but… I think this is supposed to work better if… if you feel something before me.”

“Okay,” she breathes, deeply, and relaxes her thighs a little, allows him to move once more, “Okay,” she says it again and again, until it sounds as if she’s chanting, this one word a mantra.

He wishes he could stop, now, the fear of getting this wrong and ruining everything almost too much to bear. But he has to be the strong one here, a rarity in their relationship: he has to pretend at least for her sake that he knows what he’s doing, that all will be well.

He brings his hand up once more, brushes against her tender places, softly and slowly, trying to gauge her reaction. She is shaking all over, but she does not tense up again, doesn’t try to move him away.

He finds - entirely by accident - after a few minutes of soft exploration and her soft, rapid breathing, one place that makes her go stiff all over, and make an odd little sound. “Belle?” he asks, worried, hoping he didn’t find some long-lost scar, manage with his fumbling, unskilled hands to somehow hurt her.

“Yes,” she nods, “Um… yeah, that… that’s good. Keep doing that.” She manages a smile, a weak and fragile thing, but genuine. She means it. He’s managed to do something right.

He nods, a little shakily, and tries to repeat the motion. He tries twice more before he hits the right spot again, and she makes that same odd little noise. He wonders if that is the sound she makes with pleasure: he had never managed to do anything at all with his first wife to know what women would sound like if a man managed to please them in this way.

It’s easier, now, with this little bit of practice, to do the same twice or three times more, until she is shaking once more, but loosely, without the tension she had shown before.

He tries to ignore the little stab of wanting - and what an odd thing it feels now, to want after so long without wanting at all - that comes with feeling the moisture pooling between her thighs. He almost groans aloud, at knowing that somehow, despite his lack of any skill at all in this area, he has managed to do something right. That he has caused her to want too, and to want him at that.

“Stop,” she breathes, after a little while longer, and he does so immediately. He has probably done something too much, and now he has ruined it and confirmed his own fears. But he clamps down on that thought: if she is being brave then so shall he be. Just for once: just now. He can do this for her.

“What is it, love?” he asks, the endearment coming from his lips before he can stop it, “What’s wrong?”

“I… I’m not sure.” She frowns, “It’s just… a lot, you know? It’s good, it’s really good,” she reassures him, even now, “But it feels like… like something’s going to end. I don’t remember enough of my books to know…” she sighs in frustration, “It’s a little overwhelming.”

He actually manages a small smile, “I think that it’s a good thing?” he frowns too, thinking back, “I think it doesn’t matter so long as the same doesn’t happen to me.”

“Oh.” She laughs, a sound of total relief, and nods, “Okay, yes. That sounds right.”

“Okay?” he asks, still a little concerned, but she nods again.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine. It was just a little much to handle for now.” She leans up, wraps her arms around his shoulders and kisses him again, “Maybe…” she murmurs against his lips, “Maybe we should just…”

He pulls back to see her gesturing between them, and guesses the rest. He swallows, hard. At least now, now that she looks so much more relaxed and has had at least a little pleasure, perhaps it won’t end so badly. It doesn’t stop his fears entirely, but it helps a little.

“Yes.” He nods, and manoeuvres them so that she is beneath him, so that their hips are aligned and everything is ready. “No time like the present, I suppose.”

She actually laughs, wonderful little thing that she is, as she kisses him once more, “You act as if you’re the one who fears this.” She says, fondly.

“I…” he looks at her a moment, wondering if this is the time to lie, to claim confidence and masculine understanding. But Belle is his wife, and she has seen him terrified and anxious and untrusting far more than she has seen him happy or self-confident. He barely even knew how to do those things anymore, until she showed up on his doorstep. She will not believe a brave lie, “I don’t… this is important, and I am usually terrible at important things.”

“Terrible isn’t a word I’d choose so far,” she whispers, and why does she keep kissing him? Why does it feel as if she is reassuring him, when she is supposed to be the one in need of soothing? “You’re not trying to hurt me, and that means the world.”

“I’d never want to hurt you,” he tells her, trembling with the effort not to bolt even now. He wonders if there is something deeply wrong with him, that even here, with his wife beautiful and willing beneath him, his fear outweighs even desire for her. “Never.”

“I know.” She nods, and her smile is just this side of tearful, “My husband, my tender-hearted husband.” She holds him to her, croons this in his ear, and so when he enters her they are clasped together, as close as is possible.

She makes some noise, some soft, whimpering noise against his cheek, and he cannot tell if it is in pleasure or pain. Slowly, he moves a little out of her and rocks back inside, and despite her soft little noises - pain, he thinks, most likely more than pleasure - she strokes the back of his head, fingers woven in his hair, as if to comfort him that he has not done something unspeakable, something wrong. Not yet, not yet, and this part he remembers. This part is doable, if not well or with any finesse.

He had not imagined the sensation of being inside her, of truly taking his wife, but he has to admit he that is grateful for it. Had he imagined this, every aspect of being with her - the tenderness and wonder; the warm, wet heat of her - then he would have most likely ruined it with eagerness, or worse, by pressuring her and hurting her heart.

He knows he cannot last long, not after such a long time without so much as touch, and certainly not with her kissing him and stroking his hair. He wishes he could bring her more pleasure first, that he knew what to do to make her feel just a little of how he does, of how glad he is that she didn’t let him succumb to fear, that they made it this far. He settles for kissing her, as well as he can while he loses his mind trying to hold back, only rocking against her to reduce the pain he causes, and bringing one hand from where it is braced beside her head to cradle her cheek.

He could love this woman, so very easily. He knows the truth of these things, that love is for youngsters, for children, that the moment there is anything close to it in this world then something greater will come to destroy it. But for this moment, this one fleeting moment with her face in his hand, and every inch of him surrounded by her arms and her body, yes, he loves her.

And it is with this thought that he loses his battle for control, and spills himself inside of her, his eyes briefly squeezing closed as the release rushes through him. He makes some embarrassing groaning noise which he buries in the side of her neck, and he apologises with a tender kiss pressed there, that he couldn’t do better than this even for her.

*But she is still petting his hair, even as he slips out of her and rolls them onto their sides, so he can hold her against him and murmur apologies into her hair.

“Why?” she asks, pulling back to look up at him, her arms wound around his neck still, “What are you sorry for?”

“You deserve better: you deserve someone who can please you, someone who can do more than this for you.”

“Hey,” she soothes, as if he is Baelfire after a nightmare, hugging him close for a moment “Shh, shh, it’s okay. We’re okay. Better than, even.” She is close to beaming as she looks back up at him, and it is as if the sun has come out, her smile brighter than he has ever seen it, “We did it. We’re married now, wholly and truly.”

“We’ll try harder next time,” he promises, not even realising that he is also promising a next time in with the deal, “I’ll spend more time on you.”

“It barely hurt at all,” she tells him, reading his mind through some power she has yet to explain, “Nothing compared to…” she stops, looks down, the lights in her eyes dying just a little, “Nothing I couldn’t understand, didn’t expect. Far less than I expected. And it won’t at all, next time,” she smiles again, agreeing to his proposal without the words having to be said aloud, “Next time we’ll know what to do.”

“Next time.” He promises, nodding, and then turns her gently over so that her back is pressed to his front, as they are most nights, as close as can be as he trails little kisses over her neck, and she wriggles in what he thinks might be delight.

They fall asleep that way, curled together and smiling, and Rumpelstiltskin hasn’t been so comfortable, so contented, in an eternity.

The nightmares come that night, of course they do. The nightmares come for them all, even on the best of nights. The soldiers in Rumpelstiltskin’s dream, though, no longer come for Bae. Instead, their leader has a face: he is the stranger, the one Baelfire saw. Sir Gaston, his wife’s former paramour. The man who knows her face and her voice, who would have held her as Rumpelstiltskin now does if things had gone differently.

In his dream, the worst part is her leaving. She doesn’t scream, doesn’t fight, just walks with dead eyes and a quiet mouth to the knight’s horse. She is being brave, saving them all. And he has to watch her go in silence.

He wakes in the small hours of the morning, and presses a kiss to his wife’s hair. He knows what he must do, he knows, and he wonders if he really did steal some of her courage in the night.

He stumps in silence through the house as he dresses, and grabs a roll of bread for breakfast. He hopes he can be back before his wife and child wake; he hopes he will come back at all.