Fic: Harmless - Chapter 9
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.
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
Baelfire wakes early, to the sound of his papa hobbling around in the kitchen. It’s too early for spinning - they need the sun risen for the light to be good enough, and papa eats breakfast before he works, always - and yet Rumpelstiltskin is out of his bed and leaving their home.
Bae knows that something important happened yesterday, that Belle and his papa have not agreed on what to do about the knight. He glimpses Rumpelstiltskin’s face as he passes Bae’s cubby, and it is set with something Bae has only seen a few times before: his papa is determined, his jaw set against the fear that so often grips him. Whatever he is leaving so early to do, he is terrified.
Papa’s fear should not cause Bae to feel the same, but it does, every time. Papa is a coward, but he is also one of the few fathers in the village still able to look after his son. The few other men in the village of fighting age are sickly or lame, as Papa is. Papa is in the best shape of them all.
Fic: Too Long On The Vine
Title: Too Long On The Vine (Not Quite Yet series)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Belle accidentally drank one of Rumpelstiltskin’s potions, and the recovery leaves her sick in bed. He tries to comfort her.
A/N: This follows on from ‘Masked Affection’ and ‘Honeyed Kisses’, but they’re not required reading. All you need to know is that Belle and Rumpelstiltskin are in the Dark Castle, and have a romantic/sexual relationship but are not yet at the ‘true love’ stage.
Written for Ched, who asked for Rumpelstiltskin feeding Belle grapes. I hope you like it!
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It’s only a little bit funny, he tells himself, the suffering of his housekeeper. Under normal circumstances, her pain would be the farthest thing from humorous - terrifying and gut-wrenching would surely be closer to the mark.
But the silly girl had brought this upon herself: snooping in his work rooms again, searching for something to get thick pink liquid out of paper without smudging the ink.
The liquid in question being a potion she spilt on his ledger.
Really, Belle hasn’t been blameless since yesterday afternoon.
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.
Fic: Harmless - Chapter 7
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.
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 7
Rumpelstiltskin, for a man who spends much of his life trying not to be noticed, certainly picks his moments to reappear.
Belle, as soon as the words left her mouth, had hoped that perhaps Bae could hold his tongue and keep to himself what she had said about Gaston. Perhaps her former fiancé would leave the village empty-handed and allow them to continue their lives as before.
But her sudden, thoughtless admission rings through the air, and meets Rumpelstiltskin as he comes in through the door.
Fic: Masked Affection
Title: Masked Affection
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Belle and Rumpelstiltskin share a bed, and yet she worries that he’s still holding back and hiding from her. She attempts to remedy this.
I co-opted two of Fyre’s up-for-adoption prompts: ‘She is on the table; he in the chair’ and ‘gold thread bondage’.
This also marks, oddly, 300,000 words of Rumbelle/OUAT fanfiction. So yeah, that happened.
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Belle had been interested by the golden thread Rumpelstiltskin spun from straw since the moment she first saw it. She liked to watch the way it shimmered as it was formed, the gleam of it in the sunlight. He caught her watching, sometimes, and laughed at her, sent her scurrying to some new task or other.
It grew to a fascination when, a month after her arrival in the castle, when he allowed her to run a piece through her fingers, and feel the texture.
Fic: Harmless - Chapter 6
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.
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
Marchie prompted: ‘Morraine comes to visit’
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Harmless
Chapter 6
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Bae doesn’t understand what has changed between Belle and his father, but Morraine seems to find it hysterically funny.
“I don’t understand why we have to hide,” he grumbles, as she pulls him down behind a bush to watch his father and stepmother, “They’re my family.”
Fic: Harmless - Chapter 5
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.
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 5
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Rumpelstiltskin spends the rest of the day in a mindless, almost entirely unthinking daze.
She said yes.
To a question he hadn’t even really been asking. A woman he’d known two weeks, been almost-friends with for all of a few days… and now she is to be his wife.
Fic: You Can’t Be Too Careful Anymore - Chapter 4
Title: You Can’t Be Too Careful Anymore - Chapter 4
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Rumpelstiltskin doesn’t know what he took on when he bargained for Belle as a housekeeper. He’s not the only one with a demon inside, and she has far less control than he does. (Or the one where Belle is a firestarter and her control slips)
Fic: The Third Girl
Title: The Third Girl
Rating: Generally PG-13, but some briefly explicit sexual references.
Summary: “What was her name? Margie? Verna…” The story behind those names, and the many girls who wore them. Rumbelle.
Marchie prompted: “Since his wife, he’s had women before Belle” ; “Planting dead flowers”; “Rumpelstiltskin doesn’t like it when she sings” ; “A trip on the stairs”, “There are no mirrors, there are no clocks”
Fic: Harmless - Chapter 4
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.
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 4
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“You shouldn’t know anything about me.” Belle says, quietly, and for once everything she says is the truth, “It’s dangerous.”
He laughs, a low and broken sound, the hollow note of a man beyond fear and sadness and pain, too tired to do more than smile, “I’ve sheltered an apparent fugitive for the past fortnight. I think the ship has sailed on dangerous.”
Fic: Harmless - Chapter 3
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.
Marchie prompted: There is something moving upstairs; Belle helps Bae with his homework.
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 3
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Bae stares out of the window through most of his lesson. He’s interested in learning - papa cannot read, not really, and it’s useful for getting anywhere beyond the village - but he’s easily distracted, his mind on other things, these days.
Morraine’s mother, Mistress Maisie, says he’s away with the fairies. Papa says he has a head full of sawdust, but he smiles when he says it, and Bae knows he wishes he could read too.
It’s just more interesting today to look out of the window, to where papa and Rose talk by papa’s lanolin barrel, and watch them smiling at each other. They look like the older boys and girls used to, before the war took them, right before the village elders would have them married and children would come.
Fic: Harmless - Chapter 2
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.
Marchie prompted: Bae beats Belle at Go Fish; Belle smells lanolin for the first time.
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 2
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Bae follows her, the girl who slept on their floor, as she vanishes into the woods. He follows because she couldn’t walk yesterday, and for all her smiles she is scared as papa and weaker still.
Bae pretends that papa is strong enough to look after them, but Bae has stopped trying to lie and say that he’s not terrified as a rabbit in crosshairs. And it’s alright; it has to be. The world is a dark and scary place, and papa knows more of it than Bae does. He has his reasons to be so afraid.
But Bae knows a wounded animal when she sleeps three feet from his bed, and so he follows her into the woods.
Fic: Harmless - Chapter 1
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’ve had this story in my head for months, and Marchie finally convinced (i.e: begged, pleaded and bullied) me to write it. So here goes: my second Big Damn AU.
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 1
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Everything is quiet in the village.
More than quiet: silent. It’s the kind of calm emptiness that only comes when everyone is locked up tight, hiding their children by firelight and quietly – quieter than mice and tiny crawling insects – mourning their dead.
Rumpelstiltskin is no exception. He cowers, and feels little shame anymore in doing so, with Baelfire never out of his line of sight.
