#bramble!fic

[bramblebriarrose]

Flash Fics

I'm taking prompts again, in the hope of getting some more writing done! (As ever, I can't promise that I will fulfil them, but I've done pretty well so far! 

Feel free to prompt rumbelle or anyelle or anything from my masterlist.

[bramblebriarrose]

Flash fic: Belle starts using snapchat, and proceeds to show the town the fluffy side of Rumple and their relationship. (Also, are you taking hiero/ives prompts?)

Granny deposited Gold’s order on the counter – two coffeesand a brown paper bag, already warm from the muffins inside – and smile at him.

Actually smiled.

“Not making breakfast this morning?” she asked,with something curiously like a twinkle tugging at her normally sterncountenance.

“No,” he replied tersely, before managing a moredismissive, “Obviously not.”

“Well,” Granny replied, inanely. “You have agood day.”

Gold glared at her as she turned to serve another customerbefore taking careful hold of the cardboard cup holder and the paper bag in hisfree hand. Leaning on his cane, he made his way to the closed diner door.

Normally opening doors while carrying anything was somethingof a production, forcing him to either balance all his weight on his good legwhile opening the door with his cane in hand, or finding a nearby place to dumpwhatever he was carrying for a moment while opening the door, then bracing thething with his body while he picked whatever he had been carrying back up.

While the whole palaver was a waste of his precious time,carrying out either ritual in public was nothing more than a reminder that thewhole world knew him to be a cripple. With Hook now safely ensconced at theSheriff’s side, it wouldn’t surprise him to learn that all of Storybrooke wereaware that he had gained the injury through base cowardliness.

Gold resented any knowledge about himself being shared –unless he was the one doing it, and with a price in mind.

If Belle hadn’t wanted coffee and a muffin, he wouldn’t even have tried to carry all of it.

Thankfully, he was saved from going through the wholeroutine when David Nolan appeared at his elbow and pulled the door wide open.

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” he asked. “Offto the beach?”

As the beach was an unrestricted space, anyone from towncould have seen him and Belle occasionally choosing to make a picnic of theirbreakfast, reclining peaceably on one of the low benches above the water.

“No,” Gold answered, disliking this sudden,over-familiar interest in his breakfast habits. “I’m meeting my wife atthe library. Now if you’ll ex—”

“Ah,” Nolan chuckled, cuffing him manfully on theshoulder. “The Reading Nook. Nice one, Gold.”

Too surprised to do more than nod mutely and stagger outinto the sunshine, he missed his opportunity to ask how in the hell Nolan knewabout the Reading Nook. While the beach was public property, the quiet momentshe and his wife spent curled up in the quiet area of the library in theblissful minutes before it opened were completely private.

The question plagued him until he arrived at the library,where Belle’s radiant smile as she welcomed him inside was enough to drive awayany distraction.

Taking their breakfast from him, she led the way deep insidethe library, to the cosy corner she had created for anyone truly wishing to getlost in a book.

“Shoes off,” she commanded, settling down on thecomfy pile of cushions.

Gold obliged her, lowering himself carefully beside her andstretching out his legs. Belle cuddled up to him, her thigh snug against his asthey sipped at their coffee.

“We match,” she noted happily, nodding towardstheir feet. Two pairs of stripy socks were propped up together on a cushion,his purple and blue, hers yellow and green. She wriggled slightly, pulling herphone from goodness knows where and raising it up to find the best angle tocapture a picture.

Belle had been dismissive of the phone at first, liking itonly for the opportunity it offered her to contact him throughout the day whenthey were apart. When she texted, her messages still had a tendency to flowover and beyond the word limit, each sentence precisely structured and neatlypunctuated. More recently, she had taken to capturing snapshots of their lifetogether using the inbuilt camera. They tended to be mundane, homey things: thecollection of shells that they had gathered together during their walks, the bookshelveshe’d had built for her, already groaning under the weight of their preciousload, or the richly dyed balls of yarn he had spun for her, ready and waitingto be looped and knotted into a warm blanket to snuggle under when the nightscolder.

Recently, she had developed quite an interest in documentingthe various meals and delicacies he loved to present her with, from the heavilyladen tray he placed on her knees when they had time to indulge in breakfast inbed, to the antique picnic basket he would fill with pastries and exotic fruitswhen their adventures took them further afield.

She was, herealised, particularly fond ofphotographing their shared breakfasts.

“What’s a clever caption for matching socks?” sheasked. “I know; c-u-t-e-s-y  t-o-o-t-s-i-e-s i-n  t-h-e  n-o-o-k-s-e-y,”she spelled out. “Perfect.”

There was some determined swiping at the screen before sheheld the phone up for his inspection. “Do the wiggles make it look likethe toes are moving or that they’re a bit whiffy?” she asked, in allseriousness.

“They look like they’re wriggling,” he decided,with as much gravity as he could must while sprawled upon a bean bag. “Belle,what are you doing?”

“Hmm? Oh, I’m just snapchatting,” she replied, asif that explained everything.

Considering the wording, it probably did.

“Who,” he pressed, finding that he had to clearhis throat a little to get the words out, “are you snapchattingwith?”

“I think it’s just ‘who are you snapchatting’ like 'whoare you texting,’” she corrected. “Although I’m not certain. Thereare only a few people in this town with phones from this decade and none ofthem give the impression of being particularly au fait with social networkparlance.”

“Is Granny one of them?” Gold asked throughtightly gritted teeth.

“Yes,” Belle answered brightly. “Although she’snot very good at it. There’s a finite appeal to plates of lasagne withheatwaves coming from them after all.”

“Charming, too?” He could feel his face heatingup.

“Don’t worry!” She smiled, bumping his shoulderwith her own. “The pictures only last for a couple of seconds and thendisappear forever. Look, I’m setting this one for five seconds, just enoughtime for people to be able to read the text and then it will be gone.”

“It vanishes?” Gold double checked. “Then it’sgone forever?”

“Sadly yes,” she clarified. “Some of thesecan be surprisingly affective. I’ll forever regret that I only set the DarkOnesie to show for only one second. My most popular snap to date.”

[bramblebriarrose]

TMI Tuesday

I've not done this before, but I've but some new fic out there recently and have decided to be brave.

My masterlist is here. Replies may come in fic form if I get the time!

[bramblebriarrose]

Flash Fic: Everything

ryik-the-rumbeller-oncer said: Blind Date AU’s are always awesome? Or how about a wee domestic Rumbelle? That is greatly needed right now.

I went with domestic…

 "Tea?"

"Please."

Belle accepts her cup with a grateful smile, her attention returning to the slim tablet balance against the arm of the sofa. Gold settles beside her, unable to entirely conceal the happy smile that lit his harsh features at the way she automatically moves to make room for him and the equally natural way her feet slide into his lap.

At first, these quiet afternoons had filled him with unease. He worried that Belle might be bored. She had never had the experience of a cursed life in Storybrooke, and as such was disinterested in the mundane pleasures offered by television and radio, once the initial fascination had worn off. She had never taken up scrapbooking or Pilates or whatever other hobbies had been inflicted on the womenfolk of the town under Regina's rule, and sometimes he worried that she had never been given the opportunity to discover her own interests.

One moment she had been hidden away in a dark corner of the hospital, the next she had been a constant fixture at his side. While he still grew cold when he considered those years she had been captive and could never, ever bring himself to regret her presence in his life, in his darker moments he couldn't sometimes wonder if she'd been meant for more.

Once she had longed for adventure. While Storybrooke was far from boring, Belle was destined to remain on the peripheries of the action, her association with him keeping her from ever being truly accepted by the heroes of the town. The recurring idea that she could somehow be used as a pawn against him meant that he was happiest when she was safely inside his home, yet he wasn't so selfish a creature to ignore the fact that she deserved a life of her own.

Belle was a creature of curiosity and industry. She had never been still in the Dark Castle, always darting from room to room. Seeing her curled up in the corner of the settee had unsettled him.

The biggest fear – and this was where his selfish nature could not be denied – was that perhaps he bored her. That without his castle and his easy magic he was just an ordinary man to her, a face amongst the crowd. That he stifled her. That his glorious, wild Belle would fade away like a hothouse bloom.

If he's honest with himself, he still feels that way sometimes.

Belle knows. He's never so much as mentioned it, besides suggesting that she may like to start a bookclub in town, or learn how to drive the car, or think about exploiting this world's cache of knowledge and continuing her education, yet somehow she knows. He can lie to her, much as he wishes he never needed to, but he can't hide from her. How she came to know him so well in the brief months they were together he will never know, yet somehow she can see to the heart of him. She probably understood his doubts before he did.

"I dreamed of this, you know," she tells him, allowing her book to rest face down as the reaches for her teacup.

"Oh?"

"Well, not this exactly," she corrects herself, gesturing to the opulent room. Regina had granted Mr Gold expensive tastes. "I imagined somewhere smaller, like the study in my father's house. There was a low, wide sofa there, much like this."

He doesn’t need to as when she imagined this; the only time they have been parted were the years of her incarceration. He closes his eyes briefly, then nods for her to continue.

"They weren't big thoughts," she confides. "Mostly I just thought about having you beside me. The thought that I could look up from a book or across the dinner table and you would be there."

Gold places a hand on her ankle where it rests upon his leg, the curve of her heel fitting perfectly to his thigh. He's not so accomplished at casual touches as Belle, although he's learning. It took a while to believe that she could truly welcome them. Slightly longer to dare to offer them.

"The idea that when I woke in the morning, or in the middle of the night, you would still be there. It helped. It still helps."

"Belle." It's not much more that a whisper, but he thinks she will hear his meaning all the same. He might have spent the last twenty-eight years without her memory, his heart had felt her loss. Having her back in his life seems less real than his cursed life sometimes. He too carries the fear that one day he might wake up.

"I like the idea that you know how l like my tea," she adds, taking another sip. "That you know to add exactly three quarters of a sugar and just a splash of milk. Little things. Family things."

"Just this?" Gold asks, gesturing to the narrow space between them, the wave of his hand somehow encompassing the quiet, even mundane afternoon and the restful silence they had shared.

"Just this," she agreed. "All of it. Everything."

"Everything," he agreed, enjoying the sound it made. After all, it was all he had to give.

[bramblebriarrose]

Dark Castle Rumbelle: Belle accidentally walks in on Rumple bathing

“And another thing,” Belle snapped, as if theirargument had paused only moments before and she hadn’t spent the last hourhunting down items of laundry that had mysteriously worked themselves free ofthe lines in the garden – despite the stillness of the day – and hiddenthemselves amongst the azaleas. She might have worked herself into a properfury had the shirts not been so completely free of creases that it would probablyhave been  counterproductive to tryironing any of it. As it was, she was still in a mild snit at having beenmagicked away in the middle of a discussion. “You promised me that youwould tell me about the sands of Agrabah,” she reminded him, striding intothe room to dump an armful of crisp linen onto the rich coverlet that swampedhis bed. “And yet you never—”

It was the sound that stilled her. Looking back later shewould acknowledge that the sound of someone sitting hurriedly upright in abathtub was distinctive enough to have explained itself. There had been nothingstopping her from whispering a mortified apology and backing out of the roomwith her eyes squeezed shut.

There certainly was no need for her head to whip in thedirection of the sound, yet somehow Belle found herself doing just that.Indeed, the speed with which she turned caused her neck to click.

Shoulders and torso bared to her gaze, his wild hair curlingfurther with the steam, Rumpelstiltskin stared back at her.

For once his odd face was completely blank. It was that thatcaught her attention most, even more than the confirmation that his odd,glittering skin really was everywhere, or the way his cheeks were flushed goldenwith the heat of the water. Seeing him without a sneer on his lips or his browcreased with impatience, feigned or no, was as shocking as seeing him naked. Themobility of his features and the constant change in expression, as if his moodsrippled through his skin like the splash of a stone’s toss into a millpond,were as much a part of the creature she had come to know as his elaborateclothes and his exaggerated gestures. Perhaps more so.

Expressionless, dragonskin coatless, and with his handssomewhere beneath the water – and no shewas not going to give in to the insane urge to look for them – this Rumpelstiltskinwas someone she had never met before.

Strangely, it didn’t occur to her to be afraid until later,when she had regained what little common sense she had been born with and fledto her room. There she shivered and shook beneath the bedclothes as sheconsidered just how close she may have come to having been eviscerated with startledmagic.

Likewise, it just didn’t occur to her to look away.

How long she must have stood there, she could not tell. Theonly saving grace was that her eyes had been riveted to his. Oh, she was awareof the rest of him, certainly. Aware enough to now appreciate that he was notthin as she had always supposed, but rather compact and lightly muscled. Awarethat the skin at the centre of his chest looked as rough as that on his face,but that it smoothed out and faded beneath his arms and across his shoulders.Aware that his nipples were small and dark and utterly unlike her own.

Yet all of this was somehow peripheral to the compellingsight of his open, unguarded face.

It hadn’t occurred to her that he needed to bathe. It wassuch an ordinary, human sort of thingto do. She had long suspected that he made her attend to the laundry and tofetch his supper simply because it was her duty as his housekeeper, rather thanbecause he needed her to. There had never been talk of any servants in thecastle and for all her snooping she had never found the slightest hint of apredecessor. Knowing that the Dark One soaped himself in a tin bath before thefire – no matter how large the bath or that the fire burned with all thecolours of her paintbox – made him more of a man to her than ever before, evenas his strange hide confirmed that he was something else entirely.

In the end it was Rumpelstiltskin who had moved first,drawing his knees towards his chest in an attempt at modesty – his or hers, shenever found out – for it was as if this small movement caused time to return tothe steamy room and for Belle to come at last to her senses.

Caring little for creases, Belle threw her armful of linentowards the bed, turned on her heel and fled from the room.

Once she reached her bedroom she turned the heavy key in herdoor, ignoring the sensible voice that reminded her that an iron lock wasunlikely to cause the Dark One a moment’s pause if he chose to chase her toground. Instead she crawled beneath the covers of her bed and hid her face inher hands.

When he didn’t arrive to tear her limb from limb, Belle’sterror gradually subsided into something closer to sadness.

There would be no more friendly arguments after this.

How could there be?

No more stories of far off lands, no more finagling him intobickering with her when she should have been completing her chores. No moreafternoons lingering over cups of tea and plates of shortbread in the draughtyhall. There was little chance of him treating her with gentle exasperationafter this. No allowing her to sit to close or ask too many questions.

It felt as if she had just worked out the twist at the endof a novel only to have the book snatched from her hands before she could findout if she was right. She’d seen Rumpelstiltskin in that room, really seen him, yet something told her that itwas for the last time even though it barely counted as a first.

Her stomach rumbled, intruding upon her thoughts. It wastime to fetch the tea things, she realised, wiping her face with the back ofher hand. That would be the brave thing to do. Better than hiding in her room, at any rate. She was afraid he might cometo fetch her if she didn’t appear with his supper. Worse, for the first time,she was afraid he might not.

[bramblebriarrose]

Prompt plea

This is another flashfic prompt plea. I've spent the whole weekend reading and haven't managed to write a thing.

( ryik-the-rumbeller-oncer, I've seen your prompt and am on my way to filling it!)

[bramblebriarrose]

Thank you to everyone who came up with prompts - I've had fun trying to fill some of them!

Anyone who prompted durzelle will have a bit a wait however, as I want to get more of Honour Over Glory complete before wandering any further down that path.

All flashfics are up for being continued - just drop me a prompt!

[bramblebriarrose]

Rumbelle Knight's Tale AU

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Rumpelstiltskinasked the busy courtyard at large.

As the only one close enough to hear him over the ruckus ofthe joust – or the only one without four legs and a tail – it fell to Belle toprovide reassurance.

“Probably,” she agreed, failing spectacularly. “Nowstand still, these buckles are tricky!”

As Rumple had schooled himself into utter indifferencewhenever Belle was knelt between his legs tightening various leather straps, it was easy to ignore her less than enthusiastic reply.

“Do you think she’s out there?” he asked.

“Milah? Of course,” Belle replied, yanking thestrap on his shin guards with unnecessary force. “She has nothing betterto do than sit around all day watching men try to skewer each other forsport”.

“Lady Milahis an aristocrat,” Rumple bristled. “I am honoured to fight in hername.”

Belle paused in her task to look up at him. Sat on herheels, her hands still resting on his thighs, even Rumple could admit that shepainted a pretty picture. Or at least she would, if she didn’t resort itdressing in boys’ clothes to gain admittance to the melee as his squire.

“She’s the one who ought to be honoured,” sheobjected, her fingers digging into his thigh muscles.

Rumple shifted awkwardly, uncomfortable at theuncharacteristic earnestness lighting her face. It always confused him whenBelle spoke with her true voice, rather than the roughened patter of thestables that deflected any awkward questions of what a woman of gentle birthmight be doing tending to the armour of a hedge knight rather than sitting withher peers in the cool of the stands.

Apparently Belle felt it too, for she dropped her hands andclambered to her feet, dusting the straw from her rough-hewn leggings.

“I mean, everyone ought to be honoured,” sheamended, not quite meeting his eye. “They’ll not have seen armour as fineas this in any tourney.”

“It’s fine armour, Belle,” he agreed. “Youhave a gift.”

“Yes, well,” she demurred, crossing to Queenie’sstall to check the mare’s nose guard was fastened correctly. “Remember thatwhen the first hit sends you flying. If you’re very luck, my armour might justbe good enough to save your neck.”

“Thanks, Belle,” he groaned.

Strangely enough, he found that he meant it.