Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Gideon (Once Upon a Time), Prince Charming | David Nolan, Mad Hatter | Jefferson, Evil Queen | Regina Mills, Red Riding Hood | Ruby, Ariel (Once Upon a Time), Original Characters
Additional Tags: Rumbelle Secret Santa 2022, RSS 2022, Fluff, Angst, Humor, Storybrooke (Once Upon a Time), Missing Years, Family, Awkward Dates, Romance
Summary: With a new, restless baby, the Golds are struggling to find peace. Belle isn't getting enough sleep, Gideon doesn't feel like he has enough attention, and Rumple just wants to make his wife feel special. When their usual hamburger date gets rejected, Rumple turns to his friends for advice. David knows about love life after children, but his take on it is royal and less than helpful. Jefferson wasn't always a single father, but as a man who never went anywhere after his child was born, his dates are a little off from the norm. Enter Regina, who out of everyone, knows how help Rumple create the grandest of gestures hidden within a display of power. Meanwhile, Belle is left to struggle with her own troubles. If she tells Rumple he's trying too hard, she'll hurt his feelings or worse, make him shut down entirely. Ruby and Ariel to the rescue! Will our favorite couple ever find their happily ever after, or will they have to give in to the fact that clumsy dates are just the start of their new beginning?
Created for @leni-ba for the Rumbelle Secret Santa of 2022.
Read on AO3
How to Date a Librarian - Chapter 1
Darkness filled the main bedroom of the Golds' pink Victorian, making Rumple shuffle uneasily through the space to find the edge of the bed. At three o'clock in the morning all of Storybrooke was silent and still, at least that was the case now that he'd managed to get Gideon back to sleep. Their newborn was an exceptionally needy being, wanting contact at all hours. He also had a powerful set of lugs. It was a miracle that none of their neighbors were complaining about the noise. Then again, they were probably afraid to say something, lest the terrible Dark One turn them into toads.
"Is he really asleep?" Belle’s gentle moan was muffled by the covers that piled up around her shoulders.
"Finally," Rumple assured her as he got into bed.
She snuggled close and let out a deep sigh. "Do you think he’s so uncomfortable because he can still see his past?"
"I doubt it." Rumple didn't want to think of that horror. No one should have to endure visions of the things Gideon had told him about, let alone someone so small and innocent. He felt cursed as a parent, forever unable to reach through some magical void and solve the problems of either of his children after he had created them himself.
Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Gideon (Once Upon a Time)
Additional Tags: Family, post episode, Missing Years, Romance, Smut
Summary: Gideon tells his father of his mother's worry, and so Rumplestiltskin shows his wife that he, too, is happy. Written from the dialogue prompt, “Do you regret it.” For @emospritelet
Read on AO3
Looking In From the Almost Outside
It was, Rumplestiltskin had come to realize, indicative of his son’s last experience at college based on how far away from the house he had the portal bring him to the Edge of Realms. It was a simple correlation; the further Gideon walked, the harder his last days or weeks had been, and the more the boy had on his mind.
He shook his head at himself. Hardly a boy any more - although he’d always be a boy in Rumple’s heart - but a young man.
“Father?”
Rumplestiltskin blinked. He hadn’t heard Gideon’s footsteps, and he also hadn’t realized how far he had wandered from the house. Did it mean that he, too, had too much on his mind. He turned and offered his son a smile, and then opened his arms to hold his son tightly as the young man stepped forward and wrapped strong arms around him.
“Mother was worried,” Gideon told him as he stepped back, but neither man let go of the other. “She said you’ve been out here some time.”
“I’m all right, son,” he said. “I was just thinking.” He gave Gideon an apologetic look. “I didn’t mean to worry your mother.”
“I know,” Gideon gave him a verbal shrug. “But I said I’d come out here to find you. We’ll be eating soon.”
Rumplestiltskin chuckled, answering Gideon’s quizzical look with one of extreme fondness. “She’s been looking forward to cooking for you again.”
Gideon shook his head. “I’m sure she enjoys cooking for you too.”
“It’s not the same,” Rumplestiltskin told him with a smile and a squeeze of his arm. “Come on, we’ll be in trouble if we keep her waiting.”
As they walked, Rumplestiltskin felt the tension in his son’s body, almost heard the way he deliberately held whatever was on his mind inside.
“What is it, son?” he asked after a little while.
“I just wondered what it was you were thinking?” he answered. “To be out here by yourself. It’s unusual for you. You’re usually t-ogether.”
The slight catch in Gideon’s voice almost brought him up short, realizing that it was not only Belle that was worried at his meditative walk, and felt suddenly selfish for taking the time to try and settle the disquiet in his own soul. No matter how slowly, time was passing. He had noticed, and he wasn’t ready to have noticed.
“Nostalgia… Gideon,” he said hesitantly, not at all convinced that his son believed the veracity of the single word. Not even sure that he believed it. After so many years of spinning lies and embracing obfuscation, he seemed to have lost his edge, so added, after another moment, “You’re so… grown and—”
Gideon sighed softly and gently tugged him to a halt. “Mother worries too, Papa.”
The very fact that Gideon used the childhood name, dropping all formality, brought tears to his eyes even before the other words his son had spoken registered. “She worries that you only agreed to be here for her happiness and not because it was what you wanted too.”
Rumplestiltskin felt his heart lurch, an uncomfortable prickle of something that felt like fear rushing through his being. Fear made no sense, but that was the only name he could put to it. Fear that he had hurt her all over again.
“She told you that?” he asked, too aware that he failed to keep the shock and emotion from his voice.
“She didn’t have to,” Gideon confessed. “The two of you are always so in tune, so alike in your feelings that it was as obvious to me as daybreak.”
“Gideon,” he started, the words quivering inside his unsettled body. He felt on the brink of releasing the gathered tears. “I… I… I don’t want your mother to worry.”
“I know,” his son answered, his tone first rising and then falling in the way it always did when he was stating an obvious truth. “It’s just… she thinks her reasons for asking this of you are—”
“Her reasons for asking are perfectly sound, and make the most sense, even to me,” Rumplestiltskin interrupted. “I might not have realized it at the time, and… and I know we all lived a fulfilling time in all of our adventures, but… but she was right. It was time to settle down.”
He turned then, and Gideon turned with him, the both of them gazing on the house that he and Belle had built with their own two hands, and felt the peace of it envelope him again. Time would go on. It would take Belle and even, eventually, Gideon with it, leaving him behind, but he had to have faith that his beautiful, clever wife had found the answer, and it was only a matter of waiting for the right moment.
Still… he couldn’t have Belle - or Gideon - worrying that he was doing anything other than he wanted to do.
“At first it may have been for your mother’s sake that I agreed to build this house and plant our roots here, but… in the building of it, I found that it was my happiness too,” he said.
Gideon smiled.
“I know, Papa,” he said, “But perhaps Mother can’t see that through her own worry.” He shrugged then and added, “The two of you are more alike than I think even you know.”
Rumplestiltskin was about to answer, when the sweet, clear voice of his beloved Belle sounded from the doorway of their home, calling them in for dinner.
**
He had no idea how long he stood in the doorway, watching as Belle sat in front of the dressing table mirror, smoothing the cream, that they had made together, onto her face. She was going about her nightly routine as if he were not watching, though he knew she knew he was.
“You are allowed to come in,” she said with a chuckle in her voice, turning on her stool to look at him, she started to take the pins from her hair before she turned back to reach for the hairbrush.
Rumplestiltskin moved to her side quickly enough to beat her to the brush, catching her hand and bringing it to his lips, to bestow a delicate kiss there.
“Allow me,” he said.
“Only if you tell me why you were lurking in the doorway,” she teased, but allowed him to take up the brush and begin to run it through her long hair.
“Can not a man admire his beautiful wife?” he asked softly, moving his hand in an even stroke to ease the brush through her hair to banish the tangles of the day.
“Hmm,” she answered Her gaze meeting his in the mirror was amused, but knowing. “You’re up to something.”
“Yes,” he confessed, allowing the hint of want to sparkle in his eyes.
“I know you, Rumple,” she said, “far too well for you to fool me with your playful distractions.”
“Playful distractions?” He quirked an eyebrow. “I’ll give you ‘playful distractions’,” he warned in a light tone, before he leaned closer to murmur into the shell of her ear, “or perhaps that’s what you’re hoping.”
Belle chuckled, but did not answer his accusation one way or another, simply leaned back into his tender caresses as he abandoned the hairbrush for running his fingers through her hair, and planting delicate kisses on her neck as he swept her hair to one side.
“Do you remember the first time you did this?” she asked after a moment.
“Your hair was shorter then,” he said.
“And more uniform in color,” she said, meant as a quip he knew, but he could still hear the undertones of worry in her voice. “Less gray.”
He picked up, and ran his fingers through, the long section of silver hair that cascaded from near her temple. “Like a silver moonbeam has kissed you, my love, that’s all.”
“Flatterer,” she murmured.
He wound the strand of hair around his fingers, and moved to perch on the surface of the dressing table, looking deep into her eyes. “No,” he said. “It’s the truth, Belle.”
Before she could answer, he leaned forward to kiss her, the softness of his lips tenderly parting her own to allow the gentle sweep of his tongue against hers. After only a moment, she wrapped her arms tightly around his shoulders, and took possession of the kiss, deepening it and melting against him as he straightened, and lifted her to him.
“Take me to bed, Rumple,” she whispered against his mouth as she broke the kiss.
“Always, sweetheart,” he murmured in return, and wrapped his arms around her more securely to carry her across to their bed.
He set her down softly, and joined her, beside her on the comforter, somehow without taking his arms from around her.
Their caresses were unhurried, loving and lazy, like a languid river in the summer’s heat. He gasped softly as she nipped at his shoulder, beside his collar bone, arching her back as he teased her nipple through her soft, cotton nightgown - lace edged and as beautiful as she. Each knew the other well, but every touch held the reverence of the first time. Fingertips grazed sensitive skin, awakening to greater desire the more their bodies brushed, each against the other.
He unfastened the ties of her nightdress and she the fastenings of his clothing, leather and lace succumbed to their need to release each to the other until they could press together, skin to skin, until his kisses could anoint her body, breast to hip, to thighs that trembled with the need of his lips as he bathed her with his tongue. He breathed in the musk of her arousal, tasted the sweetness of her, and hardened in want of her.
She moaned softly, and drew him up to cover her, lifting her face to the warmth of him, and the heat of his kisses; parted her thighs and drew him to her, against her… within her, arching to take all of him, and breaking the deepest of kisses with a gasp.
As unhurried as their caresses were, so was their lovemaking. He took his time to rise and fall against her, leaving her alternately filled and empty, moaning at the way the perfection of her wet heat sheathed him, gripped him, fluttered against him, first in the soft rhythm of her rising pleasure, and then, as he too peaked, clutched against him as she drank him deeper.
She cradled his head against her breast as breathless they both surrendered to momentary stillness, until she began to tenderly run her fingers through his hair left damp by their passions. He nuzzled closer and tightened his arm about her waist, breathing evenly against her as they each caught their breath.
She spoke into the peace of their room, a soft voice, loving, but tentative.
“Do you regret it?” she asked softly.
He raised his head and shifted so that he could see her face in the half light, the radiance of the eternal sun shaded by the thick drapes. He knew he should have asked what he should regret, but he also knew she would be aware their son would share his concerns. Instead he answered her. his tone matching hers.
“Never, sweetheart,” he said. “Here, with you, I am complete.”
Fandom: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Gideon (Once Upon a Time)
Additional Tags: Family, Fluff, Fluffapalooza, Travel, Missing Years
Summary:
While traveling in another realm, Belle pines for the little tea shops of Europe and Gideon works to make her dream come true.
The Tea Shop
Gideon watched as the outer shell of the sand wall he was building crumbled beneath his hands. "It's no use, Papa. My side won't stay together like yours." He wanted his part of their joint creation to be as perfect and straight as his father's, instead it was a sloppy mess of uneven lumps. His fists shot down into the river’s sandy shoreline, hitting harder than he intended and jarring his shoulders.
"It's all right, Gideon." The rumble of his father's soft assurances immediately soothed the ache in both his body and his heart. "I bet we can find out what the trouble is."
Keeping on his knees, his father shifted position in an awkward kind of dance around the castle, studying it from all angles as he moved. Gideon watched, intrigued by the examination, and found himself mimicking his papa's earnest expression. Sometimes just doing that helped him see the problem.
Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Gideon (Once Upon a Time)
Additional Tags: Family, Fluff, Travel, Missing Years, Monthly Rumbelling November 2021 (Once Upon a Time)
Series: Part 51 of Monthly Rumbelling 2021, Part 10 of Growing Up
Summary: The Golds are traveling through Europe and accidentally end up as the newest residents of a very different sort of campsite.
Written for November's Monthly Rumbelling
Mobile
The steady clicking and clacking of the train over its tracks was a soothing sound to Gideon, one he’d become accustomed to in his family’s travels through Europe. Since his father never went anywhere in a plane, the Golds had been seeing the world through railways, seas, and rivers when they didn’t have a car with them. Though his father preferred taking luxury ships from port to port, Gideon enjoyed the trains more. Ships only gave you the basic idea of a place as you peered out into the distance, but trains gave you details. He spent hours staring out at old factories and quaint homes, seaside cottages and modern stations. Every city had its own story to tell, spat out at him in the rush of a minute or two before the page was turned and another came along with a completely different look and history.
Gideon never took his eyes off the windows if he could help it. When the family walked from car to car, one of his parents had to stand ahead of him and one behind so that when he ran into someone it would always be his mother or father. He stared out through the day and into the night. In bed he would look out into the darkness and catch glimpses of light flicking by, imagining what each flash of color might be and who could be living in their glow. Their brilliant shine put him to sleep and in the morning the outside world was the first thing he took in when his eyes opened.
Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Gideon (Once Upon a Time)
Additional Tags: Family, Fluff, Missing Years, A Monthly Rumbelling September 2021 (Once Upon A Time)
Series: Part 45 of Monthly Rumbelling 2021
Summary: Things are getting a little hot in the kitchen and for once Gideon's not the one to blame for cooling things down.
Written for September's Monthly Rumbelling.
Teeth
After a full day wandering the market, Belle was exhausted to her very core. Being in a realm with magic might feel more like home, but right now she missed the more modern conveniences of travel by motor vehicle. Even public transport would have been preferable over trudging around, laden with bundles. The walk into town was pleasant, promising all the adventure that came with exploring someplace new, but the walk back was a chore she could have done without. Her arms ached, her feet hurt, and her back twinged from the unusual stance she was taking so as not to jostle anything she carried.
Similarly laden, her husband and son chatted happily as they followed the wagon road through the woods that would lead to their rented cottage by the lake. Rumple had offered to get them a place in town, but they’d stayed in a town in the last realm they visited and Belle had been more than happy to have a change of pace. A little bit of privacy near gently lapping water seemed the perfect combination for relaxation and intimacy after being a part of a large community. Unfortunately the beauty of it came at a price.
Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Gideon (Once Upon a Time), Original Characters
Additional Tags: Travel, Missing Years, Family, Fluff, Angst, A Monthly Rumbelling October 2021 (Once Upon A Time)
Series: Part 49 of Monthly Rumbelling 2021
Summary: Gideon and Belle have tricked Rumple into joining them on a special adventure.
Written for the October Monthly Rumbelling and Beauty day.
Balloon
“Papa! Look!” Gideon’s excited squeal sounded more like the attention getting devices of a three year old than one who was nearing his teens. He pointed through the field ahead of them just as a great rush of air blasted out in the distance. It had a sound to it like a dragon’s snort and only served to remind Rumple exactly what he’d signed up for.
He cringed, swallowing down the waves of fear that pulsed through him. “I’m sure there are other interesting things at this festival. I saw a smith a while back. Maybe we could get you-”
“Hudson said I would earn the right to make my own weapon,” Gideon reminded him. “You were there when he offered, worrying that I’d get burned.”
