#nirvigedearie

[justadearie]

You came back to me

[emospritelet]

Outsider prompt, "why does anyone have to be naked?" ^^

A fic based entirely on prompts from this post.

50: “why does anyone have to be naked?”

So it’s been a while since I updated this fic, due to other commitments, but I’m back on track.  There are three more chapters after this one.

AO3 link

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9][Part 10] [Part 11] [Part 12] [Part 13] [Part 14] [Part 15] [Part 16] [Part 17] [Part 18] [Part 19] [Part 20] [Part 21] [Part 22] [Part 23] [Part 24] [Part 25] [Part 26] [Part 27] [Part 28] [Part 29] [Part 30] [Part 31] [Part 32] [Part 33] [Part 34]

They drove north-east, the setting sun at their backs, and kept going until night fell.  Belle had slept most of the way, but pain in her shoulder woke her as the car ran over a bump while turning into a motel parking lot.  She blinked sleepily, letting her head fall to the side as she looked at Gold.  He parked up, turning to her with a small grin.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

“Sorry.”  She yawned, pressing a hand to her mouth.  “These painkillers are a little too good.”

“You should have another before you go to sleep,” he said.  “Are you hungry?”

“A little.”  She stretched and yawned again.  “Can we just get a pizza or something?  I don’t think I can cope with anything more complicated.”

“Let’s check in, and I’ll get us one,” he promised.

“Hmm.”  She let her head rest against his shoulder for a moment.  “I’d rather you got naked first.”

“That would make the purchasing of pizza something of an adventure,” he said dryly, and she grinned sleepily.

“Okay, then I’ll get naked.”

“Why does anyone have to be naked?” he asked patiently, and grinned as she pouted.

“I’ve been in that hospital for days,” she complained.  “I’ve barely slept, and you smell good.  I want to curl up with you and let you remind me how good you are with that mouth of yours.”

He looked at her steadily, and she sighed.

“You’re gonna make me wait, aren’t you?” she said.  “I won’t break, you know.”

“It’s not that,” he said quietly.  “I just think we should talk, that’s all.”

Belle sucked in her cheeks, letting her head roll back against the seat a little.  He was still watching her, his gaze calm, but there was a seriousness in his eyes, and she sighed again.

“Fine,” she said.  “I guess I’ve been avoiding the issue, but you’re right.  We should talk.”

“Dinner first,” he added, and opened the car door.

The motel room was comfortable, and Belle climbed onto the bed, propped up against the pillows.  Gold returned after twenty minutes or so with the pizza, which they ate out of the box, washed down with water, Belle being unable to drink alcohol whilst taking the painkillers.  She watched him as he ate, long fingers pulling apart the strings of mozzarella at the edge of each slice and popping them into his mouth, and she threw the last of her crusts back into the box and licked grease from her fingers.

“You knew my father,” she said, and Gold hesitated only briefly before replying.

“Yes.”

“How?”

Gold dropped his last half-eaten slice of pizza back into the box, and wiped his fingers on a paper napkin.

“I used to work with him,” he said simply, and Belle shook her head.

“I don’t believe you,” she said stubbornly.  “I know you, and you’re nothing like him.”

“Nevertheless, I used to work with him,” said Gold.  “Oh, perhaps not quite in the way he thought, you have me there.”

Belle frowned.  “Look, these painkillers are scrambling my brain as it is.  Stop speaking in riddles!”

Gold sighed, sitting back and running a hand through his hair.

“I used to work undercover,” he said.  “I can’t - I can’t really tell you much, and given the favour I just had to ask to get the FBI off my back, it’s probably best you don’t know.”

“Undercover?”  She wrinkled her brow.  “Like - for the secret services, or something?  Oh!”  Her eyes flew wide open.  “Were you infiltrating organised crime networks?  I had some suspicions that my father had links with terrorist organisations - money and guns in return for drugs - but we couldn’t find concrete proof.  Was it that?  No, you can’t tell me…”

She broke off, chewing her lip.

“Okay, so you were supposed to be some bigshot crime lord,” she said slowly.  “I guessed that much from the way he spoke to you as an equal.  You would have to have commanded as much respect as he did to get that from him.  But there’s no way your intelligence services could set up a network like that, so it was some sort of hostile takeover, right?  A plant?  You replaced the head of a criminal gang.  Maybe you even had some connections to the underworld: informants, or double agents, or even just people you knew as a kid, because I’m guessing you weren’t exactly born with a silver spoon in your mouth.  How am I doing so far?”

Gold was staring at her, and she raised an eyebrow.

“You’re remarkable,” he said eventually.

“But then,” she said, “then you gave it up.  Moved to Storybrooke, which is pretty much the arse-end of nowhere.  What changed?”

Gold took another drink, and ran his tongue around his teeth, sucking his cheeks in before setting down his plastic cup.

“I had a son,” he said.  “He was four when he was taken.”

“Taken?”  Belle shook her head, even as she was digesting the fact that he had a child.  “Who took him?”

Gold’s mouth flattened, and he looked away.

“There was a rival organisation that worked out of Boston,” he said.  “The head of that organisation was called Midas.  Your father would have known him.”

“He never mentioned him, not that I can recall,” she said, and he nodded.

“You were only a small child at the time,” he said.  “He and I had - clashed - for want of a better word, but his position on the East Coast was something my real bosses were very interested in.  He had connections in Europe and Russia.  Networks that had infiltrated the UK.  They wanted me to take him out and disrupt his enterprise.  A hostile takeover, as you say, with their man at the top of it, in charge of a worldwide network of intelligence and resources.  It was - a laudable aim.”

His mouth twisted, and Belle wanted to touch him, to send him comfort.  She was well aware that he had never mentioned a son before, and his use of the past tense to describe him made her dread to think what had happened.

“Bae didn’t know what I did for a living, of course,” he said.  “And he certainly didn’t know my true identity.  While I was doing business, he was cared for by a nanny, Mrs Potts.”

“Um…”  Belle chewed her lip.  “What about his - mother?”

He pulled a face, his expression grim.

“Oh, caring for her child was beneath her,” he said bitterly.  “All she wanted to do was drink, and party, and tell me how bored she was with her life.  I’d have paid her to leave after Bae was born, after I’d seen she had no interest in him, but I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because she knew who I really was,” he sighed.  “She knew that my life was a sham, and she could have brought the whole operation down with a single word.  I had to keep her close.  It was either that or kill her, and I couldn’t take Bae’s mother from him.”

Belle nodded, and he shrugged uncomfortably.

“She liked dangerous men,” he said, his voice heavy.  “After a while, she decided she’d rather move to Midas’s team than stay with me.  He was very generous to the women in his life.  That was a step too far for the powers that be.”

“They wanted her gone,” said Belle, nodding.  “Did they ask you to do it?”

“That wasn’t the problem,” he said dryly.  “The problem was that she was smart enough to know that she’d signed her own death warrant by leaving, so she took some insurance.”

“Your son.”  Belle put a hand on his, and he nodded.

“Looking back, I should have quit the second she talked about leaving,” he said.  “I should have handed over to another agent and taken Bae and gotten the hell out of there.  But the work we were doing - we were getting incredible results!  We were saving lives, disrupting criminal networks.  It - it was good work!  It mattered!”

He was gazing at her, desperation in his eyes, and Belle nodded, squeezing his hand.  He glanced away, heaving a sigh.

“I explained the situation,” he said evenly.  “And they said they’d take care of it.  I should have gone myself, of course, but I was a coward.  I couldn’t bear to let Bae see me kill his mother, if it came to that.  So I stayed in my fucking fortress of an apartment block with the rest of my fucking people and I waited for someone else to do the fucking job I should have done years ago.”

Belle was silent, her heart thumping in her chest, and he swallowed, his jaw tightening.

“They said she used him…”  His voice cut off as he swallowed again.  “They said she used him as a fucking shield.  Picked him up as they shot at her.  They never meant to hit him…”

“Oh God…”  She shook her head.  “I’m so sorry!”

“I almost killed the men who came to tell me,” he whispered.  “Don’t remember much of it, but someone pulled me off.  An accident, they said.  Not their fault.  And it wasn’t, I suppose.  It was mine.”

“It was an accident,” she said gently.

There was silence for a moment, and he looked down at where her hand covered his, her thumb stroking.

“I quit,” he whispered.  “I told them I’d quit, that I’d never go back.  They were very generous with the settlement.  I quit and I moved to Storybrooke, and I started a new life as a landlord and antique dealer, paid for with my own son’s blood.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said sadly.  “And it’s over.”

“But it’s not.”  He looked up, fixing her with a steady gaze.  “I called them when I was with the FBI.  Called for a favour so I could get the hell out of there. Everything comes with a price, Belle.  At some point they’ll cash that favour in.”

[pinchtheprincess]

My Tumblr Crushes:

alwaysdearie

emospritelet

thenightling

nirvigedearie

horseonthespaceship

seasons-gredence

theoneandonlylittlebird

lotus0kid

quinninthenorth

[timelordthirteen]

@nirvigedearie is inspiring me to write entirely too much Rumbelle smut. ;)

[justadearie]

Work of Art

[justadearie]

Rosie

[emospritelet]

I love the Outsider! It's very hard to choose a prompt, I'd like to see them all in this fic! But I picked another one, (if you doesn't have it already) : 24 "I will if you will"

A fic based entirely on prompts from this post.

24 was also prompted by @tinuviel-undomiel and @mannibanani. Hopefully the bloody Read More link works this time

AO3 link 

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9][Part 10] [Part 11] [Part 12] [Part 13] [Part 14] [Part 15] [Part 16] [Part 17]

Gold didn’t speak for a moment, and she felt like screaming.

“I want you,” she repeated.  “I don’t just mean that I want to kiss you, I want all of you.  And - and it feels like you want me, but you’re holding back.  Is that true?”

His mouth twitched a little, but then he reached up, brushing a curl of her hair from her forehead.

“Yes,” he said softly.  “Yes, I want you, Belle.  Of course I do.”

“So what’s the problem?” she asked.  “You want me, I want you…  Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t do this.”

“I can give you four,” he said wryly, and she folded her arms, raising her chin.

“Okay, shoot.”

He looked amused, with an air of weary patience, as though she were a recalcitrant pupil refusing to accept a proven principle.

“Well, for one, I don’t have any protection,” he said.  “Do you?”

“I - well, no,” she admitted, and he nodded.

“Mm-hm.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that one,” she conceded.

“You’re very generous.”

“But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t do other things!” she added.  “I’ve read - stuff.”

“Stuff?  My my, how depraved.”  

He raised a brow, grinning, and she blushed.

“Okay, shut up,” she muttered.  “What else?”

Gold sighed.  “Secondly, it’s been a long time, Belle.  I wouldn’t want to disappoint you.”

“I don’t think you could if you tried,” she said.  “Besides, it’s not like I have anything to compare it to.”

“Oh look, there’s a fifth reason,” he said dryly, and she rolled her eyes.

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” she said.  "Go on.“

He looked at her steadily.  "I think it’s pretty clear that I’m probably going to have to kill your father to keep you safe.”

She felt her mouth flatten in a thin line.  "And what, you think I’ll resent you for it?“

“Families are peculiar things.”

“He killed my mother!” she snapped.  "He’s trying to kill me!“

“It’s still a consideration I have,” he said, and she rolled her eyes.

“Well, you can strike that one off the list.  What’s your final reason?”

“I told you before,” he said patiently.  “I won’t take you to bed when you’re scared and in pain.”

“I’m not asking you to!” she protested, then slumped a little.  “Well, okay, maybe I am, but we don’t have to do that tonight; you’re right about the birth control.  You could - you could just kiss me.”

He grinned then, his eyes twinkling.  “And you’d be satisfied with that, would you?”

“For now,” she said.

He cupped her cheek with a warm hand, his thumb stroking over her skin, and leaned a little closer.

“And what if that’s not enough for me?” he said, his voice a low rumble in his chest.  “What if I taste you once and I can’t stop?  What if I bear you down here on the rug and take you hard?”

Belle swallowed, pressing her knees together in her arousal.

“That’s okay,” she said softly, and he shook his head.

“No,” he said.  “No, it really isn’t.  For the reasons I’ve already given.”

“You’re not like that, anyway,” she assured him.  “You have way more self-control than me.”

He chuckled at that.  “Apparently so.”

She reached up to touch him then, feeling the warmth of his skin, the sharp rasp of his stubble against her palm.

“We - we could make a deal,” she suggested.  “Kissing only.  Okay, maybe a little groping…”

He burst out laughing, his eyes sparkling in the firelight.

“…but when one of us says ‘stop’, we stop,” she continued.  “No question, no hesitation.”

“And you’d agree to that, would you?”

She nodded, meeting his eyes.  “I will if you will.”

Gold inhaled deeply, still with a warm smile on his face.

“It appears you have an answer for everything,” he remarked.  “Very well, the deal is struck.”

She grinned, excitement fluttering in her chest, and the tip of her tongue swept across her lips.  His eyes followed its path, and she felt that low-down tug of need.  She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.

“Okay,” she whispered.  “Are you - are you going to kiss me?”

He sat up a little, setting down his wineglass, and turned to her, cupping her face with his hands.  His thumb brushed over her lower lip, and he pulled it down a little, making her open her mouth.  Belle could feel her breathing quicken, and she breathed in the scent of him, the mineral smell of the soap he had used and the faint, heady sweetness of his own musk.  She was staring at him, his eyes grown large and black with desire, his own lips parted as he leaned forward, and she moaned as he pressed his mouth to hers, his fingers sliding into her hair and sending shivers through her.  He slipped his tongue into her mouth, and he tasted of the wine they had drunk, dark and rich.  

She shifted closer, touching his tongue with hers, and he deepened the kiss, his fingers curling around the base of her skull.  His tongue flickered across her palate, swept around the inner walls of her lips, stroked against her own, and Belle let her hands slide over the planes of his chest and stomach and around his waist, tugging herself against him.  Gold groaned a little, the sound vibrating through her, and broke the kiss, dropping his hands to her waist and turning her around as he dragged her onto his lap.  His mouth found hers again, one hand in her hair and the other clasped around her waist, and she let her fingers sink into the soft fall of his hair, her nails scraping his scalp and making him growl.

It was by no means her first kiss, but it was far and away the most intense, the most intimate, that she had ever experienced.  The pressure of his mouth had increased a little, and his tongue was stroking inside her mouth, and it made her think of what else they could do, of what they wouldn’t need birth control for.  The thought was exciting, and she slipped her hand down his neck and inside the opening of his shirt, sliding across his chest and feeling the heat of his skin and the hard nub of his nipple.  He gasped into her mouth as she touched him, and pulled his lips from hers, kissing along her jaw and down her throat.  Belle moaned as his tongue swept over her pulse, moving in circles against tender flesh, and then he sucked at her, his teeth gently biting.  She let out a tiny cry of pleasure, and he licked back up her throat to kiss her again, his hand sliding up her waist to cup her breast through the silk shirt she wore.

Belle moaned, pushing herself against him, his hand squeezing.  She could feel him against her hip, the hardness of him, and she shifted position, making him groan again.  Her fingers slipped out of the shirt, plucking open another button, and another, until it was open to his waist, and he made a contented sound as she touched him again, her hand stroking over his belly, his chest, her thumb stroking his nipple.  She wanted him to open up the shirt she wore, to touch her properly, to reach between her legs and feel how much she needed him.

She let her tongue swipe across his, their lips slippery with saliva, his new-grown stubble scratching her cheeks and chin, his fingers twisting almost painfully in her hair, her heart thumping, and all at once he pulled back, panting.

“Stop!” he whispered.  “I have to stop, Belle.”

Stopping was the last thing she wanted, but it was what she had agreed, and she withdrew her hand from his shirt, reaching up to stroke his hair as they caught their breath.  He let his head fall forward, pressing his forehead to hers, and she nuzzled his nose.

“Wow,” she remarked, and he smiled.

“Yes indeed.”  

There was silence for a moment, except for the crackle of flames and the sound of their breathing.  Gold recovered first and pulled back a little, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“You should go to bed,“ he said.  "I want to leave early.”

“What about you?”

“I have some things I need to do first, but I won’t be too long.”  He brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers.  "Rest, Belle.“

“Okay.”  She slipped off his lap, her legs a little unsteady, and straightened the shirt she wore.  “Will we be passing through Storybrooke?”

“That depends.  Where are we heading?”

“New York, I guess.”

“Then yes, we’ll head back through Storybrooke.”  He was fastening the buttons of his shirt, but glanced up at her.  “We’ll need to pick up some breakfast, and something for the road.  Was there something else you wanted?”

She gave him a flat look.  “Well, either you buy the condoms or I do.”

[pinchtheprincess]

My Tumblr Crushes:

thenightling

alwaysdearie

sozdanie-gryazi-eternal

nirvigedearie

horseonthespaceship

poca-staks

tinyconfusion

chocolatequeennk

scotsaddict