Summary: Belle French and ‘Rumpel’ Gold have been best friends for a long time, ever since Belle first walked into Gold’s yarn shop. One stormy night, one bottle of wine, and a couple of heartfelt confessions later, and their relationship will never be the same again.
Belle was certain that Gideon was in training to be a professional soccer player. Or perhaps a ballet dancer. Either way, whatever he was doing with his feet, he was showing a skill at precisely hitting her spine with each movement that no unborn child should ever have. He hadn’t even taken his first breaths and he was kicking like a champion. Whilst she was pleased to be able to feel him and know that he was moving and healthy, she was also in so much agony that she just wanted him to stop.
“Please,” she begged, tears of pain running down her face as she leaned on the issue desk, her forehead pillowed on her arms as she tried desperately to find a position that didn’t hurt her back any more than she was already hurting. “Please Gideon, stop it. I don’t know what I did wrong but please stop kicking me! Please, baby!”
She rested one hand on her belly, rubbing gently and trying to calm him.
“If it was the sticky ribs from Granny’s that I had last night then I swear I will forsake them for the rest of my life if you just stop kicking me!” He was hitting her right on the nerve, sending spasms of pain shooting down her spine to her hips, the sensation spreading out through her body, and it was all she could do to stay upright and not collapse onto the floor.
“Belle?”
Gideon stopped moving at that moment, but his foot was still wedged against her back, the pain now a continuous one rather than a steady pounding, and Belle wailed, not looking up to see who had spoken to her. The library was empty; she was officially on her lunch break but she hadn’t been able to eat anything.
“Belle, love, what’s wrong?”
She recognised Gold’s voice through the haze of pain that was blocking out everything else, and she managed to lift her head a little bit to see him hovering in the doorway. It had always been an unwritten rule between them, one that had been reinstated with their renewed friendship, that the shop and the library were never truly closed to one another, although right now Belle wished that she’d locked the door properly to keep him out. She’d never felt more helpless, even when she’d been throwing up every five minutes and he’d managed to bear witness to that. What was it about the man that kept him popping up every time she was in a very uncomfortable position that she didn’t want anyone to see?
Of course, she could just have gone on maternity leave already and be holed up in her flat avoiding all of this, Belle told herself sharply, but the reality of the fact was that she wasn’t at all displeased to see Gold. If anyone was going to be able to help her out without a second thought, then it was him.
“Belle?” He put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong? Is Gideon causing trouble?”
She nodded against the desk. “He was kicking really hard and my back’s killing me. He’s stopped now but his foot’s still pressed against my spine and my whole lower body’s complaining.”
“Is there something that I can do to help?” Gold asked. “Would you like me to rub your back?”
“Yes.” Belle nodded eagerly, she couldn’t think of anything else that would help and hopefully some outside stimulation might get Gideon to move his damn foot. She loved her son more than anything but she thought that he might have at least a little more respect for his surroundings whilst she was still his home.
“All right. Let me know if anything hurts.”
She saw Gold’s cane hook over the edge of the issue desk, and heard him pull up her chair, sitting down behind her and placing his hands on her lower back, carefully rubbing down until he got to the place where Gideon’s foot was and Belle let out a hiss of pain, and he worked around it gently. The massage felt good, but there was something missing.
“Can you go under my top?” she asked. “The motion is great but I need to feel the heat from your hands.”
“Oh.” Gold sounded a little bit stunned.
“You don’t have to it you don’t want to,” Belle said. “But it would be much more effective skin to skin.”
“No, no, it’s all right.” He pushed the hem of her top up a little and slipped his hands up under it, replacing his fingertips on her skin and beginning to massage her again. She didn’t think that anything had felt as good as Gold’s hands did on her at that moment, and she gave a moan of happiness as he touched her. Unbidden, the memory of his hands on her before came fluttering into her mind, and she wondered if she could maybe get him to go a bit higher and massage her breasts as well. They were getting full and heavy now and every little thing to help guard against growing pains helped. She felt her face flush at the thought, and cursed her happy hormones. Slightly too happy hormones which were now fixated on the idea of him bending her over the issue desk and taking her from behind right here in the library in the middle of opening hours. Her pulse quickened at the thought and she tried to push it away, but it seemed lodged.
Finally, she felt a wave of relief as Gideon’s foot slipped away from its position and the pain began to ebb away. The shuddering groan of relief that she gave was not entirely related to the lack of pain, and although she knew that she really ought to tell Gold that his wonderful hands were no longer required, she couldn’t help but keep him there, exactly where she wanted him, for a little bit longer. He was so gentle with her, and she wanted to remember the feel of his hands on her as she knew she would be unlikely to feel them again. A little smirk crossed her face. She was going to have more problems with Gideon kicking her in unfortunate places before she gave birth, and Gold knew how to ease her aches and pains. There was always the chance of another massage from him. She sighed, a mixture of pleasure and sadness. This was a functional thing that he was doing, trying to alleviate her pain, and he didn’t mean anything more by it. Any sexual undertones that she was picking up were entirely the fault of her own overactive imagination.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, and Belle nodded, knowing that she couldn’t in good faith drag it out any longer.
“Yes, that’s much better,” she said. “You made him move his foot, which is good.”
“Glad to hear that I could be of service.” Gold pulled her top down and she heard him get up from her chair, his hand on her shoulder guiding her back down into it, and she gave him a grateful smile as he collected his cane and came round to the front of the desk.
“Thank you so much,” she said. “You really are a lifesaver.”
Gold shrugged. “I just want to help,” he said. “Whatever way I can.”
He was so sweet, she really didn’t deserve him, but Belle pushed that thought to the side. It was something that could be pondered later, when he wasn’t here. She didn’t want to mar the pleasure of his company with melancholy thoughts.
“So, what brings you to the library today? Unless you possibly have a sixth sense about when I’m in trouble and need your help.”
“Darn, I’ve been found out,” Gold said theatrically, but then he laughed. “No, this encounter is purely chance, I assure you. I was coming to give you something, actually.”
He’d given her a very lovely massage that had left her wanting more, Belle thought, but she didn’t say anything.
“What kind of a thing might that be?” she asked.
“Erm, I think it might be better if I showed you,” Gold said, and he lifted a large cloth bag up onto the issue desk. Intrigued, Belle pulled it towards her and peeped inside, gasping at what she saw.
The bag was filled with all kinds of beautifully crafted knitted toys and clothes, from the tiniest perfect little booties and mittens to the rather outsized stuffed stegosaurus who seemed to be taking up most of the room in the bag.
“Oh Rumpel,” she breathed. “These are wonderful, thank you so much.”
“I, erm, I might have gone a bit overboard,” he said, looking sheepish. “But there’s plenty in there to be going on with, and I’ve made them in increasing sizes.”
“Really, Rumpel, I don’t think it could ever be too much, you know how babies grow. These are so lovely.” She pulled out a tiny mitten and slipped it onto the end of her finger. So cute and dinky.
“It’s all cotton-based yarn,” he said. “Easy to wash on high heat.” He laughed. “That is one thing that I’ve learned from experience. Always make sure that your children’s clothes can go in the washing machine. The toys are all washable too. When Neal was younger he had this plush teddy that he never went anywhere without; it was surface wash only but, children being children, naturally Mr Ted ended up a little bit more filthy than a sponge bath could fix. I made the mistake of putting him in the machine and the poor fellow ended up completely bald.”
Belle laughed. “What did Neal say to that?”
“He was absolutely distraught at first, but then we made up a story that he’d been fighting a dragon which had burned his fur off and he was all right after that. Mr Ted was a fantasy hero of yore rather than a slightly worse for wear bear.”
Belle took the plushie dinosaur out of the bag and raised an eyebrow.
“Well, it’s something different to the conventional teddy bear,” Gold said. “He was going to be smaller, I will admit, but the pattern that I first followed came out too small, and it was one of those whereby if you double everything, it ends up coming out four times as big instead. But… You know, if you have a toy bigger than yourself then you’ve always got a bodyguard.”
“True.”
Belle put the dinosaur back into the bag and put it under her desk to take back up the flat again later, and she returned her attention to Gold. It was now or never. She’d not been able to stop thinking about him since that night - well, not been able to stop thinking about him in that way, and now the notion was taking over her brain in the most unfortunate of times and places. If there was anything more than friendship between them, anything at all, then they were going to have to have that conversation sooner rather than later. She didn’t think that she would be able to survive to the end of her pregnancy if she didn’t set the record straight with him. True, it might just be the hormones and ridiculously increased sex drive talking, but at the same time, Belle knew that these feelings weren’t going to go away. All right, jumping straight back into bed together probably wasn’t going to be the most sensible way of gauging their feelings but, Belle thought with a wry smile, at least they wouldn’t have to worry about possibly getting pregnant this time. She thought back to the night that they had spent together and how everything had panned out, wondering how they could have read each other so wrongly.
Perhaps, just maybe, there was the possibility that they hadn’t been reading each other wrongly after all. They’d jumped to massively the wrong conclusions afterwards, when it had come to the baby. There was definitely precedent.
“What are you thinking about?” Gold asked presently. “You’re frowning at the middle distance.”
Instead of saying anything remotely related to what she had been thinking about, Belle decided on a tactical retreat.
“It’s forecast to storm tonight,” she said. Gold grimaced.
“Yeah, I read. I was thinking…”
Belle’s heart leapt to her mouth. This would not be the first storm that they had weathered since that night, but it would be the first that they had spent together.
“Yes?” she prompted.
“You know how much I worry about you when you come over in the storms,” Gold continued. “And you have to know that I’ll be worrying about you even more given your current condition.”
“Oh. Yes.” Belle tried not to let her disappointment show in her voice or on her face. “Yes, you’re right. There’s no reason to take any unnecessary risks with the little one.”
“Could I come over to yours instead?” Gold asked.
For a moment Belle was too stunned by the suggestion to answer. He’d been in her flat enough times over the years but during storms she went to him, it had always been the way.
“I mean, if you don’t want to that’s fine but…”
“No, no, I’d love you to come,” Belle interrupted quickly, wanting to head him off at the pass before he got completely the wrong impression again and they ended up setting their friendship and possibly tentative relationship back even further. “You’d be very welcome. I’ll make sure that the kettle’s on.”
Gold smiled. “Thank you.”
“Just make sure that you come over in plenty of time before it hits, I don’t want to have to come out with a torch to look for you.”
Gold crossed his heart with a soft chuckle. “I swear that after telling you not to come out for fear of you and the baby being struck by lightning, I will not make you come out with a search party. I guess I’ll see you later then? They’re thinking it’ll hit town around seven.”
“I’ll expect you before seven, then.” Belle smiled as Gold left the library with a wave, and she sat back in her chair with a sigh of contentment, rubbing over her belly. This would be their turning point. If anything was going to happen, it would be tonight.
Her phone buzzed with the arrival of a message; it was from Ruby.
Please don’t go out in the storm tonight.
Belle rolled her eyes and replied: I won’t. Rumpel’s coming over to mine instead.
There was a long pause before Ruby replied.
Do you think tonight might be the night?
Well, Belle certainly hoped it would be, although the night for quite what she still wasn’t sure. She decided to downplay it.: The night for what?
The response, a split second later, was an emoji rolling its eyes.
Telling him how you feel about him, of course. If you catch him during the storm then he won’t be able to run away!
Belle sighed. It was certainly a true statement but it wasn’t right to use his fear to her advantage like that. But being together in close quarters, both of them with their guard lowered, it did seem like the perfect opportunity to actually sit down and lay her feelings on the line - and since neither of them would be able to go anywhere, it would really force them to actually talk about where they were going, rather than each of them avoiding the subject - and avoiding each other physically - in order to spare each other’s feelings.
Maybe. And what do you know about my feelings anyway?
I hate to say it, girl… Belle could hear Ruby’s voice saying the words in her head as she read them. But it’s not exactly been subtle. For all you talk about him being your best friend, I know you want to be more than that. You wouldn’t be in the position you’re in now if you didn’t. I think maybe the only person who’s not picking up on those signals is Gold. Just remember to speak in words of one syllable and use diagrams if necessary.
Belle had to snort at that, and she gave a sigh. Perhaps there was some truth in Ruby’s words. Before she had started going out with Gaston, she didn’t think that she had been all that subtle in her overtures towards Gold, the insinuations that she wanted to be more than just friends, and she had come to the conclusion that since he showed no signs of responding to said overtures, he evidently didn’t want to me more than just friends and so she had given up and settled for Gaston instead.
Now Belle was not quite as sure. During the last few months she had been forced to question all the things that she thought she knew about herself and Rumpel and confront the reality that so much of her relationship with him had been based on assumptions. Now she just wanted to know the truth, no matter what that was, so that she could begin this next stage of her life without any more misconceptions or falsehoods. She had begun her pregnancy with fear and secrets, and it had only led to even more problems. She could not and would not bring her child into the messy world that she’d helped to create around herself. It was time to do the brave thing, for both her own sake and that of Gideon.
With a new-found determination and steel in her stance, Belle left the issue desk and went over to get the children’s corner ready for storytime. She had already taken to reading bedtime stories to Gideon even now, getting him ready for when he was born and it would become a regular fixture. She hoped that she could get Rumpel to read some of her favourites to their son as well; although he denied it he had a beautiful voice for reciting, his accent perfect for lullabies. Belle wondered if he knew any traditional Scottish ones that he had sung to Neal when he had been a child, and she smiled at the thought of Rumpel singing.
Outside, the wind was beginning to howl in preparation for the evening’s forecast storm, and Marian and Roland were blown into the library on a particularly strong gust. Roland immediately ran over to pick through the picture books, and Marian came over to Belle.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“He’s training to be a soccer player already, but other than that we’re going ok.” Belle glanced down at the Harlequin romances that were sitting in the top of Marian’s bag ready to be returned, and her thoughts rushed involuntarily to her slightly less innocent symptoms. Heat suffused her face, and Marian grinned.
“You’ve reached that stage, then?”
Belle nodded sheepishly.
“Well, I’ve finished these if you want to take them off the shelves for personal use. I don’t think anyone would mind.” The other woman winked as she handed over the books and Belle sped off to check them back in and surreptitiously hide them under the issue desk.
She hoped that she wasn’t going to need them, but it paid to be prepared for all eventualities.
I thought this might be an appropriate post for Mother’s Day 2017, a son smiling for his mother. Especially since Gideon’s had little to smile about, Belle probably considers her son’s smiles to be very special. And he’s just so cute!
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