
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/905988.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Once_Upon_a_Time_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Belle/Rumpelstiltskin_|_Mr._Gold
  Character:
      Belle_(Once_Upon_a_Time), Belle_|_Lacey, Rumpelstiltskin_|_Mr._Gold, Red
      Riding_Hood_|_Ruby
  Additional Tags:
      Golden_Lace
  Series:
      Part 13 of play_on,_give_me_excess
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-07-31 Words: 2760
****** The Center Cannot Hold ******
by whereismygarden
Summary
     Things change slowly, then quickly.
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
Things changed subtly, the way the seasons moved: fall gave over into winter,
the air was a little bit colder every morning, and he and Lacey warmed up. Just
little by little, but he welcomed every casual touch on his shoulder, every
time he could admire her without fear that she’d reject his appreciation. The
day she pecked him on the cheek without ulterior motive had him smiling for a
good few hours afterward.
                Not everything was different: it was still a secret, and they
still spent most of the time fumbling and gasping in stolen corners. But
everything was sweeter when he could kiss her when he was buried inside her in
the woods, when he could just give her things (small things, not obvious
things) that she liked instead of watching her touch them wistfully on the
shelves.
                She walked into his house early on the weekends and fucked him
to full alertness, and she was better than coffee. He bought a small bunch of
flowers from her father’s shop and presented her with them as a joke, the next
morning, but she smiled sweetly and threaded some of the baby’s breath and
lavender into her hair, leaving the rest in a vase in his shop until she came
back from school.
                They needed to be more discreet, he knew it, but Lacey’s
birthday was only a month away, and he planned to walk up to her in the street
and kiss her senseless in front of half the town. She didn’t appreciate
romance, and had half-laughed at his flowers, but he knew she liked to lean
against him and talk. Maybe it would be better when it could all be in the
open, when they could be whatever they were in the light and not the dark. He
didn’t want to romance her if she didn’t want it: he wanted the gleeful, dark
joy of being able to mark her with his mouth and everyone knowing it was his
work. He wanted to be able to buy flowers from her father and hand them to her
while she stood in the shop.
                “Lacey,” he muttered, in mid-December, nibbling at her ear. She
was bent over his desk, and he was bent over her, moving slowly, making her
groan softly with his movement. She ran her hand through his hair lazily,
rocking her hips back against him.
                “Hmm,” she said agreeably, and pulled his mouth to the back of
her neck. He tugged with his teeth and she whimpered, and he put his question
aside for the moment, rubbing at her clit with a finger and relishing the
moment as she clenched around him and screamed her pleasure into the back of
her hand. He followed her over the edge a few moments later and leaned over
her, blanketing her body from the cold air of the shop as they caught their
breaths.
                “Do you want to stay over tonight?” he asked, straightening
slowly and putting his clothes to rights. “Bed, food, warmer than this icebox…”
he trailed off. It was Thursday night, but Christmas break was upon them. They
could fuck all night. He wanted her naked and screaming under him, tonight. She
pulled up her knickers and tights and layers of skirts—and hadn’t those been
frustrating, trying to bare her enough to let them join—and combed her fingers
through her mussed hair.
                “I have to go water the greenhouse,” she said apologetically,
and kissed him hard. “And then I open tomorrow, Dad hasn’t had a day off in
weeks.” He grunted and squeezed her ass through her skirts.
                “Sometime soon,” he teased. “I miss the taste of your pussy,
Lacey.” She pushed at his shoulder, but he heard the way her breath caught at
his words. He could still make her stumble, still surprise her. Still turn her
blood to fire, and he was glad of it.
                Despite his words, Christmas had his shop relatively full of
customers, and Game of Thorns was busy with poinsettias and holly and
mistletoe, and the next time he saw Lacey, it was on his property in the woods.
She was dressed in jeans and a long coat, a ragged basket full of branches on
her hip.
                He saw her first, and called out, making her jump in surprise
and drop her basket: full of green and white mistletoe, and a pair of clippers.
                “What the hell are you doing out here?” she said. He spread his
hands.
                “I own this land, dearie,” he pointed out, and her expression
turned shifty.
                “Um. I didn’t know that.” She indicated the basket. “I guess
I’m stealing.” He eyed the plants.
                “You climbed for those?” he asked. She nodded: her face was
flushed beyond what a walk would warrant, and there were pine needles clinging
to her hair. Gold raised his eyebrows, impressed. “You know, I’m very hard on
thieves,” he pointed out, leaning on his cane. Lacey folded her arms. “But I
could be persuaded to some other form of payment.”
                That was all he got out before Lacey had him pushed up against
a tree and knelt in the snow. The cold air coupled with her hot mouth had him
coming hard and fast, fingers scraping away pieces of bark as he gritted his
teeth, chasing silence. She swallowed—she always swallowed, and he wondered if
she had guessed that he liked that she did, or if she simply preferred to—stood
up with a wicked grin, then rinsed her mouth with a handful of snow.
                Winter deepened: the holidays neared their end. Lacey ended up
in his house more than once, ad he repaid her for her stunt in the snow, using
his tongue on her until she screamed. He gave her an old necklace from his
shop, with a blue drop on a narrow chain, as Christmas present, and she
scrunched up on the couch and admitted she had not thought to get him anything.
He said something disgustingly sappy in return and dragged her upstairs.
                New Year’s Eve he passed alone, with a book and his usual glass
of water: Lacey had a party, of course. No doubt she would be by the shop
within the next few days, and then school would resume and their days would
fall back into their usual pattern. He still needed to ask her if he could kiss
her in public after her birthday.
                Eventually, his book drew him in enough that he wasn’t
preoccupied—that was one drawback of the new facet of their not-relationship,
she stayed in his mind and distracted him far too much—and the hours slipped by
unheeded as he turned pages.
                The phone rang at two in the morning, after he had fallen
asleep in his chair at a painful angle. Neck aching, he stumbled to the phone,
knowing it must be an emergency at this hour. Hopefully no one had fired a
firework into his display window.
                “Gold,” he said tersely, and heard a clamor and someone
breathing heavily.
                “Mr. Gold, this is Ruby Lucas,” the girl was Lacey’s friend,
and sounded tearful. “I know about you guys, she told me, but that’s not
important now.” It was important, more important than anything that happened in
weeks: Lacey had told someone? The thought would have made him giddy, the idea
that she considered him worthy of mention to her friend, if not for the shaky
note in Ruby’s voice. “We’re at the hospital.” His heart went cold, and he was
alert, the pain in his neck forgotten.
                “Is Lacey hurt?” he demanded sharply, but all he heard was a
deeper voice calling to Ruby to return to the doctors, and the connection
ended.
                He stood staring at the receiver for a few seconds, trying to
process every possibility. Lacey hadn’t called him. So she couldn’t. She wasn’t
dead: he would know, for one, and Ruby wouldn’t have her head together enough
to call him if that were the case. She must be hurt.
                Fear squeezed his heart and turned every drop of blood in his
veins to ice, and in moments, he was in his car, half-skidding on the poorly
gritted roads. She would be fine: whatever it was, she would be fine. Once she
had spent a good fifteen minutes listing every broken bone she’d had and how
she’d done it. She had scars from roses and branches all over her arms and
legs: he had seen and tasted every one. Lacey was unbreakable, but still his
heart pounded and pumped blood that felt like cold water.
                Storybrooke’s only ambulance was idling by the emergency room
doors, lights still flashing, and Gold walked in as fast as he dared, heedless
of the cold air and his lack of a coat. In the distance, red fireworks sparked
in the black sky: like a flare, he thought grimly, and pushed into the patient
entrance of the emergency room.
                Ruby Lucas, who was holding an ice pack to her forehead and
sitting in a chair against the wall, spotted him first. She had been watching,
perhaps. Her grandmother sat on one side of her and a boy he vaguely recognized
on the other, arm in a sling. Lacey was nowhere to be seen. Unable to give a
damn about secrecy, he limped up to her and ignored the older Lucas’s glare.
                “Where is she?” he snapped. “Is she okay?” Ruby only pointed,
through a set of double doors, and he followed her finger.
                Getting to Lacey was a blur of snarling at nurses and staff who
tried to block his way, but eventually he was in a room holding a few doctors,
two beds, and Lacey’s exhausted-looking father. The bed to his left held a
blinking, morose-looking boy whom he recognized, through bruises, as the one
who’d followed Lacey into his shop once. The other held Lacey, head half-
covered in bandages, eyes puffy and closed. He could see her chest rising and
falling, and that helped calm the burning in his head.
                “What the hell are you doing in here?” He blinked and found
himself looking up at Dr. Whale, Storybrooke’s only surgeon, whose face was
tight with irritation. Gold’s agile mind rescued him.
                “I heard there was an accident, and I wanted to know where it
happened. Best to keep on top of property damage.” The doctor’s face twisted in
disgust.
                “You can’t bully me in my own hospital. Leave,” he said curtly,
and Gold did, with one last look at Lacey, to collapse into a chair outside the
room. She was fine. Bruised, hurt, but fine. Ruby had called him because she
was in shock, from whatever exactly had happened. He forced himself to stand up
and stop a nurse with an imperious look.
                “What the hell’s going on?” he asked, without preamble, and
gave his most merciless stare. The kind of look that said do what I say or I’ll
evict you. She sighed and obliged him.
                “Kids were in a car, going way too fast, took a sharp turn and
skidded on ice.” She frowned. “It’s absolutely ridiculous the way the gritting
and salting is done, I’m amazed more people haven’t had accidents. Then again,
most people don’t drive ninety—“ Gold cut her off with a look and jerked his
head towards the room.
                “How are they?” She sobered, leaving her righteous indignation
behind.
                “The two in the front did badly: driver’s got no sensation
below the waist, and Whale doesn’t think he’ll ever walk again. As for the
girl, it’s hard to say. Swelling in the brain from a concussion: they bored in
and drained it—are you alright, Mr. Gold?” He managed to nod and flap a hand in
dismissal as he sank back into his chair.
                They had drilled a hole into Lacey’s head because her idiot
friend couldn’t drive. Morbidly, he wondered if he had been drunk. She and her
friends drank often enough. He put a hand to his face and wished he had
convinced her to stay in with him. But Lacey was Lacey, and she would party on
New Year’s Eve, or what was the point?
                He wasn’t sure how long he waited in the bright fluorescent-lit
hallway, while people passed in blurs, with carts and arms full of papers.
Everything was harsh and white and smelled like disinfectant: Lacey wouldn’t
like it. She liked shady places, liked to fuck in the back room with the lights
off and the smell of old books.
                He pushed into the room after however many hours had passed,
when it was empty, and pulled aside the curtains around Lacey’s bed. There was
a chair next to her head, and he sat down, taking her cold hand in his. Some of
her hair had been clipped away, and he could see blood dried on some of what
remained. She didn’t react to his touch, only continued to breathe, in and out,
and he sank from the chair to half kneel on the floor, holding her hand to his
forehead.
                “Lacey,” he whispered, and his voice broke, after the strain of
the night, after the strain of months wasted in stupid games and struggles.
“Don’t you leave me now.” He had a handkerchief in his pocket, but he was
frozen, his free hand curled around the edge of the bed. “I love you.”
                The words burned like acid on his tongue: now, he knew for
sure, because he needed her to wake up, or he would crumble away, turn into
dust. He loved her, with all his heart, and she lay sleeping and bruised, and
all he could think was that he’d never said it. He’d fucked her, kissed her,
but he wanted to love her.
                He fell asleep in the chair, head on the edge of her bed, and
woke up to a nurse shaking his shoulder.
                “Sir, you can’t be in here unless you’re family.” He sat up
straight, rubbing his face with a shaking hand, and didn’t move. “Sir!” she
said sharply. “Leave, please!”
                Lacey stirred on the bed, shifting, and her hands moved. Gold
stood up with a jolt, ignoring the pain screaming through his stiff body and
the nurse’s continued insistence he move. Her eyelids fluttered and she looked
up blearily at him.
                “Hey,” he said softly, and tried to smile. “How do you feel,
Lacey?” She blinked, frowned, and her eyes turned frightened. Gold reached for
her hand but she jerked away, sitting up.
                “Who—who’s Lacey?” she asked fearfully, and her frightened eyes
were blank, blue and mirrorlike and empty of the woman he loved.
                They threw around words like amnesia and head trauma when the
doctors returned, but he didn’t give a damn. He stumbled out of the hospital,
trying to let the freezing air and brilliant sun clear his head. The new year
was cold and blue and fresh.
                It didn’t work.
                He sat in his car with the radio on for hours, head in hands,
drifting in and out of sleep. He had his shop to open, tenants to chastise for
shooting off fireworks and damaging trees as they did every year, but the
center of his world lay empty and wounded in the white and clean room she would
hate, and he couldn’t care.
                The radio eventually sputtered and he re-tuned it as he started
the engine, pulling out of the parking lot as the sun and frost mocked him and
all his plans. He was supposed to kiss her soon, in a few weeks. He was
supposed to convince her to live with him, and make love to her without fear.
He was supposed to tell her he loved her, and then she would love him too.
                “Head full of coppers like a beggar’s bowl, take her from the
water to sky, God, take her from the water to sky—“ He hit the radio so hard
that the face cracked and his knuckles stung.
                Things changed quickly: his house was empty, echoing, and he
found some of Lacey’s hairs on his couch when he returned. He twisted them
together and left them in a wooden box in his hallway, a last part of their
secret to keep. His bed that night, though he’d slept alone in it the last few
days, was too big and empty, and he kept waking up to fading ghosts and the
sound of metal wrecking.
                He was sure that at any moment he would fall apart, like a man
made of straw.
End Notes
     This installment's quote came from Thea Gilmore's "Water to Sky."
     Many thanks for sticking it through to the bitter end, everyone!!
     I've enjoyed these reviews more than anything.
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