A/N: Things get hot n' heavy.

Also, as mentioned before, Belle has both a stand-in shower and a tub in her bathroom. The tub is one of those old ones, with a hose above the faucet? Yeh just picture that.

She was exhausted.

Between constantly checking on Rumple, and pinning over the "what-if"s once he came to, she was in a heart-quivering state between paranoia and anxiety. To say the least, she did not like it; she didn't like it that the anthropomorphic crocodile decided to crash in her bathroom—well, she had lead him up here, but due to that fact he had been shot at, with both a bullet and a tranquilizer dart, she was near livid. Oh, once he woke up, she would be having words with him!

She sat on her bed and tired to work on her novel, glancing up at him every other moment. Rose, to Belle's slight horror, had gathered the courage to emerge from the couch to check out this new thing in her domain. Sure enough, the small tortoiseshell crept over to the bathroom on cotton ball sized paws. Head down, ears back, she stalked over to the unconscious being splayed out on the tile floor. The small cat hissed upon sniffing him.

Having nothing else to do besides work (Belle's anxiety was too high to really work), the library's caretaker took up a book instead.

Face scrunching up, Rumple let out a low, rumbling groan. She still sat on her bed, cross-legged yet poised to move quickly if necessary, but when he moved she was well aware. Staying silent, the petite woman watched the great man-croc squirm into consciousness.

"Oh, fuck," Rumple groaned as he began to lift his limbs up. From her angle she couldn't tell if his eyes were open, but she observed him start to—it wasn't quite flailing—wriggle around on his back like a turtle would. "Fuck, I can't—the hell?"

With a loud groan, the croc slashed his great clawed hands out to grapple the floor. For such a beast, it took a lot of fuss for him to roll onto his belly. His paler, tender underside out of view, and his glossy, murky green and black scales on display, Rumple looked much more frightening on his belly than his back.

Reptilian eyes glared upwards, pinning her with an accusatory gaze within a slit second. "Were you trying to kill me?" He hissed in that curious accent of his: a uvular trill.

"I—Sorry, can you not lay on your back?"

"Messes—my sensory—fuck, give me a moment so the room can stop spinning. What happen?"

"You tell me," she crossed her arms, sliding off her bed to stand before him. "You were shot, and—"

"Ah," Rumple suddenly purred. Darkly. "I remember now."

Mightily sighing, the croc pushed himself up on his arms to sit up—an odd sight—on his knees. His thick, long tail tailed around him, foots long. The bandage she'd hastily dressed him with had some blood on it, but not enough for her to worry about. His eyes were focused more, too.

And of course he still smelled. Horribly.

When she didn't answer him, too busy studying the scutes on his tail, he said, "Did you doctor me up, scrumptious? How sweet."

"It would be more trouble for me to rid your body if you died," she snarked.

Rumple put a hand over his chest, mocking shock. "Is that sarcasm I detect?"

Rolling her eyes, and remembering he wasn't as bad as she first thought, Belle tiptoed over the dirty floor of her bathroom to get a washcloth. He hadn't gotten up from the floor yet. Though his expression was close to what it usually was, she could tell he was not well, yet. And knowing him, at all, she had a feeling he would loaf around her new place before he made himself scares again. Plus he'd been shot at. Surely he wouldn't get up and leave right away.

If he was staying any longer, he had to be clean. "You smell, Rumple."

His nostrils flared. "What a rude remark."

"I'm serious. If you're staying another moment you need to haul your stinky arse in the tub. Don't use the shower, it's jammed."

Rumple turned his head to look at her bathroom situation. "A tub and a shower? Ah—yes, this place was a house before it became a library, wasn't it?"

She scrunched her brows. "It was a factory?"

"Family owned business. Mills and Co."

"Mills? Like the mayor?"

The croc laughed impishly. "Same blood."

"W—okay, enough. Get your butt in the bath, I can't smell this—" she motioned to him in general—"another moment."

"But maaaaa," the croc groaned, flopping back onto the floor in a loud thump. "I don't wanna. It's my natural musk."

"I doubt that. Get in before I kick you out."

"How will you do emthat?/em" He mocked, but his eyes shifted, just for a moment, to the doorway of her bedroom with a look of trepidation.

Belle, irked from his incorporation, dropped to the floor in front of him and sat on his muzzle.

Instantly, his eyes shot upward and glared at her. Mumbling, unable to open his jaw, he lay rather weak and helpless under her.

"You may be tougher than any human, Rumple," she said, without any room for jokes, "but right now I have more strength than you."

"Furk uff," he mumbled, growling.

After a moment to proof her point, and until he stopped fidgeting beneath her, she stood up and back away.

Perhaps it was a bad move on her part. While Rumple, like any crocodilian, was more or less vulnerable to his jaws being held clasped closed, he still had his teeth and claws—and without his mouth tied, he could truly hurt her.

Yet she knew he was in trouble. Of some kind or another. If he tried to hurt her with his body, the person or people who shot him could be tipped to his whereabouts. If he tried to attack her with—something, well, he was weak from his earlier ordeal.

Glaring, the croc pulled himself up off the ground. He wouldn't meet her gaze, and turned angrily to her bathtub.

He tsked, but with a low sigh he turned around and waddled on all fours to the tub; he climbed into the great ovular tub, smearing the edges with his filth. God, he really was gross right now. "Do I get the spa treatment?" He asked woefully.

Belle pursed her lips. "If you're nice."

"Nice is my middle name, dearie."

Dearie. That odd little… condescending address. She wasn't sure if it was better than "scrumptious"—that seemed to be his personal nickname for her—but the way he said it sounded like he was cussing her.

Once he was in, she followed him and turned the nobs. Rumple let out a loud grunt of surprise when a harsh wave of cold water hit him like small ice bullets. "Fuck!"

Ignoring that, she pulled off the hose and aimed it on him.

The water would warm up, but—Belle reached out to turn the warm water on more.

Cruelty wasn't in her nature. Yet, Rumple made her so angry sometimes; and anger and Rumple didn't mix well. She glanced at his face, as he struggled against her merciless near-torture.

Now she felt bad.

Sighing, she aimed the water away from him to wash away the dirty water flowing down the drain. With the water warmer now, and the most of the croc's filth gone, she plugged the tub and poured in the bubble bath soap she owned, and changed the water to the tap and not the hose.

Rumple was no longer swearing like sailor. With his claws clamping around his body, he opened his eyes to stare with all the wretchedness he seemed to muster. Her heart clenched. She had been kind of a bitch.

"Sorry," she said, and rolled up her sleeves as she kneeled down beside the tub. "That was kind of mean."

"Kind of?" He spat, low and suspicious. "Dearie, you near threw me into torpor."

Ah, yes. Another douse to salt to the wound. He was cold-blooded—he needed heat. Belle blushed with shame. To make up for her bad behavior to her hurt guest, she tore off his bandage and put some more bubble bath in. Soon the tub was filling with foamy rose-scented bubbles, masking his sewer-y stench by a degree. Mutely, she took her washcloth out and squeezed some body wash on it. Lathering it up, she leaned over and began to scrub his head.

"What are you doing?" His voice hitched with curiosity.

"Washing you," she said, scrubbing away his grime. Like magic, his once mucky scales became shiner and—almost sparkly in her bathroom's light. It was as if tiny flecks of gold shined from his reptilian skin.

Rumple didn't have much qualm to this. In fact, his once storming anger died down to—pleasure. He hummed and moved like butter under her menstruations. "Holly hell that feels good."

"Mhmm," she nodded and moved across his head, washing his face and muzzle. His teeth dripped with diamonds, it seemed, as water droplets slid down his scales and gums. That slick tongue of his curled when she got under his chin and neck.

Belle cleaned his top and cleaned his middle, marveling at the pretty shade of his scales came to light. He shined like a newborn snake. He leaned back against the tub as she got to his belly.

It was hard to tell if he was on the verge of starving to death or not. He had thick skin, which felt heavy when she cupped his slight jowl under his head, yet there was something—eerily human as well, under all his armor. When he caught her staring, the corners of his maw curled upward. "See something you like, scrumptious?"

She flushed. Why did he make her so—rallied up? "No," she insisted, but it felt like a lie. Confused, and unsure of what she wanted from him, she went on to bathing her beast. The water would have to drain, soon. She turned the spouts off, and the room fell into a focused silence with only their breathing, the slashes of water, her scrubbing of him, and the soft whirl of her fan in her bedroom.

He turned to her, eyes heavy. "If I had known you'd be this lovely I'd've jumped in here long ago."

Rolling her eyes, she replied, "Can you get to your back or head without my help?"

Rumple actually snorted. "I couldn't get my arse clean without you, either."

At least he was aware of his long frame and slightly-shorter-than-average limbs.

She went on to bathing him, finding a calm in the peace and quiet between them. It strained her muscles to do all this vigorous scrubbing, but the frequent cleaning of the library had hardened her muscles. This was a good work out, in a way.

Right as she was getting to the parts of him underwater, Rumple suddenly lashed out and grabbed her wrist. Startled from her trance, she looked up to him with her eyes wide.

"Careful, Miss French," he said, voice lower.

Belle opened her mouth to question him, yet when she took note of where her hands were she realized it herself.

Unconsciously, she had moved to his… nether regions. Oh. Concerned, she glanced back at him in askance.

"I don't mind," he reassured her with lulled eyelids. She could see the peaking of his second pair of clear eyelids, reminding her of glass marbles.

"I—" She didn't want to look like a sissy, but—well, she guessed he could get to this part himself, since the croc could bend forward well enough like a dolphin—he wasn't moving at all to take over. He smirked with that odd, toothy mouth of his.

With more tenderness than she knew he was capable of, Rumple reached out to touch her shoulder. Mute, she watched him tug the collar of her t-shirt.

There were no words but her mind raced with thoughts that she couldn't keep up with. Practically blank, Belle let the beast haul her into the tub so she could be in front of him.

She lowered herself into the water, listening to the fuzzing of the popping bubbles. Rumple chuckled, and took her washcloth. "I won't do a thing you don't want," he said. "But if you're too squeamish to touch the beast…"

That earned him a halfhearted glare. "I'm not afraid."

"Then prove it, scrumptious."

And so she did.

Why this felt like something scandalous—well, she had no clue, and never before had she been this close to another male. This atmosphere was alien to her, and Belle felt her heart swell into her throat and an odd pulsing sensation warmed her feminine places. It was as if she was sick, but from what, she didn't know. At the same time she felt excited at this… new experience.

Rumple leaned back again as she continued her blind scrubbing. Bubbles hid him from her view, but she felt the way his belly was much more supple (like his neck) than the rest of him. However, he was tense behind the skin, and muscles twitched as she neared his cloaca. She shivers from the cool of her apartment's air and the warm of the water.

When she touched him where all this seemed to be indirectly referring to, she felt—nothing. A smooth curve from his stomach to between the gape between his legs. It felt no warmer than his core temperature, but—it felt soft, and fit into her palm easily. She felt the curve of his puckered vertical seam, and—

Belle shook her head. What the hell was she doing? Blushing madly, she moving away from his—parts—to clean the rest of him. Scrubbing like a maid with a mission, she got to his legs and tail.

"There," she said, feeling dizzy and awkward. Did he have no modesty? She'd practically copped a feel! "Done—"

She froze.

To her—not horror, nor furry—shock, she made contact with something that hadn't been there before, beneath the water.

Rumple, letting out a low purr of glee, watched her with his head tilted down to look at her properly. "I told you," he cooed, "be careful."

It was a hard shaft of sorts, and through her washcloth Belle found him as thick as an average man's wrist, if not rounder and more slender, with a slight curve toward the croc's body. The shaft thing twitched against her—

"Oh my god," she gasped, and backed away from him with a yelp. "Are you—"

"Hard? Always. It's just out for a peek because of you, Miss French."

"I didn't—!" Her face was on fire. Goodness, how did she get into this situation?! Turning away from him, she pulled the plug out of the tub and flung herself out.

"Oh, come now! It wasn't like I did it on purpose!" Rumple said, but his voice was laced with laughter. "I didn't mean anything by it!"

"You're nasty!" She squealed, and dropped her washcloth into the sink.

"But I'm clean now!"

"That's not—gah!" Throwing her hands up, she left the bathroom and shut the door, hearing him warble with good merit. He was downright naughty, and she—well, she had no idea what they had, or were, doing. Belle knew it had to be wrong, since he was so not human.

Yet she couldn't shake the fact it felt nice to touch him. Or that her heart always sped up when she saw him. That was fear, though. Today, she felt fear, more for his sake than her own. He'd been shot and hurt; Belle had to help, despite his impish nature.

But now? It was different, and she didn't have a clue as to what this new emotion was.

She heard the water start up again, and the hose being turned on. Glad to have him busy, she dashed to her dresser to get changed. Once he was out she would be having those words with him. Even if she saw him important to her novel, lines had to be crossed with hiding fugitives from armed men out for his blood. Yet, for now all she needed was a new pair of clothes—it felt like Rumple's hands were all over her.

And she wasn't sure if it was entirely unpleasant.