Breathe Symphonies: The Price of Magic

By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette

Category: AU post -ep

Spoilers: through 1.12

Disclaimer: They're not mine.

Word Count: 2629

Distribution: my , LJ, and my AO3. Anyone else please ask first :)

Summary: In the "I Will Not Kiss You" Universe, Part five of the Breathe Symphonies series. 'She put her free hand on her hip, dirty rag and all, and cleared her throat, trying to be as nonchalant as possible while still being a good fifteen feet in the air. "Thought I'd just hang about, you know, get some fresh air up here." "Plenty of other places to hang, if you're interested," he starts, pacing beneath her, a glitter of darkness in his jester-like voice, "the gallows are still in the basement, I believe."' RumxBelle fluff.

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AN: There are SO many other OUAT things I want to write. For instance, I have a Rumbelle fic that actually features the Sleeping Beauty story line, but it's not all that Rumbelle yet and it's complicated and it needs LOVE (at 33 pages and growing...)... but Breathe Symphonies is just SCREAMING at me to write every second of the day that I'm not working.

So, here's some more Rumbelle fluff from the Enchanted Forrest. (enjoy it now, the next part is a serious hit in the angst war effort...)

"What are you doing?"

Belle sighed. Every time he asked her that it was like he was surprised to find her actually working. Currently, she was hanging nearly sideways (one leg wrapped around a ladder, one arm hanging from a flagpole, one hand dusting and the other foot trying to stabilize her by pressing her toe into a mortar joint between stones... very unladylike if she did say so herself, especially in her favorite blue dress) trying to remove the remnants of a bird's nest from the top of a shield and sword hung high in his great hall. She put her free hand on her hip, dirty rag and all, and cleared her throat, trying to be as nonchalant as possible while still being a good fifteen feet in the air. "Thought I'd just hang about, you know, get some fresh air up here."

"Plenty of other places to hang if you're interested." He starts pacing beneath her, a glitter of darkness in his jester-like voice. "The gallows are still in the basement, I believe."

She snorts in derision. Sometimes his dark humor goes just past her liking, and this is one of those times. She reaches out, knocking more bits of twig and straw to the floor. "No, thank you. I'm actually trying to get this bird's nest out of here. I've never seen a bird in the castle, and there's enough dust on this to have been empty for years."

He clears his throat and she turns her attention back to him, wrapping her arm tightly around the flagpole. He snaps his fingers and the coat of arms disappears from the wall and reappears in a puff of silver smoke next to him on the floor, the nest vanished. "Never one to do things the easy way, are you?" She doesn't move, doesn't speak, and for a moment his hands clench at his sides because he thinks she's ignoring him and the favor he's done for her. "Dearie? Care to stay up there all day?"

Belle laughs a high titter that conveys anything but fun. "Oh, no. I'd like to come down, but it seems I may be... stuck."

A bleating laugh squeaks out of the back of his throat. "Stuck?"

She sighs, not even bothering to keep up the pretense any longer. "I've lost my balance and can't get back to the ladder without tipping it over." She presses her foot into it just enough to demonstrate her predicament to him. He watches the ladder wobble and present no sure footing as she slides her foot over the step she had been standing on a moment before. "Could you possibly, steady it for me?"

"No," he says, high and sure and full of mirth.

"No?" she cries out, nerves starting to get the best of her as she wraps her arms tightly around the flagpole. "You'd let me fall-"

He snaps his fingers and she disappears in a puff of bright blue smoke, reappearing in a heap on the floor in front of him. A high squeak of shock and surprise falls from her lips as she catches her breath and regains control of her limbs. "Don't need to hold the ladder if I can get you down myself, dearie."

Belle stands, brushing dust from her skirt and forcing the fluster out of her face. "Thank you, I think."

"Can't let you fall," he says, turning away and making a tight face. "House is far too dirty yet to be losing you."

She smiles behind his back at his choice of words, stepping up behind him and taking his hand in hers. His face softens and they share a brief second of the something that they've carefully been building. Their love is fragile, untested, and bound by far too many rules. Even the declaration that they loved one another was bound by clauses and musts and things that they could never, ever do. It wasn't so very long ago that she had almost kissed him.

Since then, there had been many moments where she hadn't kissed him. Many where he hadn't kissed her. She had not yet found a replacement for the gesture; they were still devoid of that sign of affection, that exchange of emotion, that a kiss shared.

He looks away from her and she takes the opportunity to lean against him, into his shoulder, He stiffens at first, like he always does, but relaxes after she stays there for a moment. "Why did you use magic, though?"

"Why not?" he answers lightly, pretending to evaluate the sword and shield in front of him.

She squeezes his hand, though he doesn't squeeze back. "You always say that all magic comes with a price. What was the price for saving me?"

His voice modulates through different tones, coming out far too sarcastic for her liking, "I didn't save you, dearie."

"I rather disagree," she argues, stepping away to look up at him and crossing her arms over her chest. "I could have fallen and..."

"All magic that must cause a change comes at a price, be it mine or that of the magic itself." His eyes grow dark as he speaks, the depths of the magic in him swirling. "Spells for love, charms for wealth, incantations for healing, potions for forgetting, all come at a cost because they must bring a reward." A smirk lifts his lips, and his manner lightens to that of the silly jester in a matter if seconds, "But magic that simply moves, or translates, there is no reward. There is no price. One must simply know how to use it."

She stares at him, her arms still crossed, thinking hard. "So since I didn't fall, and wasn't quite at the moment of splattering myself on these freshly cleaned floors..."

He laughs high in his throat. "I simply put you down. Like I can make puppets dance, and flowers grow, and music play..." He does all three: violins sound in the air as a dancer in a cabinet twirls and briar rose bushes crawl vines up around the windows and in through the cracks in the mortar. He laughs lightly again, this time sweeping her up in his arms and spinning her in a waltz around the great room.

She giggles, Gods help her, she giggles as he dances her around the room. He spins her away, pulling her back, her dress floating around her legs, and she hasn't felt this carefree in ages. "What has gotten into you today?" she asks, curious at his raucous mood.

He stops moving, leaning in close to her and wrinkling his nose when he smiles. "You work too hard." He sweeps her up again, spinning them around in an imaginary reel.

She shakes her head and tries to focus in on his face lest she get dizzy. "I am the caretaker here."

"Care you make take, and careful you should be," he says, his words tripping over his lips like a long forgotten nursery rhyme, "but my caretaker you are no longer." He slows them to a stop, stepping away and sweeping a bow, impish grim plastered on his face. Belle wobbles a bit at the loss of momentum before dropping into a curtsey, never releasing his hand.

Rumpelstiltskin straightens, crooking his finger at her to come closer. She steps to him until they're nearly nose to nose. "Call for me before you decide to hang like a bat from the rafters again," he taunts. He snaps his fingers and a wind whips through the hall, leaving the stones sparking and a substantial pile of dust next to the bottom of the ladder. "A bit of magic may save your pretty little neck." He runs the back of his finger up from her collarbone to just behind her ear.

Belle shivers with the soft, intimate touch, but is mentally outraged when she's been working so hard for so long and he has never offered to help before. Her next words are weak, peppered with the sound of her longing. "You can clean that easily?"

"For a price," he whispers, tangling his hand in her hair and raking out the curls with his fingers.

"Yours or the magic's?" she breathes back, letting her nose bump his.

"Mine," he says, the sound more sinister than sultry, and it makes her knees weak. She has never felt this way about a man who is so dangerous before, but she is not afraid of him in the least.

Belle tips her head away, ghosting it into the crook of his neck. They are not touching, but she is close enough to feel her breath bounce back off his skin. "And what is the cost?"

His forehead presses into her shoulder. "You must not kiss me," he says tightly, his nose playing over the shape of her collarbone.

"So very high," she whispers, pressing her hands around the slim circle of his waist.

His arms snake up her back, over her spine until they wrap around her shoulders, holding her to him. "Oh, yes."

Belle lifts her head and leans back into the strong, wiry arms that hold her. She finds his eyes and sees the clouds of frustration there. A memory surfaces from only days ago:

"Can I kiss your cheek?"

"Best not to, dearie."

"But if I do not kiss your lips..."

"Any kiss, by you, would be far to tempting to leave it at just one."

She pulls away, every muscle and fiber in her body screaming to stay in his arms. "I will not kiss you," she says, conviction coloring her words as she steps out of his reach. She watches his body morph in demeanor: the intimacy is gone, his walls slowly building back up brick by brick, his face an overly dramatic mask. "Unless you kiss me first."

He shakes his head, the imp disappearing from his features for a brief moment, replaced with a sad, lonely man. "I will not kiss you, dearie."

Belle swallows hard, forcing a smile on her face and a lightness to her voice. "Then be prepared to be doing a lot more cleaning."

He mocks her, screwing his face up tight, his eyes wide as he repeats her words. "Be prepared to do a lot more cleaning?" He waggles his head and snaps the dust and ladder out of existence, flicks his wrist and replaces the sword and shield on the wall. "Has anyone ever told you that you work far too much?"

She finds her smile isn't quite as forced this time. "My employer, well, he's quite the tough character. High expectations, you know."

Rumpelstiltskin huffs high in his throat and holds out an arm for her to take, "Surely he won't notice if you take the rest of the afternoon off." He pats her hand as it slithers into the crook of his elbow before pointing at the wall where the rose bushes have grown into the cracks around the window sills. "Seems there's been some activity in the garden. Care for a stroll?" He bows a bit, rolling his tongue around the t's and r's just a little more than usual.

She clasps his arm tightly with two hands as she dips a small curtsey, the contact between them still humming with a low buzz instead of the charged energy of just a few moments ago. "That would be lovely."

They only get a few steps toward the door before he stops and points in her face. "No cleaning, dearie." His hand rolls and gestures to the ground. "The dirt in the garden is meant to be there. Wouldn't want you climbing trees and tossing poor birdies out of their bitty homes."

Belle lifts a hand in surrender, smiling at his tight smirk. "Wouldn't dream of it. Birds belong in the garden, not in the Great Hall- noted." He lifts his eyebrows, she winks, and they step forward together. She walks with him in companionable silence through the castle and out to the gardens, basking in the sunlight and wondering at the new ivy and the sprouting of flowers as big as her hands.

Now is not the time to tell her that most of the time, he simply puts a price on the magic for fun and sport, and of course to remind those he bargains with that nothing in life comes for free. He wants them to choose wisely, give them a consequence, but he finds they are often far too foolish. He doesn't tell her how sometimes there are prices to the magic from the magic itself, dark, mysterious prices occasionally unknown even to him. He can't think of a way to describe what happens when a deal isn't kept, the way the magic unleashes itself and finds a way all it's own, like a separate being. He doesn't want her to worry, he doesn't want to see deep lines crease themselves in her forehead or any little wrinkles around her eyes from anything but laughter. He's adept at the spells he uses around her, and knows they carry no such repercussions.

One day soon, however, she'll have to learn of the depths of the Dark Magic within him, the true power it holds, and what his magic cast by another's black heart will eventually do. She smiles at him, lifting her face from smelling a rose nearly as big as her head. He wonders what would be happening now if he hadn't created the curse... how far her highness would go if he hadn't, in the depths of his despair so many years ago, turned every emotion into magic and bottled it with expletives and blood. Walking with Belle, he wishes he had never created the damned thing, but knows their future is set. Every moment now is spent in a count down: waiting for the day when he will leave her, when they will leave this world, every moment a sweet torture knowing that his time with her is finitely numbered.

Belle pulls his elbow to the edge of the path where a bud is just about to bloom. She plucks it carefully, deftly avoiding the crimson flower's thorns. She leans up to him, the bud dangling from her finger tips, and brings her lips mere millimeters away from his in the torturous game they play. "I will not kiss you," she whispers, her breath ghosting over his skin. He breathes out as well, the phantom of a kiss he wishes he could give her. She holds up the rose and lets her lips press chastely to a petal, pressing the bud into his hand when she's done.

When she smiles he feels the blackness in his soul lift, the emotions of fear and frustration that the Dark Magic took such a liking to in him slowly starting to morph in just the smallest way. He feels the hope that he felt before he stole the magic, the prospect that perhaps, he can find a way to twist it to good again... all because of her. Today is not a day for explaining to her the true price of magic, today is for the magic of her smile. He grasps the stem tightly, a thorn in his palm drawing blood. The sting of pain centers him amidst the emotions that this beautiful girl stirs in him.