Chapter Text
❅ ❄︎ ❅
He's passing through the foyer when she returns from the village.
He pauses, not because it's Belle and there she is, but because she's not wearing her green traveling cloak. Instead, she's wearing a lighter, rosy cape trimmed in white fur that, while perfectly matching that pink dress he loves with the ruffled trim, leaves her whole front exposed to the unforgiving mountain clime.
She's panting but smiling, smattered in wet snow, having unsuccessfully raced the storm back with the weight of a laden basket challenging her balance in the fierce winds.
"It's really coming down out there!"
She says it like it's an adventure.
He's not so amused.
"Yes, I know. Would it kill you to take the horse?"
Or wear the warmer cloak?
Or wait until the storm ends?
She throws him a look as she shakes the snow from her cloak, like he's wrong for admonishing her. As the ice pellets softly patter on the stone like spilled pearls, a reprimand builds on his tongue—and dies when she removes her mittens.
The state of her hands shocks him. They're red and cracked and shriveled with cold, knuckles raw and joints stiff. He can feel the pain she masks throbbing in her fingertips.
"Is your heart set on frostbite?"
"Oh, it's not as bad as all that."
This will not do.
She leaves her mittens to dry on the hearth in the great hall. When she sets off to make dinner, he picks one up to inspect it, thumbing the loose thread near the fuzzy white cuff. They aren't in terrible shape, but a staleness clings to them, and they show signs of wear, no doubt worsened by all the moisture they've absorbed over time.
He teleports to his tower and summons his wheel.
She has other mittens.
She has warmer gloves.
So, why is he doing this?
A spell alone won't suffice, he decides in unraveling her mittens. He needs to properly infuse the enchantment, physically and magically.
With the kinked wool and a piece of straw held together, he spins, wheel creaking slowly as he runs them through fingers glazed in red sulphur oil. The yarn piles in his basket, rejuvenated: a richer shade of deep rose-pink, softer and smoother. Threaded with a translucent shimmer of magic that will always keep them dry.
After dinner, he winds the wool and spends the night knitting it up again. In the morning, he leaves them on the chaise in her room with a sprig of juniper; she likes little things like that.
He feels such a fool—and smiles.
The next time she returns from the village, he's waiting. He relieves her of her basket, slides the mittens off her hands, and encases them in his own.
They are a bit cold,
but they are also dry.
Belle steps closer, cheeks flushed from the wind's bite. The snowflakes melting in her eyelashes twinkle like tiny jewels.
"Would you enchant my cloak as well?"
Rumplestiltskin pulls her closer still.
"Say pretty please."