Once Upon a Time Sore Lips

_Sore Lips_

**~O~**

Rumpelstiltskin awoke with the feeling that he had never closed his eyes; he felt raw and honey-heavy, and as he touched his fingertips to his forehead, he thought, _Dread is like unsweetened molasses_. He stood up, first noting the presence of pungent, earthy odors, and then with a shaky intake of breath, the rainfall. _When Milah left, so did the sun._ He exhaled in a sudden, sheepish laugh. _Really, Ru, what self-imposed melodrama. Farthing fiction at its worst. Pathetic._

Unhappily, Rumpelstiltskin eyed Milah's vanity and its threadbare cache: a gilded hairbrush and hand mirror, a tiny jar of chamomile-scented beeswax, and a woven blue bracelet. _Milah's things._ Remorse furrowed his eyebrows; he always regretted with the alacrity of lightning, and these sudden jolts of guilt tended to manifest in physical ways—in flinching, in cringing, in clenching. _Her bracelet. Forget-me-not blue, the cliché of clichés. Forgive me, sweetheart. Now, I'd dye it cerulean._

A little too quickly, he shifted his glance to the lively hearth and its cauldron, finally at a boil, and to the wooden tub adjacent to it. Distastefully, he eyed the tub; as he hobbled towards it, he exaggerated his limp in tacit protest of its baptismal properties, and then once there, reluctantly poured the piping-hot contents of the cauldron into its tepid water.

_This is for you, Bae._

Forced into action by a bullying breeze, Rumpelstiltskin removed his thin, faded articles of clothing, sunset see-through in the molten glow of the fireplace, and wobbled into the tub. He tapped his fingers against the dimpled surface of a sponge, squeezed it; he fattened it with water, bobbed it like a buoy.

Outside, the torrents intensified; the cottage shook, and the weaver did, too.

_Relax_, Rumpelstiltskin demanded of himself, and let the leaden weight of his dread submerge the intractable angles of his body underwater. _Happy things, think of happy things. Our wedding. Milah, in her pearls-and-lace gown and her airy, tumbling veil. She smelled of roses, and her dark tresses were sprinkled with forget-me-nots—like the earth in bloom. _

Subconsciously, he slipped his hand in between his legs.

_The barbed taste of rum on his lips— _

He bolted upright, and through labored breaths, muttered, "Oh, Killian Jones. Not now, please, not now." But, per the norm, Jones prevailed and the reverie persisted.

_His milk-skin and his eyes like sunlight hitting sea-glass. The sharp odor of the ocean's salty breath on his body, sunshine-warm. He spewed heat._

Aesthetically, Jones mirrored Milah, and yet, Rumpelstiltskin was only vaguely aware of the juxtaposition. He was, however, wholly cognizant of his steadfast self-loathing, and that because he was incapable of liking himself, his heart usually beat for people who did not like him, either. Was this, he often surmised, the source of his attraction to Jones?

_He eased me, he cajoled me; he hoisted me up, my legs around his waist. _

Suddenly, Rumpelstiltskin wondered, "Was Milah privy to the sordid details of our tryst?" The echoes of this inquiry at once rendered his daydreams stone-dead, and his hand, severed from Lust, the Puppeteer, lay limp and palm-up in his lap.

Soaking the sponge in freesia oil, he continued, "She would've laughed, surely," and then added privately, _Would anyone believe that I had tried to offer myself in place of Milah?_ Dejectedly, he shook his head and applied the sponge to the slim, spindly contours of his neck, but as he tilted his chin upwards—seductively, almost, trailed by a soft spiraling moan—he froze.

Unintentionally, but also not erroneously, he had directed his gaze to the central post of the cottage, where a dangling piece of parchment bellowed:

_By Order of the Duke, A Call to Arms: All Children Three and Ten Years or Older Must Enlist in the Royal Army._

His heartbeat rippled the bathwater. Three fretful words—

_Is. Tonight. Enough?_

—filled his mind with deep, wine-dark swells of fear, and the trailing thought, _Doubt it_, fully darkened any flickers of light that the inquiry had initially cast. _After all, I couldn't satisfy Killian Jones. Oh, excuse me_, he added dryly, _Captain Killian Jones._

At once, his head was full of the pirate, but now, he recollected; he did not daydream.

"…His affected manner, the apparent duplicity of his words," Rumpelstiltskin whispered to the empty cottage, and then as he transferred his glance to the rosewood trunk at the foot of the bed, concluded, "Just like a showman." _You're an immoral man, Killian Jones, but then again, so am I._

On top of the trunk lay a pair of beige pants and an embroidered blue shirt that was cinched at the waistline—the pricy apparel of a nobleman at court.

_More like a fool's garb._ "Tonight, I'll be a showman, too."

Listlessly, Rumpelstiltskin groped for the warmed bottle of rum next to the bathtub, and after a series of greedy gulps that resembled the unslakable thirsts of both his wife and the swashbuckler, he began to mumble:

"Pearls are the Diver's farthings,

Extorted from the Sea,

Pinions the Seraph's wagon,

Pedestrians once, as we…"

_He sang a sailor's song, soft and low, to help me sleep, and then laughed as he kissed my eyelids shut._

"Night is the Morning's canvas,

Larceny, legacy,

Death but our rapt attention

To immortality."

His memories of Killian were like watercolors; the details of one recollection always bled into the nuances of another, and thus, Rumpelstiltskin tended to recall the entirety of their brief acquaintance, and not just the pirate's steadfast gazes, or his winsome grins.

_The backdrop: The Jolly Roger against a bright, cold sunset…_

**~O~**

**Author's Notes:**

While I respect RumBelle, I prefer GoldenHook and RumMilah, and I figure that's okay.

Aesthetically, Killian mirrors Belle, Cora, and Milah, and I thought it'd be interesting to see Rum struggle with a kind of attraction to him. I don't entirely view pre-Dark One Rum as this obsequious, servile little thing; yes, he's timid, and yes, he's diffident, but maybe—just maybe!—he also desires and indulges like anyone else on OUaT.

I also thought it'd be interesting to see Killian desire Rum—in a small, curious kind of way. But that's for Chapter Two.

Also, Rum's song is a piece of Emily Dickenson's poem, "The Feet of People Walking Home", and full credit goes to her.

Chapter Two is to follow, hopefully.


End file.

Once Upon a Time