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“I’m fine,” Rumplestiltskin tells his maid, as she arranges him in his bed, but the flightiness to his tone of voice betrays him.
He’s ill, and his magic is depleted from running himself into the ground, but he’ll be damned before he lets his stolen lady know that. He’ll mend soon enough anyway, without her interference of thin nightshirts and cool sheets, water and broth. He’s the Dark One, with magic beyond her comprehension - magic that will defend itself as well as him, the vessel - and yet…he can’t tell her to stop.
She leans over him, in her golden gown with her hair in pretty burnished ringlets, and Rumplestiltskin takes a breath of her perfume as she tucks the sheets about him, not like he’s a boy or an invalid but like she wishes him true comfort.
Belle smiles - lovely teeth, lush lips - and he stares up at her, blinking, tucked into bed and…so very content.
She sits at his side and pushes his hair from his forehead with tentative fingertips, but when he makes no move to stop her she becomes more comfortable, her soft touch soothing his hot brow.
“I’ll bring in a sponge later,” Belle tells him kindly as he begins to doze. “If you’d like a wash.”
He drifts and he can’t say a word, and his dreams, when they come, are bright and vivid and colourful, and Belle features in all of them. Along with her bloody sponge.