#pineapplepizzaparade

“Should we be worried, do you think?” Belle paced across the room as she spoke. “Is this normal, imaginary friends? What if it isn’t imaginary after all? What if something or someone is stalking him? Trying to lure him away? What if it someone is trying to hurt him?”

“I am reasonably certain there is no child in this town safer than our Gideon,” Rumplestiltskin replied. “Henry being the only possibly exception and that only because he’s old enough to defend himself somewhat. Even the wee Charming princeling isn’t looked after half so well as our boy. And if some beastie or other is trying to harm him I will find it and I will end it. Painfully.”

Belle stopped her pacing and looked down seriously at her husband. “Promise?”

He stood then, reaching for her hand. “You know the answer to that. Gideon, and you, are the priority. You always will be. Always. But, if it will help you sleep instead of wearing a hole in our bedroom floor, I will talk to him in the morning and see if I need to talk to anyone else.”

“Please don’t turn anyone into anything without good reason.” Belle smiled as she said it but the joke, such as it was, still fell rather flat.

Rumplestiltskin gave her a half-bow before settling himself back down on the bed. “Now, come to bed? Get some sleep. Nothing will harm him in his bed while I’m drawing breath.”

***

The next morning, Rumplestiltskin looked at his son over a small stack of pancakes positively swimming in maple syrup. “Your mother is worried about your new friend.”

Gideon wrinkled his nose. “Why? She’s my friend. I like her. An’ she’s pretty.”

“I’m sure that you do like her.”

“She plays with me,” Gideon went on, then shoveled a surprisingly large amount of pancake into his mouth before continuing to speak.

“Playing with you is to be expected from a friend I should think,” his father said. “I couldn’t quite catch that last bit. Perhaps if you swallowed before talking?”

Gideon rolled his eyes. “Mum says that too. Alla time.”

“Your mother is a wise woman,” Rumplestiltskin told him. “What if you were to mangle your words enough that you cast a spell and summoned some horrid beastie to the breakfast table?”

“You’d magic it away, Papa,” Gideon answered brightly. “Or ‘splode it. BOOM!” He clapped his hands to illustrate his point, still holding his fork, and managed to fling maple syrup across the table onto his father’s shirt.

“Hmmm.” Rumplestiltskin dabbed at the spots of syrup with a napkin. “Explosions are messy. Much like small boys.”

Gideon’s rather smug response was unintelligible around the pancakes and Rumplestiltskin simply shook his head fondly in the boy’s direction.

“I’ll just wait until you’re finished then.” He would wait, change his shirt once the syrup had all been safely consumed, and then spend the day with his boy, and perhaps ease Belle’s fears about the imaginary friend.

***

“Mum! Hi hi hi!” Gideon flung himself off the couch and directly into his mother’s legs and held on tightly. “Papa and I feeded the ducks! And then he feeded ME ice cream. And then we went to the shop and I helped!”

“I’ve never seen such help,” Rumplestiltskin agreed dryly. “I may never see it again.”

“An’ then we went to the store and we buyded food and then we came home and I helped cook and we had dinner and we saved some for you and Papa said I had to go to bed when you came home.” Gideon was now bouncing as he filled his mother in on his day with his papa.

“All true,” Rumplestiltskin confirmed. “Every word. I may even have promised a bedtime story while Mummy eats her supper. It’s off to bed with you now my lad.” He paused, then reconsidered after giving his son a once-over. “After a bath.”

***

“Now then, all settled and comfortable?” The boy ought to be exhausted by now but his supply of energy was a continual source of amazement to his father.

Gideon nodded.

“Ready for Papa to tell you a story about being a little boy himself?”

Gideon’s eyes went wide. His papa didn’t talk about being little almost ever. He nodded again.

“I was just a wee lad like you, living with my own papa.”

“You have a papa!?”

“No, no. Not anymore. Not for a long time. This was a very, very long time ago. Your papa is very, very old,” Rumplestiltskin reminded him. “My papa was very busy, all the time. Not much time to spend with a little boy. I was alone quite often. I had a doll named Peter I played with, I carried it everywhere, but also another friend my papa didn’t know about. Rather like your new friend, I suspect. A little girl, just my size. She was always there when I needed someone to talk to or a playmate or just someone to keep me company. My papa was busy, as I said, and spent more time away than he did at home. When he was away I had Peter and I had the little girl.”

“Sometimes papas have to work,” Gideon offered. “You hafta work.”

“No, my papa was… I suppose you could call it work. He was trying to get money.” That was a more favorable interpretation than Rumplestiltskin would normally have allowed but his son would learn about his ill-fated grandparents soon enough. There was no reason to ruin a perfectly fine story with too much truth. “My papa would spend hours and hours at the pub. He played cards and other games. He wasn’t very good at it though.”

“Now, while my papa was off playing his games I was at home, alone. Until, of course, my friend would arrive. She was very adventurous. Much more than I was. She always kept me company when I was left alone. Sometimes I was alone for a long time. Days.” He frowned. He had meant this to be lighthearted. “But I wasn’t really alone. I had her. We went on adventures. Small adventures, to be sure, but we were small ourselves.”

“I like ‘ventures,” Gideon told him.

“Because you’re very brave. Like your mother. And my old friend. She was forever taking me exploring. She never got lost. I got lost on my own plenty of times. She even found me and brought me home once or twice. I was always safe with her. Safer than with my own father.”

“What’s her name?”

“She always told me she didn’t need a name. That she was my friend and that was enough.” He wouldn’t trust someone without a name now, of course, but he was only a boy at the time. His friend who appeared suddenly and disappeared even more rapidly not having a name had made perfect sense at the time. “She looked like your mother. Same hair. Same brilliant blue eyes. Not so beautiful, of course, but who is?”

Gideon yawned but nodded. “Mum’s the prettiest.”

“That she is. I’ve never met someone lovelier. Not in hundreds of years. Not even the little girl who used to save me from my loneliness as a boy. Only fitting the lovelier and older version would have done the same for me when I was so much older.”

“Never seen anyone lovelier than Mum neither. But where your friend go?”

“I never knew. She told me she was leaving and then she was gone. I’d just gone to live with two wonderful ladies after my father left. ‘I can’t come with you, Rumplestiltskin.’ she told me. ‘I shouldn’t be here now. They’ll take care of you and you won’t need me.’ Then she was gone as if she’d never even been there. And I thought I’d never see her again.” He’d cried himself to sleep that night, among others. “I asked the spinsters once. One of them just smiled at me and told me I might see her again if I was a very good boy.”

“Were you?” Gideon asked as he fought back another yawn. “Did you see her?”

“I was a good boy,” Rumplestiltskin said with a sad smile. “But I outgrew it. And no, I didn’t. She vanished, never to be seen again. Sometimes I thought I might have made her up. Eventually I forgot her altogether. Until I saw your mother.”

“An’ she was the prettiest,” Gideon mumbled.

“The loveliest woman I’d ever laid eyes on. Though I couldn’t tell her that, of course. Not for years.” Of course, he’d thought her dead for many of those years and been cursed for several others but once again those were details that would come to his boy’s attention eventually and didn’t need to be mentioned in a bedtime tale. “The prettiest and the bravest and so of course she reminded me of my long-lost-and-forgotten childhood companion. Who was no longer quite so forgotten. And the longer your mother stayed with me the more I remembered.”

Gideon’s eyes were closing so Rumplestiltskin lowered his voice. “I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that I’d found something, someone, even better than my childhood companion. I still can’t believe it most days. I sent her away because I was afraid and I regretted it for years. Decades. I saw your mother sometimes when I thought she was lost forever. She haunted my dreams and my waking hours. But that false Belle didn’t take me on adventures or save me from my loneliness. She made it worse. So I knew she wasn’t really your mother and she wasn’t even my long-lost friend returned. When I found your mother again, alive and real and solid in my shop one day, I knew I couldn’t lose her this time. Not that I didn’t try in spite of myself. Far too many times. Look at us now. Married and with you safely with us. Better than an imaginary girl by far.”

***

“That was a different sort of bedtime story.” Belle looked up from the unopened novel in her hands as her husband entered the bedroom. “Is he finally asleep?”

“Fast asleep. You were listening at the door?” That surprised him. It shouldn’t have, but it did.

“Mmm hmmm. Was it true? The imaginary girl?” Belle was looking at him somewhat sadly.

“Belle. I was a little boy named Rumplestiltskin. I had a terrible father with a gambling problem and a mother who abandoned me at birth. I was then partially raised by actual literal spinsters. How many real friends do you think I could have had?”

“And this one looked just like me?” Belle’s expression and tone were skeptical.

“Not half so lovely. Nor with your accent. But once I saw you I did remember and there was undoubtedly a resemblance. Or perhaps you were so lovely I made her look like you in my memories. Who else would I have had her look like?”

“Flatterer.”

“I have been called worse. By you.”

“Likely you deserved it!”

“I almost certainly did.” He had likely deserved far worse. “I don’t believe Gideon’s ‘friend’ is anything we need worry about. He may just be lonely.” Seeing Belle’s expression he hastened to add, “perhaps, loathe as I am to admit it, we might want him spending more time with the other children.”

“We could arrange playdates,” Belle suggested brightly. “Invite someone over here.”

Rumplestiltskin gave a much exaggerated shudder. “If we must.”

“That’s what his teacher suggested. That or signing him up to learn to play soccer. Or…” Belle’s voice trailed off.

“Or?” Rumplestiltskin prompted. “Or what?”

“Or he did ask me the other day for a little brother or sister.” Belle grinned as she said it.

“Who am I to stand in the way of my child’s wishes? We need to start on that right away. As soon as possible.”

“You spoil him,” Belle laughed.