Belle Of The Gays

Days In The Sun

When Adam came to it was because of the searing pain in his shoulder as he felt something come in contact with it. Hissing he moved away, opening his eyes to see only Belle in the room with a frustrated look on her face.

"Stay still, I'm trying to help you."

"Well it stings!"

"It wouldn't sting if you stayed still and let me finish!"

"You wouldn't have to if you didn't run away!"

"I wouldn't have run away if you didn't yell at me to!"

"That wouldn't have happened if you didn't go into the West Wing!" The two huffed at each other, but Belle's gaze softened as she set the cloth she was using to clean his wound on the end table.

"What was that rose?" Adam pointed for her to sit in the chair next to him, and he adjusted his posture in the chair to face her. Which wasn't an easy or comfortable task.

He explained everything that had happened the night they were enchanted and what would happen when the last petal fell. He tried to keep his tone from being too sad, having had two hundred years to come to terms with it all, but Belle's manner was slowly growing more tense as she continued to listen.

"Why don't you just not then? You're going to be turned into statues, is it really that hard to just say you're not... gay?"

"We'd be lying then. The whole point is that there's no way out of this curse. We can't not be gay." Getting annoyed at her ignorant stance on their situation, something that hardly effected her, his volume raised.

"So you're going to let yourselves be turned into statues?"

"We would all rather die than live in a complete lie. We've been oppressed and hidden for too long to lie to ourselves." Belle froze. If she really thought about it and tried to put herself in their shoes, she guessed she'd be in a similar thought process.

"What can I do?" Adam was caught off guard, but he knew exactly what she could do.

"You can learn."

Lumiere, Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts moved away from the door of the room the two were in, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping. It wasn't like they were ever going to leave them unsupervised after the most recent events.

"We've never really talked about this, but if we were human again, what would you do first?" Cogsworth asked wistfully.

"Depends, are we back in our time period or this one?" Mrs. Potts countered, her first thought being her wife she had forcefully left behind.

"Our time, and before you ask, all memories of us restored." Lumiere closed his mouth, having been about to ask that.

"Easy, Chip and I would be back home with my wife, and I'd never let them go from my arms."

"I'd introduce Plumette to my town baker, I think they'd be good friends at the least, and then I'd introduce Cogsworth to the mayor. I'd be the town cupid." Lumiere sent Cogsworth a wink and the clock rolled his eyes.

"And here I'd rather go around and teach the children like one of those old ladies you hear about in tales but never encounter."

The three of them smiled and continued on with fantasizing over everything they'd do if they were human again, knowing very well that it would never happen. They were simply momentary thoughts to provide momentary happiness. 

"Where are we going?" Adam had his large paws covering Belle's eyes, carefully directing her around the castle.

"You'll see soon enough." He stopped them in front of two massive doors, uncovering her eyes and stepping back. He let her look all over the painted designs on the door before he pushed them open, and her smile reached her eyes.

Adam had brought her to the castle library, something they had all closed off simply because none of them had the ability to indulge in the stories. Oh how he had longed to, though.

Pride flags hung from the banisters, and the bookshelves were tall enough that you needed a ladder to reach the top shelf. Desks with books and papers piled on them were scattered throughout the room, and plush armchairs were covered by white sheets to keep the dust from them.

"This... this is amazing." Belle stepped in, running her hand across the leather cover of the first book she saw, silently mouthing it's title.

"It's all yours too." It took her a couple minutes to even respond, not knowing what to do with all of these books that she had never seen before. It would take her forever to even begin to put a dent in the amount here, but she was willing to spend the time.

"I don't see how this relates to you guys, though." Adam smiled, carefully removing a book from a stack.

"You know Shakespeare, right?" Belle nodded, approaching him and watching as he flipped through the book. "Some of his sonnets were actually written to or about a man. And Hans Christian Anderson wrote The Little Mermaid as a way of coping from being rejected by a man."

Her surprise was there, but she didn't say anything as he read out one of Shakespeare's sonnets. It was late in the night, but the two spent hours afterwards in the library, delving into texts and even explaining the flags to her.