i need this okay

darthstitch:

Ace Belle.

Look, Ace Belle is not just into the whole…. sex thing, okay? Just no.  She wants to read her books, to travel the world and maybe, just maybe, she can find someone who’s going to understand, that she’s not broken or unnatural, that she can love. 

(But sometimes, in those dim hours before dawn breaks, Belle gives in to the fear that she is broken, that she can read about romance and kisses and love and desire and smile but not want it for herself and that she’s unnatural and sick for not wanting these things, these silly sweet things that most girls her age have dreamed of, that lead to marriage and the wedding bed.)

And the main problem with Gaston is that he doesn’t get this - because he’s the one convinced that he can fix her - that she’s just frigid or repressed and that if she just puts the books away, the right man (read: Gaston) can “awaken her passions.”

And Belle knows this is bullshit. So she makes it a point to run far, far away from Gaston whenever he comes skulking around and that her skin crawls when he tries to touch her and that the thought of being his “little wife” makes her physically ill. 

So eventually Belle meets the Beast - in pretty much the same way we’re familiar with - and the Beast knows he’s on a timetable, that he’s got to find true love and break the spell and all that jazz. 

Except he becomes friends with Belle first.  And they end up sharing interests and stories and jokes and snark and laughter and finally, finally, Belle trusts him enough with her secret, the one where she thinks she’s different

(broken)

and that she can love with all her heart but there’s something different

(unnatural)

in her love and they have told her that her kind of love isn’t true at all, that it’s not any kind of love, period. 

And the Beast is enraged.  Not at Belle - but at everyone who’s ever made her feel this way, that her friendship was not enough, that her heart is not enough, that somehow this bright, beautiful, kind girl - who’d become his first friend in all these lonely years and whose made him realize that his enchanted servants were also his truest friends, not just frightened, paid lackeys - that they made Belle believe she was broken.

“You are not broken,” The Beast tells her.  “You are Belle and I love you just as you are.”

The Beast knows he has laid his heart before her and he’s terrified and defiant all at the same time but it’s his own truth, curse or no curse. 

Belle’s smile is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.  And she tells him that she loves him too, just as he is. 

The curse breaks and the Beast is a Prince again and she looks at him in wonder and reaches out to touch his face, to look into his eyes.  Belle knows her Beast because his eyes have never changed. 

When he kisses her, he asks her first and hesitantly, she nods and that first kiss is sweet for both of them but she is pale and she trembles and he reminds her, “Did I not tell you? You are not broken. You are Belle and I love you just as you are.”

And Belle knows her Beast, her Prince, will never ask for more than she can give, will never demand her body in his bed or believe that he could somehow “awaken” her supposed “desires.”

That kind of understanding and respect is the truest sort of love.  

They make this - I love you just as you are - part of their wedding vows.

And they carry on as they have always done, because they both love their books and their stories and the two of them wander the world together hand in hand and they love each other, earnest and true and happily ever after.