Not much happens at the castle. It's the two of them and the magic. She studies. He wanders around. He's not very careful about standing behind things - he does when he remembers and there is something nearby, but it's plain that nothing about being visible in the less-than-fluffy nude bothers Beast except on her behalf.

Finally she excises an hour of study time to spend on being able to look at him without intervening furniture or flinching. She finds it's possible to do this in her mindscape, without having to use a notebook. She can zoom in deep into a rose petal, find a level of detail beyond which there are no patterns, and write, directly there. This isn't an ideal memory aid - if she looks later the words aren't exactly the same - but it's much faster for sheer processing, and the chosen modifications morph into the structure of the rose without special effort as soon as she's sure she wants them.

She behaves with more equanimity about his nudity after that. "You can stop trying to remember to hide behind things," she tells him.

Author: beheld_beauty	Not much happens at the castle. It's the two of them and the magic. She studies. He wanders around. He's not very careful about standing behind things - he does when he remembers and there is something nearby, but it's plain that nothing about being visible in the less-than-fluffy nude bothers Beast except on her behalf. Finally she excises an hour of study time to spend on being able to look at him without intervening furniture or flinching. She finds it's possible to do this in her mindscape, without having to use a notebook. She can zoom in deep into a rose petal, find a level of detail beyond which there are no patterns, and write, directly there. This isn't an ideal memory aid - if she looks later the words aren't exactly the same - but it's much faster for sheer processing, and the chosen modifications morph into the structure of the rose without special effort as soon as she's sure she wants them. She behaves with more equanimity about his nudity after that. "You can stop trying to remember to hide behind things," she tells him.
Author: deslandes	"Thank you," he says, smiling. "I was terrible at it."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Yes," she says dryly. "I noticed."
Author: deslandes	He laughs. "I'm sorry," he says ruefully.
Author: beheld_beauty	She shakes her head. "It's all right. It doesn't bother you, and I've fixed it so it doesn't bother me either."
Author: deslandes	"Good," he says. And he curls up on the floor by her chair and leans his head on her knee.
Author: beheld_beauty	Scritch, scritch.
Author: deslandes	Purr! Time passes. Belle continues her magical studies. The Beast continues to read when he can and snuggle when he can't. A few days after Belle makes herself comfortable with his true form, a storm blows up and soaks the gardens with driving rain. The Beast, of course, dashes out almost immediately to play in it. In less than an hour, he's back inside, soaking wet and slightly muddy, with twigs and brambles tangled in his mane. If she looks, she will find him on the kitchen floor, trying and failing to brush out his fur and laughing all the while.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Well," says Belle. "You're a mess."
Author: deslandes	"That I am," he agrees. "Do I smell dreadful?" (He doesn't - mostly he smells like rained-on roses.)
Author: beheld_beauty	"No, just like rain. A little floral, maybe. Mostly rain."
Author: deslandes	He laughs, and twists to try to get the brush into a tangle of fur on his back. Despite catlike flexibility, it's not quite working.
Author: beheld_beauty	Belle holds out her hand for the brush. "Does the castle not help with this?" she asks.
Author: deslandes	He gratefully untwists and relinquishes the brush to her, shaking his head. "I always get it right in the end, but it sometimes takes a few days." With a flash of a grin, "Worth it anyway. I love the rain."
Author: beheld_beauty	"I've never been particularly fond of it, myself." Brush, brush. She's gentle with the tangles. "What do you like about it?"
Author: deslandes	The Beast purrs softly. "Storms like this one... they're big and powerful, but they don't think, they just are. I like that. I think it's beautiful." Smiling, "It's fun to get all messy, too, even if I pay for it afterward."
Author: beheld_beauty	"You find a lot of curious things beautiful."
Author: deslandes	"What do you mean?"
Author: beheld_beauty	"Oh, unthinking masses of power, and falling in love with people you never saw again, and the like. It's perplexing."
Author: deslandes	"What's perplexing about it?" he wonders.
Author: beheld_beauty	"It's just nothing like my aesthetic, or that of anyone I've met before."
Author: deslandes	"Well, of course not."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Why 'of course'?" (Comb comb comb.)
Author: deslandes	(Purr purr purr.) "Becaaaaaause," he says lazily, "I'm not any of those people."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Yes, but many of them are more similar to each other than you are to any of them, why should you be so far off?"
Author: deslandes	"I don't know why," he says. "I just know it's been that way all my life."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Ah, so you've always been an oddity."
Author: deslandes	"Since long before I was seven feet tall and covered in fur."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Hm." She's been meaning to ask for a while, but no occasion has come up. "You never explained why you killed your father beyond him being - unpleasant."
Author: deslandes	"It was reason enough."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Should I be fearing for my life, should I wake up in a bad mood one day?"
Author: deslandes	"Not unless your bad moods involve beating me bloody." (Perhaps this is a good time to mention the scars on his true form's back and thighs.)
Author: beheld_beauty	"Never. Not even if I could."
Author: deslandes	"Then you have nothing to fear from me," he says.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Is that where the scars came from? I had been wondering if your habit of wrestling rosebushes was a very old one."
Author: deslandes	"I don't remember all of them," he says. "I think there were more - from other places, later. But most of them, yes."
Author: beheld_beauty	"From where else?"
Author: deslandes	"I don't remember them all," he reiterates.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Them all, but - never mind."
Author: deslandes	Softly: "Thank you."
Author: beheld_beauty	"You're welcome." Comb comb comb. "I think you're all untangled now."
Author: deslandes	"Thank you for that, too," he says, and turns, and nuzzles his catlike nose against her hand.
Author: beheld_beauty	"That looks really strange if I focus on your trueshape," observes Belle.
Author: deslandes	He laughs.
Author: beheld_beauty	"In fact, a fair fraction of what you do is strange when I focus on your trueshape. Did you always act like a giant cat? Did the behaviors come with the curse? Did you pick them up as you got accustomed to the form?"
Author: deslandes	"A little of this, a little of that, a little of the other, I think."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Hmm." Scritch scritch.
Author: deslandes	Purr purr. He's already on the floor; he flops onto his back at her feet, still purring.
Author: beheld_beauty	"I am slowly becoming used to the fact that I see both forms but I only get fur if I actually put a hand out."
Author: deslandes	The Beast laughs and purrs at the same time, an interesting if inelegant combination.
Author: beheld_beauty	"What do you want to do when we break the curse? One way or the other?"
Author: deslandes	"I... have no idea," he admits.
Author: beheld_beauty	"None at all? You haven't been dreaming of it all these years - 'if the curse ever gets broken I'm going to go and...?'"
Author: deslandes	The Beast shakes his head. "I mostly haven't had much hope it would be broken at all."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Because no one ever came until me?"
Author: deslandes	He nods.
Author: beheld_beauty	"I would probably have thought about it anyway. Just in case. To have something to do, if nothing else."
Author: deslandes	"I would never want to spend my days dreaming about a freedom I don't think I'll ever have."
Author: beheld_beauty	"I've been here for weeks now, though."
Author: deslandes	He shrugs, curling up more comfortably at her feet. "I guess I'm not entirely ready to believe in you yet."
Author: beheld_beauty	"I'm strictly nonfictional," she assures him. Pet pet.
Author: deslandes	"I believe you're there," he says, purring demonstratively. "That much is inarguable. But that you might free me... harder to let myself believe."
Author: beheld_beauty	"I have no reason not to disenchant you if I can. The other avenue is trickier. Not impossible, as far as I know."
Author: deslandes	"So it is not certain you can do either one in time," he says, "and I would rather not become comfortable with hope until I know."
Author: beheld_beauty	"...Even if the curse becomes permanent, that just means there are ongoing effects that aren't directly disenchantable. Maybe I should keep some of the magic books and the dictionaries for the foreign languages under a shelter of some kind, out in the forest, so I can take them with me and keep studying if we hit the time limit and it sends me away, and then maybe I could do something. I'm not at all optimistic - but it might be that if I learned enough, I could - I don't know. The thing that seems most likely that I could one day be able to do in spite of all the supposed obstacles is kill you. I don't even know if I could do that. I don't know if you'd want me to."
Author: deslandes	"...I'd want you to," he says softly.
Author: beheld_beauty	"If the time limit comes due," Belle says, "and we're still stuck here then, I'll leave with all the books I can carry and drag, and I will work on it, and I'll try to anti-curse you where I couldn't un-curse you, and if that doesn't work I'll see if I can get you out of here - the other way. But let's hope it doesn't come to that."
Author: deslandes	"We can hope," he agrees.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Sadistic nut of a witch," mutters Belle, "who would take all this power to change the world and do nothing productive, not even pointless harmless whimsy, but - disproportionate absurd cruelty, out of all scale - when did that start to seem to her like a worthwhile use of pain and power -"
Author: deslandes	"Don't ask me," snorts the Beast.
Author: beheld_beauty	"I have no one else to ask," Belle points out.
Author: deslandes	"Then you will never know the answer."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Unless there is some more advanced version of that past-viewing spell. Or I learn to invent my own."
Author: deslandes	"Until then," he agrees with a laugh.
Author: beheld_beauty	"I should study," she sighs, looking down at him where he's sprawled before her, "I don't want to have to work out how to kill you if all else fails."
Author: deslandes	"Go study, then."
Author: beheld_beauty	She goes. She studies. She's really not making much progress in her curriculum. If she's going to have any prayer of disenchanting the place before the deadline, she's going to have to narrow her focus. She can't just study disenchantment - she has to be specific, cross from her starting point to her destination on a tightrope instead of insisting on building a whole bridge. She can fix the breadth of her knowledge later. Right now she has something very particular to get at. She goes to have another look at the curse fondement.
Author: deslandes	There it is, just the same as— No. Wait. Apparently the Beast was right about her being easy to love. There's a stream of deep violet power twisting and coiling around the outside of the power well, and its source is somewhere below her.
Author: beheld_beauty	...Ah-hm. Well, Belle can talk to him about that later, she doesn't want to have to cast the spell to let her see the details a second time. She takes careful notes, on everything, including the stream of violet. Does it look strong enough to carry his half of the disenchantment? The curse is designed to be broken by love; maybe it would be possible to subvert it with half the recommended dose and some more magical work...
Author: deslandes	The dosage isn't the issue; the amount of power generated by how he feels about her would, it seems, be more than enough all by itself. The problem is structure: the spell is set up to accept a very specific thing, and without the two-way connection, there's just no budging it. There are no books that talk about how to accomplish the kind of delicate surgery that would be needed to change the structure of the curse in the relevant way.
Author: beheld_beauty	Dangit. Well. She has many notes about the curse. She shaves off everything she can from the curriculum she's designed - disenchantments relating to anything not powered by Heart, disenchantments that are aimed at short-term curses, disenchantments that simply hasten programmed timed expiration. She cuts down her estimate by about four weeks. This is not nothing, but it is not enough to be quite comfortable. Study study study. The next time the Beast wanders in she'll ask him when he was planning to tell her.
Author: deslandes	The Beast wanders in about an hour later, preceded by the lunch tray, and flomps into his chair as the tray sidles up to Belle.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Were you going to tell me at some point that you fell in love with me?" Belle inquires.
Author: deslandes	He blinks. "Oh," he says, not an admission but a realization. "I fell in love with you."
Author: beheld_beauty	"The curse noticed. It doesn't help, unfortunately, not by itself."
Author: deslandes	"Well, it means that now everything really is up to you."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Assuming you're relatively constant about it, anyway. It is necessary for both halves to be at the same time."
Author: deslandes	"I will not," he says with absolute conviction, "stop loving you."
Author: beheld_beauty	"How do you know?" Belle asks curiously.
Author: deslandes	He shrugs. "How wouldn't I?"
Author: beheld_beauty	"Well, I would have a good idea, in my case, but I make a particular study of my own mind, and I still wouldn't be as confident as that. So I want to know why you think so."
Author: deslandes	"I think so because it's true."
Author: beheld_beauty	Belle sighs in exasperation and gives up.
Author: deslandes	He laughs. "I'm sorry, I just can't think of another way to say it. It's not in me to give someone up like that, not for as long as I remember who you are."
Author: beheld_beauty	"So," she says, "at least not within the time limit, then."
Author: deslandes	"Yes."
Author: beheld_beauty	"All right." She sighs. "I really don't know how to fall in love with someone. There are not - instructions, anywhere."
Author: deslandes	"What do you think of me?"
Author: beheld_beauty	"You're my friend," she offers after a moment. "You - you've been treated with appalling unfairness, and there's a sort of openness to you that I half-admire, and you have quite a smile. If unbeknownst to me that added up to love on my part I believe the curse would have noticed, though."
Author: deslandes	"Half-admire?" he asks, laughing. "What of the other half?"
Author: beheld_beauty	"Well," Belle says. "When I fully admire something like that, I copy it for myself. I'm disinclined to do that. It wouldn't suit me. But it seems to work for you."
Author: deslandes	"I admire lots of things I don't want to be," he shrugs.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Like what?" She really ought to be getting to know him more diligently than she has. She suspects that's a prerequisite for falling in love. For her, at least.
Author: deslandes	"You?"
Author: beheld_beauty	She laughs. "I meant more specifically. Qualities, not entire people."
Author: deslandes	He shrugs again. "I don't know, then."
Author: beheld_beauty	"So you just sort of admire me as a vague entire thing with no characteristics?" she inquires archly.
Author: deslandes	"No," he says. "You have characteristics - I don't know which ones I like so much, that's the trouble."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Ah," Belle laughs. "That sounds frustrating."
Author: deslandes	"It would frustrate you."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Yes. It would. It doesn't you?"
Author: deslandes	"I don't frustrate easily," he says cheerfully.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Are you even curious about it?"
Author: deslandes	He shrugs. "A little."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Well, I am," says Belle. "I've - a handful of people have claimed to be in love with me before. But these were always people who'd barely spoken to me. Who thought I was pretty and knew nothing more about me than than that. If that was any kind of love I don't think it was a worthwhile sort. But if my merely looking as I do sufficed for you - for the curse - then I'd have seen it the first time I looked at the fondement, I think."
Author: deslandes	"I don't love you because you're pretty," he says. "You are, and I love it, but that's not what made the difference. I love you because you're—beautiful. Like thunderstorms."
Author: beheld_beauty	"I'm like thunderstorms?" Belle asks. "I didn't understand this the first time you mentioned it, and still don't, I'm sorry."
Author: deslandes	"I mean..." He trails off, thinks, then starts again. "What's most beautiful about you is your nature - what you are, what you do. How you think, how you speak, what you say. Thunderstorms are beautiful for the same reasons—not the same things, not the same qualities, but the same... parts of them. Their essence and how they express it in the world."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Is there," Belle says, "anything much to anyone that is not their essence and how they express it in the world?"
Author: deslandes	"I suppose not," he says.
Author: beheld_beauty	"So that doesn't really answer my curiosity, but I suppose you tried," she laughs.
Author: deslandes	He laughs, too. "I'm sorry. But it's true. I love you because you are the person that you are and you act the way you do."
Author: beheld_beauty
Author: deslandes	"You," the Beast observes, "are blushing."
Author: beheld_beauty	Belle touches her cheeks. "...Maybe."
Author: deslandes	"You are! I love it," he declares. "I love you blushing."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Well," she giggles. "That's specific, at least."
Author: deslandes	He grins.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Any other specificities spring to mind?"
Author: deslandes	"I'll tell you when I think of them," he assures her.
Author: beheld_beauty	"All right." Studying.
Author: deslandes	Gazing adoringly at her.
Author: beheld_beauty	...Well, that's distracting.
Author: deslandes	Ah, but is it productive?
Author: beheld_beauty	Maaaaaybe.
Author: deslandes	Well, he is going to keep doing it until she tells him to stop.
Author: beheld_beauty	She can still make studying progress like this. It's just a little slower. She has to keep pausing to see if he's still doing it and then manage squidgy feelings.
Author: deslandes	Are not squidgy feelings the point?
Author: beheld_beauty	Th-they're one of multiple possible points!
Author: deslandes	They're such a nice point, though. All squidgy and everything.
Author: beheld_beauty	Well technically they are not pointy feelings. They're all soft. They are pillowesque.
Author: deslandes	Are they... ...cuddly?
Author: beheld_beauty	Maaaaybe.
Author: deslandes	Cuddly is good.
Author: beheld_beauty	Belle comes to the end of her chapter. She puts her pencil down. She scoots back her armchair and holds out her arms in his direction.
Author: deslandes	Grinning, he comes around the table and hugs her. He is very fluffy.
Author: beheld_beauty	Snuggle.
Author: deslandes	"I love your snuggles," he confides.
Author: beheld_beauty	Belle giggles. "You're quite snuggleable yourself."
Author: deslandes	"I am! I am fluffy," he says happily.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Hm, I bet you'd still be pretty snuggly just by dint of personality even if you were disenchanted."
Author: deslandes	"You know," he says consideringly, "I do believe you're right."
Author: beheld_beauty	"No firsthand experience to make this a certainty? I'm surprised."
Author: deslandes	"Well, some."
Author: beheld_beauty	"All too long ago to remember clearly?" suggests Belle. Scritch scritch scritch.
Author: deslandes	He nods his fluffy head.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Le pauvre." Scritch scritch scritch.
Author: deslandes	He purrrrrrrrrrrrrrs.
Author: beheld_beauty	"I do like you," she murmurs.
Author: deslandes	"I'm glad."
Author: beheld_beauty	Hugs. Sighs. Thoughtfulness. "I'm pretty good at feeling how I want to feel, but I have to know what I'm doing," says softly. "I can decide to - to not be angry about something, if I want, because I know what it's like to not be angry. But I don't know what it's like to be in love. Even though I'd like to be."
Author: deslandes	"I know what it's like for me to be in love," says the Beast. "I don't think I know what it's like for you."
Author: beheld_beauty	Pet pet. "It might help if you told me more about what it's like for you anyway."
Author: deslandes	"It's nice," he says. "It's a good feeling."
Author: beheld_beauty	"Is that all you can tell me?"
Author: deslandes	He shrugs. "I don't know what else to say. I know what it's like; I don't know how to say what it's like."
Author: beheld_beauty	"What isn't it like?" she suggests lightly.
Author: deslandes	He laughs.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Maybe I should study the Heart spells," laughs Belle, "if you can't tell me - see how the spell's defining it. It must have a definition."
Author: deslandes	"Maybe," he says agreeably.
Author: beheld_beauty	Studying detour. It must explain all those colors somewhere.
Author: deslandes	Well... ...not very specifically. Apparently the exact shades vary from person to person. There is an incomplete list of which emotions are usually associated to which hues; romantic love is indeed sometimes violet. And the exact shades are consistent between repeated viewings by the same enchanter, so an experienced enchanter can learn to distinguish emotions very well if they have the patience to study live examples.
Author: beheld_beauty	All right... she remembers checking the fondement to see if romantic love in particular was required, and she remembers that it was but what else is in her notes...
Author: deslandes	While she looks it up, the Beast curls up on the floor and snuggles against her legs.
Author: beheld_beauty	Her notes are inconclusive on the question she's curious about. Drat. It does have to be romantic; it doesn't have an exhaustive description embedded in the spell of what that is.
Author: deslandes	The Beast puts his head in her lap.
Author: beheld_beauty	Scritch scritch. "Well, that's a dead end," she says.
Author: deslandes	"What is?"
Author: beheld_beauty	"Working from the spell's definition of love. It's not embedded in the spell itself enough for it to look at. Apparently on some level I'm in love when I decide I'm in love. But there will be no use attempting to fool myself, or the curse."
Author: deslandes	"Tricky," he murmurs.
Author: beheld_beauty	"Very," she sighs. Pet pet.
Author: deslandes	Purr purr snuggle purr.