Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Anyone might have said that the young woman clutching an important looking binder to her chest and frowning to herself was standing in front of a pawn shop, but if you were to come up to the woman in question and ask her herself, she would tell you that this was no mere pawn shop - it was her last resort and her only remaining chance. And you would be right to think that those were some dramatic words, but she would smile at you and tell you that dramatic words were kind of her thing, and her love of them had served her well during her literature studies so far.

But they weren’t of much help to her on this particular occasion. You see, she had dropped off her resume in nearly every other shop in town, and while no-one spoke unkindly to her or sent her off without a sincere apology and well wishes, rejection was all she reaped. Too costly with her Bachelor’s degree, far too likely to run off and get a ‘real job’ when she finally earned her Master’s degree, and more variations on those two concerns than she cared to remember. She would protest and insist that she was in no hurry to leave town and trade in its peculiar charms for a world of adventure – been there, done that. That’s why at the age of 26, Belle French was still a student. A student with plenty of postcards and pictures of cathedrals, castles and palaces, and a few memories of drunken kisses with charming local boys - and the occasional girl - in candle lit tavernas and flowering gardens, but also a student in debt. She was close to graduating, now, but she wasn’t quite there just yet. But for all her lovely words and impassioned pleas, none of the town’s shop owners seemed to have a use for her.

The pawn shop wasn’t last on her list for any particular reason; she had just assumed that someone would have hired her on the spot before noon. The sun was setting, now, and even though the sign in the shop door said ‘closed’, Belle knew the man inside hadn’t yet left. The sign was swinging softly when she had walked up, so she knew it must have been flipped recently. What was she waiting for, then, one might ask. Well, the answer to that question, if you had once more approached the young woman and asked her, would have been that she wasn’t waiting at all – she was gathering her courage. Because a long day of repeated rejection will inevitably take its toll on even the most optimistic of people. And she was tired, to boot.

But she straightened her back, lifted her chin just enough to look confident but not ridiculous and arrogant, and knocked on the glass pane of the door. Nothing, absolutely nothing for a moment or two, but then the slightly hollow sound of shoes on an old wood floor startled her into lifting her chin that little bit higher, making her look not unlike a petulant child for those few seconds before she caught her own reflection in a mirror and fixed her posture. Just in time.

The door creaked open, a bell chimed, and Belle stared at the man who had opened it. Opened it without unlocking it, it occurred to her with a pang of guilt. Should she have ignored the sign and just walked in? The man was leaning on a cane – was it painful for him to walk up to the door and open it for her? Brown eyes stared right back at her with an inquisitive, if slightly suspicious look.

“The shop is closed, I’m afraid,” said the man, shifting his weight from one foot to the other with the faintest trace of a pained grimace.

“Oh. Oh, I know, I’m sorry. I’m not looking to buy anything, and I just thought there might still be someone in the shop, so I knocked. I’m sorry – Mr. Gold, is it? I don’t want to inconvenience you, but could I perhaps come in for a moment?”

Belle forced herself into a patient silence and put on her bravest smile. From the looks of the man standing in front of her, this could go either way. He wasn’t smiling back at her, a fact which unbalanced her a bit; she had always managed to crack the toughest of masks and break through the most practiced of poker faces if she tried. But she found it easy to ascribe his unreadable expression to the apparent pain he may have been in and not to any sort of hostility towards her, a chirpy stranger inconveniencing a man at the end of his work day with a request to enter his shop after opening hours with no accompanying explanation.

But this silence was carrying on a little too long for Belle’s smile not to waver at least a little bit in the face of such scrutiny, so hastily, perhaps a little too loudly, she added: “I won’t take up too much of your time, I promise!”

The promise of brevity seemed to have done the trick, and the man’s hard look softened somewhat in surrender as he stepped back and held open the door for this stranger on his door step, motioning with his cane for her to enter in a surprisingly elegant gesture. Belle’s smile shifted into a victorious grin, and she walked in muttering words of thanks.

Once inside, Belle looked around, eyes widening as she took in the riches displayed on dusty shelves and in old display cases. When Belle French thought of a pawn shop, she imagined old television sets, broken transistor radios, cheap jewelry, abandoned electric guitars and sketchy looking switch blades. But in the golden light of the setting sun and with the dust dancing around, every object in the room seemed priceless to her. These looked like antiques. There were globes, maps, compasses, porcelain artwork, paintings in gilded frames, pocket watches – clocks everywhere, in fact. Beautiful things that must have been difficult to part with, or valuable old things otherwise gathering dust in attics of deceased elderly family members, hastily gathered up in cardboard boxes and dropped off here by mourning sons, daughters, nephews and nieces.

With wide and eager eyes, Belle took in as much of the beauty she could before she remembered her promise to be brief. The door creaked shut again, the bell chimed, and Belle turned towards the sound. But Mr. Gold was no longer there where she had left him. She whipped her head around, looked around the corner of a book shelf (she’d come back and take her time to browse if the rejection wasn’t too brutal) but he was nowhere to be found. Almost panicked, now, she turned around and almost gasped when she finally found him, standing behind his counter. That’s a perfectly normal place for a shop keeper to stand, Belle thought to herself, so perhaps look there first, next time.

“So, what brings you to my shop after opening hours, Ms. French?”

“How did you know my name?” Belle asked, her smile wiped away in an instant and replaced with a concerned, startled look.

“Just a guess. I’m good with names.” There was a hint of amusement in Mr. Gold’s voice that Belle found oddly comforting. Better than stoic silence. “And also, you’ve written it on your binder,” he added, the corners of his mouth curling up a bit, nodding towards the weathered brown binder Belle was still clutching to her chest.

Belle followed the man’s gaze, brow furrowed in confusion. Had she written her name on that old thing? Oh, that’s right; she had. Years ago, before her travels, before college, when she was a bookish teenager with few friends and far too many interests to commit to a binder that pictured only one of them, she had bought herself this plain brown binder and rejected all others. Every once in a while, when she felt confident enough in her love for a certain band or movie, she would add a sticker to it, very carefully positioned in a way to make it look haphazardly placed. Several weeks later, she’d change her mind about revealing herself in this way to the outside world, peel it back off and hide it in a box of keepsakes that to this day has a place underneath her bed. She’d write on the inside – observations, little poems, something funny a teacher might have said – with pencil so that she might erase it if she changed her mind. One day, a teacher mistook her binder for his own and took it, and after panicking for a full period (she had written something in there that made her blush as she wrote it) until the flustered teacher stopped her in the hallway and apologized profusely for the mix-up, thrusting the thing in her arms and walking off briskly, Belle decided that at the very least, she ought to write her name on it. In big, bold letters with a permanent marker, not a pencil.

“Unless you stole poor Belle French’s binder, of course, in which case I’m afraid you’ll have to introduce yourself after all. I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

Finally, the man had spoken in a long enough sentence for Belle to successfully place his Scottish accent; another little victory that made her quite pleased with herself, boosting her confidence just enough to shoot Mr. Gold another dazzling smile. This one he did return, with something that might better be described as a smirk. Bad time to start thinking of this man in terms of smirks and gazes, but the poetic part of her mind had gone there before the rational part of her had noticed that it was heading there, and now all that rational part could do was stand back and shake its head as Belle French slowly came to the conclusion that she thought Mr. Gold to be rather handsome.

“No, you were right the first time. My name is Belle French, and I was hoping you might have some use for an assistant in the shop. I’ve got my resume, here,” she started, moving towards Mr. Gold’s counter, placing the binder on it and opening it with slightly shaky hands. She was brave, but she wasn’t immune to pressure, and oh my, she was feeling it now.

If Mr. Gold wouldn’t hire her, she could still go back to tutoring, and if all else failed, she could ask her father to let her work for the business, but she had a good feeling about this pawn shop. She could envision herself dusting the shelves, rearranging the books, sweeping the floors, and perhaps spending some time asking Mr. Gold about some of the more interesting looking pieces. But for that to happen, she had to get herself together and sell herself confidently. Bulldoze over any potential objections before he had the chance to end the conversation and send her off.

“Here, please take this. You’d make me so happy if you would just take the time to consider me,” she pleaded, sliding a copy of her resume out from a plastic folder in her binder and presenting it to Mr. Gold with eyebrows raised in hopeful expectation, drawing her lower lip in between her teeth in a way she was completely unaware did certain things to people.

“Ms. French, I’m not looking for help at the moment,” Mr. Gold said.

“But everything in here is so dusty! And there really isn’t anything even close to a system going on in your book shelf over there,” Belle implored.

Mr. Gold raised a single eyebrow and inclined his head just enough to let the woman know he was most definitely taking these comments about his shop personally indeed. Belle gratefully took the opportunity to change tactics.

“What I mean is, I think you’ve got a gorgeous place, here, and it’s filled with beautiful things. I could at least help keep those things dust-free, right?”

Mr. Gold sighed and looked at the paper Belle had handed him. Belle hardly dared to breathe lest it should somehow annoy the man and get her kicked out of the shop. She followed his brown eyes as they moved over carefully chosen words and well-crafted sentences, breathed in sharp when he laughed at a particular passage (she would have to ask him some other time why he had laughed) and again when he raised his eyebrows and shot her a serious look over the edge of the paper before returning his gaze to it. Finally, when he put the resume on his counter and flattened it with the palm of his hand in a completely unnecessary gesture but one that bode infinitely better than crumpling it and tossing it over his shoulder, Belle exhaled in relief.

Mr. Gold leant on the counter, shifting his weight forward. Belle noticed another minute grimace of pain, and she suddenly wished it wouldn’t seem patronizing of her to ask him if he wanted to sit down for this conversation. But she knew better than that.

“Well?” she asked. Mr. Gold wettened his lips with a quick appearance of his tongue. Belle noticed. She quickly snapped her gaze back up to his eyes, which was a marginally more safe feature to look at. Marginally.

“It appears you’re overqualified. Not only for a job in this shop. I’d go so far as to say you’re overqualified for this entire comatose town.” Mr. Gold remarked.

Belle snapped her chin up and grabbed hold of her side of the counter, as if she were convinced Mr. Gold was about to physically remove her from his shop. It was a gesture that didn’t go unnoticed by the man standing opposite her, who unbeknownst to Belle was trying hard to hide his amusement at her attempts at being ferocious.

“I don’t want to be paid a fortune, Mr. Gold. And I happen to like this ‘comatose’ town.”

Mr. Gold pushed himself up from the counter and straightened his posture, gliding his hands through the air in a surprisingly graceful gesture of acknowledged defeat - on the matter of the town’s likeability, at least.

“I do apologize, Ms. French. It’s not without its charms, I’ll concede. But the fact remains that I have no need for an assistant.”

Here, Belle sighed, letting her shoulders slump and her head drop. She loosened her grip on the counter and lightly rested her fingers on the edge of it instead. Looking down, she opened her mouth to speak, but she stopped herself. Mr. Gold watched her hands close into fists, a sign of determination if he’d ever seen one. Or obstinacy. He wasn’t sure yet.

“Okay, look,” she started, snapping her head back up and walking around the counter with quick, confident steps, to stand on his side. She stood close, but not too close. Mr. Gold took hold of his gold cane reflexively and shifted some of his weight on it as he turned to face her.

“Let’s make a deal.”

The word ‘deal’ seemed to have lit a spark in his eyes, and he flashed a brief, small smile.

“You’ve got my attention,” he replied, “if indeed you manage to come up with an interesting offer – which I doubt you will.”

“You could try me out for a week,” Belle said, earning another raised eyebrow from the shop keeper. It was a look that threatened to send a blush to her cheeks, so Belle tightened her fists and decided to power through. “I mean you could just let me help for a few days, maybe a week. If by the end of it I’ve managed to convince you of my usefulness – which I definitely will, thank you very much - you give me a contract to sign.”

“And what, pray tell, would compel me to accept this deal?”

“If you’re not satisfied with my work by the end of that week, you won’t have to pay me for it, and also, hell will have frozen over and the change in climate will mean we will have more pressing things to tend to than this deal of ours, I should imagine,” Belle said, her eyes full of fire as she stepped a little closer, noting with some satisfaction that she had made the man laugh.

Silently, but she noticed his chest move as he tried to contain it, and so a laugh it was, nonetheless.

“And, most importantly; I’ll get out of your hair.”

Your lovely hair, she thought, fighting down a mischievous smirk as a sudden strange thought of tying it back invaded her consciousness.

“I won’t have to pay you for work I’m not at all satisfied with? What a novel idea, Ms. French,” Mr. Gold replied.

There was a biting quality to his voice now, one that Belle decided to take as encouragement and not as the deterrent it was intended. The man was about to crack, she could sense it. Be bold, Belle, she thought to herself. Be bold.

“Do you want to know what I think?”

She stepped a little closer still. Mr. Gold moved his cane between them in a defensive gesture, his fingers grasping the gold a little tighter.

“I’m sure you’re about to enlighten me either way,” he said, determined not to admit defeat to this plucky young woman with the strange blue eyes, but sharply aware of her cunning way with persuasive words, and therefor wary.

“I think you know I’d be good for the shop, and you just don’t want to admit it for some strange reason. But you could spend more time with your family, if you have one. Get a hobby, maybe. Sleep in every single day. So why not take my offer and consider it free labor?”

Mr. Gold huffed, but his eyes, even though he rolled them at her, betrayed a certain admiration, no matter how much he tried to contain it. Belle smiled wider. Mr. Gold knew he had made a mistake. It was as if the woman had smelled blood.

“Take my offer and send me on my way afterwards, with no pay. I dare you.”

“You dare me, dearie?”

Belle’s smile faltered and fell away. That voice was lower, now, almost a growl. Had she gone too far? It didn’t matter. It was too late to turn back, now, anyway, so Belle bravely put her winning smile on again, taking a small step back nevertheless.

“Well, I mean... how could you possibly lose, Mr. Gold?”

This time, it was Mr. Gold who stepped closer, tapping the wood floor with the end of his cane once, to see if Ms. Belle French would flinch. There was no flinching to speak of, but her eyes grew just a little bit wider, and that chin of hers tilted up again instinctively, defiantly, but with the inverse effect of being completely endearing. Mr. Gold had noticed the chin thing. It was difficult not to; she had done it several times in the short time they had known each other, and once when she for some reason didn’t think he could see her through a glass door.

“This would be a difficult deal to put in writing, Ms. French,” Mr. Gold finally spoke, breaking eye contact for a moment to walk past her, back around the counter, effectively ending the impromptu stand-off they had somehow gotten themselves into. “But if you’re okay with an oral agreement, I will accept your offer.”

Belle knew she had won, and as she followed Mr. Gold towards the door, she allowed herself the biggest, most deliriously happy grin for all of two seconds before he turned around to face her. She tried to hide her utter glee by biting her lip again. It didn’t work.

“No need to gloat, Ms. French,” said Mr. Gold, opening the door and making that little bell chime again. Belle loved the sound already. “I’d say I got the better end of the bargain, here.”

Mr. Gold held the door open for her a second time that day, but Belle didn’t go through right away. Halting in the middle of the door way, Belle leaned back against the frame and smirked, eyebrows raised.

“So, I’m right. You do think it’d be good to have me around.”

“Goodbye, Ms. French,” Mr. Gold replied, gently nudging her out of his door way with the gold end of his cane against her shoulder, “I expect you here at nine am, Monday. Don’t be early. I’m not letting you in a second before nine.”

“Got it! Thank you, Mr. Gold! You won’t be sorry!”

“I already am.”

And with that, the door fell shut behind her. With a brilliant smile on her face and a bounce in her step, Belle French took the long way home to her apartment. It was a beautiful evening, after all, and she was no longer unemployed. Well, in a sense.

Chapter Text

There were three flights of stairs between Belle and the comfort of her apartment, but she scaled them effortlessly, feeling as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Elated, really, and all because she took a chance and dared to be bold. Yes, Belle French was proud of herself, bordering on smug. So when she told her roommate about her day and the deal with Mr. Gold over a bottle of wine and a bowl of popcorn, and instead of a pat on the back she received one of Ruby’s skeptic looks, the wind was taken out of her sails.

“What’s that look for? You should be happy for me! I got a job!”

“I really don’t think you did, sweetie. Jobs usually involve pay,” Ruby said, reaching for her glass of wine on the coffee table, shaking her head.

“Right, okay, I get your point. But I’m going to blow him away by being efficient and helpful,” Belle argued, “and then he’ll want to hire me.”

Ruby nearly choked on her mouthful of wine and decided to put the glass back on the table. There were enough red wine stains on their couch already.

“Really, Belle? How helpful and efficient can you be in a small town pawn shop? There can’t be that much to do!”

“The place was really dusty,” Belle protested, pouring herself a second glass.

“Okay, so you’ll dust a bit. That’s half an hour of your work day right there. What else?”

“The book shelf wasn’t organized at all.”

“Move the books around, alright. Big book shelf?”

Belle opened her mouth to speak, then frowned. Kind, down-to-earth Ruby with her big eyes and her common sense, was beginning to get through to her.

“... Medium-sized, I’d say.”

“Okay, you’ll move the books around on a medium-sized book shelf. I don’t know how long that would take you, but you’d pretty much only have to do it once, right?”

“I guess,” Belle conceded, her brow now creased in a slightly concerned look. “Alright, unless he puts me in charge of literally everything, there might not be that much for me to do. I get that, but...”

Ruby slid closer and wrapped a comforting arm around her friend’s shoulder.

“You can just not show up on Monday, you know. Nothing’s been put in writing, right?”

Belle nodded in response.

“But I want to, Ruby. I really, really want to work there.” Ruby smiled and nudged Belle with her shoulder, gently so as not to send her glass of red to the floor, or worse – the couch.

“You can do better than shop assistant,” she said, “you and your bazillion degrees.”

“Just one,” Belle corrected.

“For now!”

“And I just want to work there for a few months. Not forever. And there’s the rent to think of, and-”

“I can spot you your part of the rent this month, sweetie.”

“I know, and that’s really kind, but you know I’d feel bad about that.”

“Why don’t you start tutoring again? Why take this sketchy deal and risk wasting your time and effort for zero pay?”

Belle fell silent. She turned her head to look at Ruby with a slightly embarrassed look, as if she had just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“Uh oh,” Ruby almost sang, moving her arm from Belle’s shoulder to lean against the back rest of the couch, tilting her head to the side and grinning faintly, “Fess up, Belle. What is it?”

“I... might be a little intrigued by Mr. Gold,” Belle mumbled, averting her eyes from Ruby’s undoubtedly massive grin. She downed the rest of her wine and set the glass back on the table, face scrunched up at the sour taste. She didn’t care. She’d need it for this conversation.

“Intrigued!” Ruby cried out in laughter, “You’re into the pawn shop guy? Classy!”

“Shut up! I’m not ‘into’ him, I just think he’s interesting. And have you even seen him? He wears suits and everything,” Belle protested, reaching over to shove her roommate into the cushions.

“Suits and everything? Sounds like a catch,” she teased, tossing a pillow at Belle’s head, which she dodged, laughing.

“And he has a Scottish accent, and long hair, and he’s eloquent-”

“And you’re definitely not into him and his sexy accent, luxurious hair and wonderful way with words. Right, got it, B-”

A pillow to the face muffled the last part of Ruby’s sentence and the two dissolved into giggles.

...

It was five minutes to nine on Monday morning, and Belle knocked on the pawn shop door. After a minute or so, it began to dawn on her that maybe Mr. Gold hadn’t been joking when he said he wouldn’t let her in if she was early. There was no light on in the front of the shop, so perhaps he would be arriving shortly, himself. With a sigh, she leaned back against the store front, crossed her arms and waited. It would be another lovely spring day, Belle knew, as she had checked before she left the apartment. She figured there was no need to wear a coat today, a simple cardigan would do, but then she hadn’t accounted for the wind. And there was no sun for her to warm herself up in; it was rising behind the shop, and she stood in its shadow. But still she smiled to herself, remembering that come late afternoon, the shop would be bathed in that gorgeous golden light again.

After a few minutes of waiting in complete silence, and enjoying the calm just a little bit, Belle startled at the sound of the door unlocking and the sign being flipped. Pushing herself off from the wall, Belle opened the door and went inside to see Mr. Gold walking away and towards what she figured must be a stock room or an office of some sort.

“Good morning, Mr. Gold,” she called out after him.

“Morning,” came the reply as he disappeared behind a corner.

Well, alright, Belle thought to herself. Not a morning person. That’s fine, she could deal with that. She approached the back room and saw him sitting at a table scattered with books, clocks, spare parts of things Belle had no hopes of ever identifying, and what looked like a set of porcelain plates.

“Could you hand me that book, over there? The big one. Blue,” Mr. Gold spoke, waving his hand in the direction of a pile of expensive looking reference books placed precariously near the edge of the overflowing table. It was heavy, but she managed to slide it out from between two even thicker books. Covered in dust, naturally, like everything else in the shop. It was a reference book on Chinese porcelain, and it weighed a lot more than any book on such a dry subject matter ever should. But she blew off most of the dust, wiped the rest of it off with the hem of her cardigan (Mr. Gold looked up and observed this with a critical look) and handed it over.

“Thank you,” he said, sliding back a bit from the table so he could open the book on his lap, there being absolutely no free space on the table, “but there was no need to turn your cardigan into a dust rag, Ms. French.”

Belle shrugged and reached over him to clear away the only thing she knew for certain she would be allowed to touch, and took away the empty mug with the tea bag still in it.

“Were you here when I knocked, or is there a back entrance?” she asked, moving around the table to reach the little sink in the corner of the room. There was a small trash can underneath, and she dropped the tea bag in there. “Because I was standing out front and I didn’t see you go in.”

“Of course there’s a back entrance,” Mr. Gold said calmly, glancing over to see Belle rinse out the mug. “And I was here when you knocked.”

Belle whipped her head around to frown at the man, but he was already looking back down at the book in his lap, moving his fingers up to his lips and licking thumb and index finger before turning the page. It was an action that didn’t go unnoticed. Belle was determined to figure this man out, at least a little bit, and so she had promised herself she would be hyper aware of his body language, the tone of his voice and the nuance behind his choice of words. Had she gathered anything substantial from it, so far? No. But she sure loved to look.

“So you weren’t kidding,” Belle muttered, turning back to the sink and looking around for something to dry off the mug with.

“Indeed I was not. There’s a tea towel in the cupboard to your left, dearie,” said Mr. Gold, “unless that’s a multiple purpose cardigan and you’d like to use it for this, too.”

Belle laughed and shook her head, retrieving the tea towel from the cupboard.

“No, that’s alright. This will do.”

If Belle had turned around right that instant, she would have seen Mr. Gold smile, content with having made her laugh. But she hadn’t. His timing was quite good like that. Mr. Gold prided himself on his ability to fashion an air of indifference, slight annoyance and begrudged tolerance out of critical looks, carefully spoken words of judgement and a trained mask that made his true feelings difficult if not impossible to read. The mask went very well with a dark suit, he found, so that’s what he wore. Ask him why he went through the effort of building up this persona that many people would only find off-putting and intimidating, and the mask would reply that that was entirely the point.

That wasn’t the whole truth, of course, and Mr. Gold secretly enjoyed those very rare occasions when someone seemed to appreciate his artfully constructed persona. When Ms. Belle French invited herself into his closed shop and practically demanded to be hired on the spot, Mr. Gold sensed that perhaps there was a small chance he wouldn’t mind her presence for a few hours a day. She was clever, and she was brave. If she turned out to be annoying after all, he would have to suffer through the week, but then he would be rid of her. No harm. Well, some harm to his peace of mind, of course, but all in all, he had a good feeling about this young woman.

And her resume was impressive, to say the least. It wasn’t so much the contents of it that had impressed Mr. Gold, it was the way in which she managed to magic what was essentially a year of galavanting around Europe into a set of assets to entice potential employers, using a few clever phrases and a thesaurus of euphemisms. She wrote of independence, resourcefulness, problem-solving skills, a broad worldview, initiative and maturity where Mr. Gold was wise and experienced enough to read ‘I’ve gone and had a lot of fun, and my wallet got stolen a few times, but I was clever enough not to carry all of my money on me. Speaking of which, please hire me and give me some. I’ve spent it all.’ He couldn’t judge. In fact, taking the time to explore the world, or at least your small corner of it, was not a bad idea in Mr. Gold’s book. But if any of that amounted to a half decent shop assistant, Mr. Gold wasn’t convinced just yet.

Belle set to work on clearing away the dust in the front of the shop, leaving Mr. Gold to peer at the impossibly tiny font of his reference books in peace. It took her longer than expected, and once the sun started to reach the shop’s windows (she’d have to clean those, too), she could see the dust seemingly appearing out of thin air somewhere and settling itself again. Belle could tell that it would only take a day or two of no dusting at all for the same layer of dust to accumulate on the shop’s various treasures and knick-knacks. It was a comforting thought, somehow. At least she could always dust.

“Ms. French, could you come in here for a moment?” came his voice from the back room after some time had passed. Belle found him sitting in the same spot she had left him, but it appeared he had cleared away some of the objects on the table; there was just enough space for the book, now, or half of it, at least. He stood up, leaning on the table for support as he had left his cane in the corner of the room. Quite near where Belle was standing. For a moment, she considered bringing it to him, but she thought better of it.

“I just recalled you left something in my shop, last time we met,” he said, walking over to where she was standing with a limp that was definitely more pronounced than it was earlier that day. She shot him a questioning look, and he responded by inclining his head and placing his hand on her back, between her shoulders, gently guiding her to a desk that was pushed up against the wall. He slid open a drawer.

Belle gasped at the sight of her brown binder, her name emblazoned on the front. She was too shocked to even register Mr. Gold’s soft chuckle as she reached into the drawer and was reunited with that which she had no clue she had even parted with.

“I almost threw it out,” he lied, pushing the drawer shut again and moving to lean against the desk, “but I decided to wait and see if you’d show up, first.”

Belle narrowed her eyes at him, an expression that would have had a chilling effect, perhaps, if her smile wasn’t betraying her amusement at the same time.

“Well, I hope you didn’t go snooping around in there. That would be a huge breach of privacy,” she spoke - teased, almost - inwardly cursing herself even as the words left her mouth.

Belle French was many things, but an idiot was not one of them, and she knew that while what they were doing still fell well within the boundaries of the definition of ‘banter’, there was also a risk of her carelessly stumbling over her words and accidentally skipping into the far more darker territory known as ‘flirting with your employer, which is still not a good idea even if he’s not paying you.’ The day they met, she had set up a chess board between them. Or perhaps he had. If he’d simply hired her, there would be no game to speak of. But, then again, she was the one who had come up with the deal. No, no, it was definitely not just her fault. This was a two player game.

“Why would I think there was something of interest to me in there?” Mr. Gold said, dismissing her concern with a wave of his hand, another in a series of gestures Belle had begun to develop a serious appreciation for.

“I think you had better put this on the counter so you won’t forget to take it home. Leave it here any longer, and my hand might slip and your precious binder could end up in the trash after all.”

“You’d never have thrown this out,” she replied, shaking her head with a soft smile, “I think you hold on to things.”

This time, Mr. Gold smiled back in a way that seemed to change the entire fabric of the moment. It was as if they’d let go of something that was pulled taut between them, and what rippled through the room as a result was something else entirely. It was a simple misplaced moment of sincerity, a thought voiced with no intent, unarmored and unrelated to the game of words and wit they seemed to have going for themselves. Mr. Gold’s defenses were nowhere to be found in that moment, and Belle saw the difference in his face. Softer, a little more tired, his eyes held her gaze for a few seconds, then blinked once, slowly, much in the manner of a contented cat.

And then the moment was gone.

“Why you would think about me at all is nothing less than a mystery to me, dearie,” he said, turning away to limp towards his cane. The bell chimed and Mr. Gold disappeared around the corner to go deal with a customer.

There we go, Belle thought to herself. Back to their game of verbal grey areas. In a way, she was glad. The way he looked at her just then was unsafe. But not uncomfortable, no, not at all. Not then, anyway, when they were still in the moment. The banter was a different kind of dangerous, and Belle knew that she would slip up soon enough, because words excited her, riled her, goaded her into going further and pushing just that little bit harder. But she knew that game, and she knew Mr. Gold understood it too. Whatever that moment was, she wasn’t sure how it had happened, but she knew it was not in the rule book.

Listening to his voice as the man bartered with the first and only customer the shop would see that day, Belle set to work on organizing the clutter on the table. She wouldn’t clear it away (she couldn’t see where she could possibly put all that stuff), but at least she could make enough space for Mr. Gold’s reference books, and a mug. It didn’t take very long.

“You can go home now, Ms. French,” sounded his voice from the door way, “I think I’ll close up shop in a couple of hours, and it’s almost lunch time. You might as well go home.”

“Oh, but I wanted to start on the books,” Belle replied, her lower lip drawn in between her teeth again.

“No matter,” Mr. Gold assured her. “Go home and enjoy the rest of the day. The weather will turn, tomorrow.”

Belle nodded and moved past Mr. Gold and into the front of the shop. She had wanted to see the shop in its sunset colors again, but it was too early for that. Her disappointed look did not escape Mr. Gold’s watchful eye, but he did not allow himself to fully acknowledge it. That was a silly road to walk down, he knew, better not to head there.

“Mr. Gold?”

“Yes, dearie?”

“I want to thank you again for the opportunity.”

“No matter. You did well, today,” he said, waiting a single beat and then adding: “Which doesn’t mean you won’t mess it all up tomorrow.”

Belle rolled her eyes, smirking as she did so. She walked out, closed the door behind her and only just caught Mr. Gold’s secret smile as he turned away.

In her room later that day, Belle typed away at her thesis, determined on adding another two hundred words before the sun set. In Mr. Gold’s pawn shop, the dust danced in the golden light – not as much dust as before, Belle would have been glad to notice – and settled on a brown binder with the name ‘Belle French’ boldly written on the front.

Chapter Text

There were rain clouds on the horizon when Mr. Gold unlocked the back door of his shop early Tuesday morning. He disappeared into the building for a minute or two, then came back out dragging a folding chair behind him with one hand and holding a steaming mug in the other. He pushed the chair against the brick wall and sat down, slowly, mindful of the hot liquid in the mug, grimacing as his leg protested under the shifting weight.

And so Mr. Gold sat in the tiny courtyard behind his little shop, staring off into the distance and sipping his tea every so often, almost as if it were an afterthought. What little sunlight there was did nothing to warm his cold hands, but maybe that’s what the tea was for, one could imagine, because it sure didn’t look like he cared about drinking it before it got cold. The paper label moved slightly in the breeze, and so did his hair, so he reached up and tucked it behind his ear.

There were very few people in the world who would pull up a chair next to Mr. Gold’s and ask him what he was thinking about, even fewer who wouldn’t be scoffed at for asking, and none of them was around at that early hour, but it would be safe to assume from the creases in the skin of his forehead that whatever he was thinking about, he would do well to get it off his mind.

He looked at his watch, sighed, rested his head back against the wall. He’d have half an hour of quiet before young Ms. French would arrive and fill the shop with the sounds of whatever it was she planned to do that day. Surely there couldn’t possibly be any more dusting? She mentioned rearranging the books before he had sent her off the day before. He smirked to himself, bringing his tea up to his lips. He had half a mind to haul in the boxes of unsorted books he kept in storage and see what she would do if those were thrown into the mix.

Actually, he thought to himself, she could probably take care of those with ease. Shift through them, check for any early or special editions, autographs, that sort of thing. She had, after all, mentioned a short stint as an assistant in her university’s historical archives on her resume. Well, what do you know. He huffed into his almost empty mug in a silent laugh. Turns out she might be useful for the shop after all.

Mr. Gold sat and watched dark clouds roll over the town until he felt the first few drops of rain fall onto his skin. With a deep sigh that turned into a groan of pain, he stood up and dragged his chair back inside. A glance at one of many clocks scattered around the room told him he still had fifteen minutes of solitude before Ms. French would come knocking (if she had learned her lesson, fewer if she hadn’t), bringing all of her words and strange looks with her.

Once inside, he sat at his table and looked out of the window instead. He often came early, just to sit in silence. Sometimes he would allow himself to treat the books in the front of the shop as his personal library and not as valuable goods to be priced and sold, and he would revisit an old classic. Dickens always sold well, but Mr. Gold wasn’t a fan. He didn’t mind realism, per se, and he had one or two fond memories of seemingly endless books about social injustice and economic inequality and all things usually moaned about by those folk in endless detail, but there was something about the modernists that made him want to lock himself up in his room – his old room, his childhood room, long abandoned and perhaps torn down – and drown in impressions and untraceable thoughts.

His thoughts turned to his assistant again in the form of a question he knew he wouldn’t ask her. ‘What do you like to read?’ There was no room for that in her game. Well, their game, if he had to be completely honest. Which he didn’t. So he scratched that thought from the records of his mind, returned his attention to the rain that was tapping his window and took a moment to enjoy the knowledge that the rain would keep away curious browsing locals with more questions than money they meant to spend in his shop.

Until he heard a knock on the shop’s front door. Mr. Gold frowned and looked at the nearest clock. Ten minutes to nine. Surely not? Surely this woman did not just show up even earlier than the day before? He stood up, grabbed his cane and moved towards the front of the shop. Through the glass and the water streaming over it, he could see a miserable wet mass huddled in front of his door. Even through the distortion of glass and water, he could see a hint of those weirdly blue eyes. Stubborn little thing, wasn’t she?

And of course, by showing up early in this weather with no umbrella, she had bested him on the matter, because there was no way he was going to have someone freeze in the pouring rain in front of his shop. Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. He would have gladly let most of the town’s population stand there and shiver until he deigned it the appropriate time to open his shop. But not her. His antisocial tendencies didn’t extend to those people Mr. Gold... did not dislike. Did she know?

What a stupid question, Mr. Gold berated himself. Of course she knew. She wouldn’t have shown up ten minutes early in this weather if she didn’t. This was a glorious little challenge meant to make him break character and drop his unattached, grumpy persona for a moment, and Mr. Gold was amused, if not impressed. He would gladly admit defeat on this particular battle field, offer his neck to such a well-crafted, expertly handled sword.

He walked up to the door, having made sure to put on his most opaque mask of indifference, unlocked it, opened it, and held it so the shivering mass of brown hair and blue eyes could scuttle inside with her arms wrapped around her. Behind her back, Mr. Gold let the door fall shut again and rolled his eyes.

“You’re early, Ms. French,” he said, deciding that stating the obvious was as good a conversation starter as any, and the drowned woman would surely take the wheel from there. Take it, and steer it towards gloating, no doubt.

“Y-yes, I am,” came the annoyingly endearing shivering reply. How could she sound this smug on the verge of pneumonia? “And you opened up for me, Mr. Gold,” she continued. Her turn to state the obvious.

Mr. Gold watched as Belle rubbed her arms, trying to warm up. Water dripped from her hair and her skirt onto the wood floor. He sighed, shook his head and walked past her towards the radiator under the window, cranked it up and nodded towards it.

“Can’t have you flooding my shop and dying of hypothermia. I’d have a puddle and a corpse to dispose of, and one of those is quite enough bother for one day,” Mr. Gold said, willingly delivering the first strike.

“One of those also happens to be my job, so I’ll thank you to leave that puddle to me,” Belle replied, shrugging off of her coat (at least she’d worn one, not that the rain had paid much heed because the poor woman was soaked through and through anyway) and draping it over the radiator. Peeling her cardigan from the wet skin of her arms was a little more difficult, but she managed, and she draped it neatly next to her coat. It was chilly in her t-shirt, but it was better than a wet cardigan.

“Oh, I think I left my binder here again, yesterday. I’m sorry, I completely forgot,” she called out to Mr. Gold who had gone into the back of the shop. She was about to head there, but before she could, Mr. Gold appeared again, holding the infernal thing in his hands. Opened. Belle watched with her breath caught in her throat as his eyes moved over whatever was in there. She stood on her tiptoes for a moment to try and catch a glimpse of what he was looking at and was relieved to see that it was just the translucent folder holding the rest of her photocopied resumes.

“This old thing, yes? You’d think it was made of ice, the way it keeps slipping your mind.”

He placed it on the counter, the exact same spot he had put it the day before, and moved to close it. But then he didn’t. Belle’s eyes widened as she realized with a sudden start that there were some things she’d written on the inside of the binder that she hadn’t erased.

Mr. Gold’s eyes had indeed caught a glimpse of something on the inside of the binder that made him open it again and take a second look. Well. That was interesting. He closed it, turned around and allowed himself to subject Ms. French to a knowing look, brow raised and mouth curled up ever so faintly into an amused smirk.

Well, screw that, Belle French though to herself. This was not going to be a win for him. She had started off the day victorious, and it was too soon to let the man score a point against her.

“No, that wasn’t his actual name, if you were going to ask.”

“You mean to say there’s no Professor Handsome? That’s disappointing news.”

Ah, there was that chin thing again. Belle gave him her most defiant look, which, combined with the fact that she still looked not unlike a drowned spaniel, had rather the opposite effect and made him want to throw a towel over her head and tell her not to attempt to look serious again until she’d gotten the Atlantic Ocean out of her hair.

“That’s a couple of years old. I meant to erase it. Or replace ‘handsome’ with ‘jerk’, at least.”

“Oh? Whatever did this heart-eyed stick figure do to fall out of your graces?”

Belle smiled, but Mr. Gold noticed a difference. This was not a smile he had seen before; there was something else behind it. The young woman wrapped her arms around herself again, though she wasn’t shivering anymore, and Mr. Gold regretted asking. This wasn’t in the rule book, either.

“Never mind, dearie. You can get on with whatever it is you meant to do, today,” he said, “and if you need me for anything, I’ll be in the back.”

“I wasn’t... infatuated with him, or anything. Not really. But he was handsome. I drew that with my friend sitting next to me, just the sort of childish thing you think is hilarious when you’re sitting in a three hour lecture on romanticism and you’re only one hour in with no break in sight,” Belle said, unfolding her arms and letting them drop to her sides.

“It’s alright, Ms. French, you needn’t-”

“It’s really not that serious,” she assured him. “He accused me of plagiarism towards the end of the semester. There was an inquiry, and they decided that I’d done nothing wrong, but that I should take a different class. It threw me off track.”

Mr. Gold had listened, narrowing his eyes a bit in a glare Belle wished she could have given Professor Jerk herself.

“Why did he accuse you if you’d done nothing wrong?”

“He did it because he’s a psychopath,” Belle said, voice a little darker now. It earned her an appreciative smirk from Mr. Gold. “As for why I managed to incur the wrath of a psychopath, well, I’d wager that was because I didn’t roll over during discussions, like the other students.”

Of course she didn’t. Belle’s eyes were wide and bright with anger, now, and her hands were fists at her sides. Mr. Gold quite enjoyed this side of her. Clearly some injustice had been done to her, and she had stood up to it, but she hadn’t forgotten.

“And because he had tenure...” Mr. Gold offered.

“There were no consequences for him. Slap on the wrist, maybe. I don’t know,” she said, nodding.

Belle was silent for a few seconds, seemingly lost in the memory.

“And he wouldn’t shut up about Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

At this, Mr. Gold burst into laughter. Belle’s frown was wiped away and replaced with a curious smile, her eyes softened and her hands relaxed. It was strange to hear him laugh like that. It sounded genuine, and it stole the anger right out of her chest, replacing it with something else. Fondness, maybe. Fondness would do.

“I hope you keyed his car,” Mr. Gold said.

“Can’t say I didn’t consider it,” Belle replied, moving closer to him, eyes fluttering from the ground to his face.

She wasn’t sure what she was doing, but her feet didn’t care about that. Mr. Gold stood perfectly still, but Belle could see that he was wary of her movements. She felt oddly powerful in this moment. There was no need for proximity in this game they were playing, but she was good at finding excuses; he was standing between her and her cardigan on the radiator. For all he knew, that’s where she was heading. There’d still be no excuse for her to come to a stand still right in front of him, smile sweetly, and say what she was about to say, but bold Belle French was past the point of caring.

“I could have used a bad influence back then.”

She took a few seconds (her heart beating just a little bit faster in her chest) to measure Mr. Gold’s reaction. There wasn’t much of one. But his eyes - his eyes were just that little bit brighter, maybe. And the longer she looked, the more her own poker face threatened to fall apart. She only just managed to stop herself from biting her lip; that would have been overkill. Belle knew he wouldn’t crack just like that. Come to think of it – that’s not what she wanted. They’d been playing, for the most part, and it had been fun. Then there was that one moment where Belle knew, really knew, that if they were to lower their weapons, they might actually have a meaningful conversation.

Both, I want both, she thought. She walked past him, her shoulder briefly brushing against his, entirely without her design. But the brief touch excited her, and she thanked whatever deities might have been presiding that day that Mr. Gold could not see her grin madly. As she feigned interest in the state of her cardigan, she could hear him walk away from her and, she assumed, towards the back room.

“It’s never too late to go down that particular path, dearie,” finally came the reply to Belle’s clumsy first foray into the twilight zone between banter and flirting. Her heart skipped a beat and she decided then and there that she ought to get busy doing something productive before she drove this car off the cliff and doomed them both.

The puddle, yes, she could clean up the rain she’d tracked in. She’d seen a mop somewhere yesterday. Peeking her head around the corner, she saw Mr. Gold with his hands full of what Belle suspected were the brass innards of the cuckoo clock sat in front of him on the table. His brow was furrowed in concentration. Belle walked – quietly, almost daintily – into the room and carefully pulled the mop free from its place between the sink and the cupboard as if she were an archeologist in a heavily booby-trapped ancient tomb and the mop was the Holy Grail or something similarly important. Mustn’t wake up the mummified guards, or the three-headed dog, or the dragon – or disturb the man with dozens of small cogs and screws in his hands.

“Tea or coffee?” the dragon politely enquired without looking up from his work.

“What?”

Mr. Gold looked up, now, with a hard stare. This is where her fantastical archeological daydream fell apart, because at this point, the intrepid explorer and brave protagonist would have not-so-bravely but quite sensibly hightailed it out of the tomb, and Belle wanted to do no such thing.

“Which do you prefer? For future reference.”

“Oh. Tea. Two sugars. But I could make the tea, if you like, Mr. Gold.”

But the dragon bowed his head over his treasure again, and Belle, clutching her prize, retreated from his lair.

The puddle was taken care of easily enough, and she placed the mop next to the door for the time being. An adventurous archeologist doesn’t relinquish their treasure that easily, after all. Not before the curse (of course there’s a curse) decimates their entire family and gives them an unsightly affliction of the skin. Only then do they face the treasure’s guards again, Belle though to herself. She smiled to no-one in particular. The mental image of Mr. Gold as a dragon guarding his treasure appealed to her literary imagination, almost made her want to tell him. Made her want to sit down next to him, poke him in the chest and tell him he would make an excellent fairy tale character.

No. The books. Focus on the books, she told herself.

And that was easy to do, because they were a tempting sight for a bookworm like her. These books were either bound in leather or clothbound, and all of them looked precious to her. With a faint smile on her face, she flitted her fingers over the spines, noting with some relief that the dust hadn’t gotten to these treasures somehow. Or perhaps Mr. Gold did do a little dusting after all? Belle rather liked the idea that the man would have the same sense of deference for a well-crafted book.

For a few minutes, she stood in front of the shelf and tried to detect an underlying pattern in the chaos. If he cared enough to keep them dust free, perhaps he also cared enough to organize them – just not in a system she recognized. Suddenly she was set upon by doubts; if there really was a system, it must have been personal. They weren’t in alphabetical order, and they weren’t organized by school of thought, genre, year of publication or print, or even by author. There stood George Eliot’s Middlemarch in between Henry James and James Joyce, and few shelves down, Eliot made another appearance with Adam Bede, this time, followed by Austen. And oddly enough, all of the Austen was clustered together. Had he started grouping things and just given up not even halfway through? If that was the case, she could just take the whole thing apart and come up with a sensible system. But if not, that meant there was something of himself in that book shelf, somehow, and she didn’t want to destroy that before she’d decoded the message. There was something about that top shelf in particular that made her want to figure the whole thing out.

“They aren’t going to organize themselves, dearie,” sounded his voice behind her.

Belle started and turned around to see Mr. Gold holding two mugs of what Belle, never having seen him drink anything else, assumed was tea. For a man with a pronounced limp and a creaky hardwood floor, he sure did manage to sneak up on her this time. He offered her one of the mugs, turning the handle towards her.

“Careful. Hot.”

“Thank you,” she said, visibly flustered, as if she suspected her inner monologue had been audible all this time. “I was just wondering whether you had a specific system in mind.”

Mr. Gold shrugged, sipped his tea, let his eyes rove over the shelves.

“Nothing at all? Because it looks like maybe you got started on something, here. The Austen, for example-”

“Someone brought those in all at once, so I just put them there together.”

Belle narrowed his eyes at him, and it made him want to laugh. That chin’d go up in a minute, if he would just take the time to push a few buttons. He gave her his most innocent look, eyebrows raised in a well-practiced but practically pantomime look of confusion.

“So you wouldn’t mind if I,” and here she paused, reaching up on her tiptoes to slide Middlemarch out from between its neighbors, “take this masterfully wrought epic on provincial life in the mid-nineteenth century,” Mr. Gold swallowed, folded his arms and hardened his expression, “and put it right here, next to Dickens, on the middle shelf,” Belle looked over her shoulder with a mischievous grin, “just like that, where just about anyone can see it,” he was practically glaring at her now, “buy it,” she turned towards him, tilted her head to the side in a mock inquisitive look, “and take it home?”

Check. Belle grinned. Mr. Gold abandoned his mug on a nearby side table and stepped closer, his tongue flitting over his lips for just a fraction of a second. Belle was holding the book up right where she’d threatened to put it instead. There was no room for it there, but she figured the visual would be enough if she held it up. And it was.

He was close, now, and his fingers wrapped themselves around her wrist, gently but firmly, and he moved her hand – and the book – back up towards the upper shelf. She had to turn in order to see where it was supposed to go, and his other hand lightly touched her waist, guiding her as she did so. It was practically a dance, and it was entirely inappropriate, probably, but Belle didn’t really think so. He was standing behind her now, not too close to be intimidating, but with his hands on her wrist and her waist respectively, he may as well have been pushed up against her entirely, Belle thought as she felt a certain heat crawl up her neck and towards her cheeks.

She slid the book back in its rightful place, and the touches on her wrist and waist instantly fell away. The heat on her face was still there, though, and she knew that years from now, she would still be able to conjure up this moment in her mind, and those touches, too. With vivid detail. When she turned around, Mr. Gold had stepped away, had reunited himself with his mug of tea, and looked a little taken aback. By his own candor? Belle thought that a little strange. Did he think he’d crossed a line? Because, of course he had, and so had she, but wasn’t that the point of their game?

“The top shelf is where I keep the books I’d be sad to see go,” he finally admitted, speaking softly into his mug in between sips.

Belle wanted to speak, but her mouth felt dry, so she licked her lips and took a sip, too. She was still holding her own tea, all this time. It was a miracle she hadn’t dropped the thing to the ground. She tasted sugar, and it had been perfectly steeped. She secretly smiled behind the ceramic.

“Why don’t you just take them home with you?”

Mr. Gold laughed silently in that way Belle had noticed he’d perfected, looked down into the dark liquid (steadily losing its heat) and shrugged. He looked nothing like a dragon guarding his treasure, now. Dragons didn’t look uncertain.

“They were sold to the shop. They’re merchandise.”

“So buy them,” Belle said. The sight of Mr. Gold as he stood there looking self-conscious, avoiding her gaze, made Belle want to reach over, tilt his head up and brush her fingers through the hair that fell over his eyes. There was that fondness again, that underlying promise of understanding and kindness, threatening to topple the game board and send the pieces flying to the floor.

“I’m not that sensible a man, Ms. French,” he replied, finally looking up and flashing her a quick half smile, as if he were apologizing for straying from the path of rationality and pragmatism. Ridiculous, of course, because neither one of them had any sort of affinity for that path in the first place. Mr. Gold just liked to hide that fact, where Belle felt no such need.

“But I’ll consider it. Maybe leave that top shelf be for now. I’ll help you clear off all the others. You can rearrange those however you like.”

Belle smiled.

“That sounds good.”

It took them the rest of the day (minus a lunch break that Belle didn’t really want to take, but Mr. Gold insisted she leave the shop for an hour - “there is only so much chirpiness one can take in a day, and be sure to take that umbrella over there”) to rearrange the books, because Belle had an opinion on nearly all of them, and she could have sworn Mr. Gold’s faint smile meant he didn’t mind hearing it. He didn’t always agree; he did not have the patience for Dickens while Belle couldn’t get enough of him. And when she got truly passionate about Katherine Mansfield, a collection of short stories of whom Mr. Gold had unforgivingly relocated to the middle of the shelf, he mocked her fervor expertly, but not without a hint of affection. She made him promise he would read at least one of her short stories, and he begrudgingly acquiesced.

What she really wanted to do was ask him about that top shelf, find out what he loved about every single one of those books, and why, and when he had read them, and where, and what was going on in his life at that time, and who was important to him then, but perhaps not today. Definitely not today.

As the day drew to a close and the rain still hadn’t let up, Mr. Gold sent her on her way with the umbrella she took to lunch. He stood behind his counter, where he suddenly noticed her binder was still taking up valuable space.

“Ms. French. I’ve still got something of yours,” he said, fiddling with the register. He only looked up when instead of an apology and footsteps towards him he heard the bell chime as the door opened. Belle grinned at him over her shoulder and shrugged.

“That’s okay. I’ve got something of yours, now.”

She opened her – well, his – umbrella and bounced out of his shop. Mr. Gold was dumbfounded. He looked down at the blasted thing on his counter, then back up to where he could see his umbrella bob up and down, crossing the street, eventually out of view with the rain streaming over the windows and blurring the outside world. He blinked, confused, but not unamused. She was stranger than she looked. Good.

Chapter Text

“You’re on time, today,” Mr. Gold said, flipping the sign over with a little smile. “I take it you’ve made your point, then.”

“I don’t know about that” Belle almost sang as she moved past him and towards the counter. “Maybe I was planning on staying fifteen minutes longer today.”

“Well I’d have to lock you in. I can’t possibly leave my shop unlocked with you as its guard dog,” he replied. “That would be,” here he tapped the wood floor with his cane softly a few times, feigning some difficulty finding the correct word, “ineffectual.”

Belle moved behind the register and moved her lips into a softly spoken ‘oh’, eyebrows raised in a look of innocence as fake as Mr. Gold’s trouble with words.

“Didn’t think I’d be here by myself, but alright, then, never mind,” she teased, face cracking into a smile at the way Mr. Gold failed to hide his confusion and replace it with his stone-faced veil of calm before Belle could spy it.

Mr. Gold watched with guarded interest as Belle gave one of the buttons on his beautiful old register an experimental push. The drawer suddenly shot open with a ding, scaring an unsuspecting Belle into jumping back and clutching her hand to her chest. Mr. Gold bit his lip so as not to laugh.

“And what do you think you’re doing over there, Ms. French?”

“I figured you could teach me to use this thing. That way you won’t have to drop everything you’re doing when a customer walks in.”

Belle, brow furrowed in concentration, tried to push the drawer back in. A futile effort, Mr. Gold knew, because the old thing wouldn’t budge unless you knew exactly where to push. He walked around the counter and stood next to her. Belle moved to make room for him behind the register.

“You have to press quite hard and jiggle it a little bit. The right side is a little rusty. Look,” he said, putting one hand on the register to hold it down and using the other to push the drawer back in with a little jerk to the left to avoid whatever it was that kept making it catch on the right side. “Did you get that?”

He turned his head to see if she’d understood, but instead of her profile as she watched his hands tame the stubborn old register, he saw her impossibly blue eyes stare at him with a strange dreamy intensity that froze him to the spot. Her lips were slightly parted. She looked caught out, now. Belle turned away, laughed softly and shook her head a little. Then she moved her head back up to grin at him and shrugged as if to say ‘You caught me! Oh well! Now let’s go again.’ Like they were playing hide and seek, and Mr. Gold had pulled up the tablecloth and found her crouching beneath the dining room table.

Suddenly, he was struck with the realization that Belle considered him in on it – whatever it was. There had always been that well-advised niggling doubt, that cautioning voice in the back of his head telling him to just let her play and have her fun. And now he knew that when Belle stumbled and stepped out of bounds just a little bit, she wasn’t frightened. She didn’t feel unsafe around him, bare without those masks and those unspoken rules, as long as they didn’t try to trip one another up. There was something underneath. Something comfortable and warm. Wasn’t there?

“Even if you did know how to work the register, I’d still have to come out. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Ms. French, but I don’t do price tags. I can’t have you selling a seven-hundred dollar pocket watch for a fiver while I’m in the back room.”

There was that look on her face again. The one that said ‘You can be incredibly dense for an intelligent person, now let me tell you why you’re wrong,’ but there came no ten point rebuttal, no well-researched counterargument and no terms for his surrender. Just a quick quirked eyebrow.

“Fair point. Doesn’t matter. I’ve got all the time in the world to learn by observation.”

“All the time in the world? Don’t you think that’s a little presumptuous?”

“Oh, right. You’re going to send me off when the week is up,” said Belle, trying her hardest to sound grave. “Almost forgot.”

Mr. Gold smiled. She’d counted to ten and he was off to hide behind his broken cuckoo clock in the back room.

…

He only had to come out to the front of the shop to deal with customers twice before lunch, and each time Belle hovered around in the background, keeping true to her word and watching him closely (but pretending to be quite busy doing something productive.) The first customer bought an old magnifying glass, the price of which made Belle’s mouth drop open. Mr. Gold caught her shock over the customer’s shoulder and only just managed to disguise his laughter with a well-timed cough.

The second customer bought a small oil painting of an extremely bored looking cow in a meadow, and this time it was Belle’s turn to stifle a giggle at Mr. Gold’s poorly-disguised contempt for the wretched thing, burying her face in her hands and having to turn away when she heard his deadpan voice praise the artist for having ‘captured the essence of the bovine.’

When noon came around and Mr. Gold tried to ship her off again, Belle flat out refused to leave the shop without him and demanded he come with her to a little diner she loved, where her roommate worked. The idea had crossed her mind before that Wednesday, and she had been hesitant to take whatever their dynamic was outside of the shop’s walls for fear of finding it changed for the worse somehow, but she was feeling particularly brave, today. Alas, it seemed that no matter how beautifully she sang the praises of the diner’s chocolate milkshakes and hamburgers, the man would not budge.

Which is why at 12:45 precisely, Belle stormed back into the shop, found Mr. Gold in the back room and plopped down a great big cup on the desk at which he’d been reading. He looked up, utterly uncomprehending. She might as well have presented him with a kettle or an iron; it wouldn’t have been any less nonsensical to him.

“What’s this?”

“Chocolate milkshake,” she replied, “I just finished mine. I told you, they’re really good.”

Mr. Gold laughed in disbelief.

“I don’t even pay you for your work, and you buy me a milkshake?”

“Guess you owe me,” she said, and with another one of her brilliant smiles, she was off God knows where to do God knows what, and he was left with a ridiculous quantity of chocolate milkshake, which (taking a sip through the straw once Belle was out of view) he had to admit was actually quite good.

With more than ten minutes to go before the clock struck one, Mr. Gold had no intention of doing any work until his lunch break was well and truly over. So he sat, he read, he sipped, he tried not to react when Belle, on her way to the sink to fill a bucket of water for some reason, stole his milkshake out of his hands, took a sip and handed it back as if that was a completely normal thing to do. He thought he’d done a pretty good job at ignoring that. He decided to count it as a victory. He heard her call out to tell him it was just her when the bell chimed, then nothing.

He made it fourteen minutes past one until his curiosity got the better of him, and he went to the front of the shop, where it became apparent that Ms. French had taken a sponge and a squeegee to his windows. She’d brought out the little step ladder Mr. Gold used to take paintings off the wall with her, and she’d pulled up her hair in a quick bun.

That little bell was a good thing, Belle thought, because otherwise she’d have fallen off the step ladder when Mr. Gold suddenly appeared next to her, wearing a positively devious smirk.

“Almost done here, Mr. Gold.”

“You know, those windows are going to look worse when a bird crashes into them because you did too good a job.”

Belle snorted and rolled her eyes at the man. “Then I’ll clean that up, too.”

Up there on the ladder, she felt even braver. He had to literally look up to her this way, after all. She laughed at the thought, looking slightly unstable for a moment. Mr. Gold saw and moved closer to steady her, but she’d already stabilized before he had to reach out.

“Do try not to fall off and die, will you,” said Mr. Gold. “You wouldn’t be able to clean up that particular mess.”

Oh, he was worried, really, Belle knew. And he must have known she knew. She wanted to laugh again, just at the pure silliness of their situation. At how they’d been dancing around each other, chasing, hiding, teasing. Pretend battles with cardboard swords.

“No dying. Got it. Any other brilliant bits of advice, Mr. Gold?”

“Yes, as it happens,” he started, reaching out a hand towards his unofficial assistant. “If you get down from there, I can teach you how to work the register.”

Now, there were three emotions responsible for the strange, delighted but flustered look on Belle French’s face. One of them was the joy at the prospect of learning something new; she liked to learn, and she loved to feel useful. The other was excitement caused by the realization that she was about to hold his hand. The third was embarrassment, caused by her awareness of the second one. What was she, a fundamentalist mormon teenager on her first date? Why didn’t her skirt reach down to her ankles? Didn’t she need a chaperone? Considering the length of her inner monologue, Mr. Gold was right to raise his eyebrows at the slight delay.

But he hadn’t pulled his hand back. Belle reached out and let him take her hand in his. There we go, see? Not that big of a deal. The world didn’t come to a stand still, nor did classical music swell up and threaten to drown out the background sound. But then why, once she’d safely made it down the ladder and let go of his hand, did Belle step a little closer than was necessarily normal (her gaze nowhere near his eyes, her mouth dry) and made the inexplicable decision to straighten his tie? Her fingers were at the knot, her eyes were focused on her fingers. Too close to his skin. She wanted quite intensely to run her fingers up his neck and into his hair, but she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. His adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and it took her all the self-control she had left not to look up.

“Was it that crooked?” he asked, voice slightly lower, much softer than Belle had heard it before.

She drew away, nodded silently, grabbed her bucket in one hand and the small step ladder in the other. She’d planned on rushing back inside and perhaps shoot herself in the head, or make them some tea, whichever, really, but she couldn’t open the door with her hands full and had to wait for Mr. Gold to open it for her. Which he did, but in his own time.

Inside, she disappeared into the back room, and Mr. Gold knew to let her be. She was regrouping. She’d overestimated her own bravery and rushed headfirst into something she wasn’t quite prepared for. He knew the feeling well. He wanted to kick himself the day before, when he took her by the wrist, put his other hand on her hip, all under the guise of putting back a damn book on a shelf. He knew she’d noticed his surprise at his own actions. She hadn’t pulled up his mask, then. He wasn’t going to pull up hers, now.

She came out with tea and a smile on her face, five minutes later. She walked up to the register and placed the two mugs on the counter next to it.

“So. If another escaped lunatic from a nearby insane asylum walks in and decides to buy a thousand dollar antique cigarette case or whatever, how do I make that transaction happen? And do I call the police before, or after?”

And she was back.

“After, dearie. After.”

…

“I’m not hungry, thanks,” Belle muttered from where she’d been sat on the couch watching muted trash on the television with a distant look for the last hour.

Ruby was concerned, of course, but she was past the point of gentle persuasion. Now was the time for action in the form of a well-aimed banana expertly tossed across the room, bumping against Belle’s shoulder and falling onto the cushioning of the couch next to her. That did the trick. She snapped out of the strange trance she’d been in and turned towards her roommate, blinking in confusion.

“It’s 11 pm and you haven’t eaten since lunch,” Ruby explained, moving across the room and coming to a standstill squarely in front of the TV. “You okay? Are you sick?”

Belle shrugged and slumped down, falling onto her side and stretching her neck to try and catch a glimpse of the flashing screen beyond the visual obstruction that was her roommate at the moment.

“I’m fine, I promise,” Belle said softly, “I’m just preoccupied.”

“Your thesis?”

“Nah.”

“Work?”

Belle curled up with a pillow clutched to her chest. She knew that at this point, she probably should have said ‘no’, but it was too late for that. Her silence had lasted a bit too long for a plausible denial at this point, and Ruby had picked up on it in an instant. And already, Ruby had moved to sit next to her friend, gently lifting her head up from the couch and guiding it onto her lap instead.

“Is he mean to you? Because I will go rip his arms off if you want me to, you know that.”

Belle laughed, turned to lie on her back and smiled up at her friend. She shook her head, indicating no, that wasn’t the problem exactly. She felt some words begin to cluster together in sentences she wasn’t sure she was ready to utter yet – or ever. The words pooled in the pit of her stomach instead, burning, bubbling, making her cheeks glow red and her hands fly up to her face to cover it.

“Oh... sweetie... You’ve got it bad, haven’t you?”

“I’m such an idiot,” she half-shouted into her hands, still covering her face.

“Of course you’re not! Well, okay, maybe a little. ‘Not into him’, yeah right,” Ruby scoffed with a smirk. But she put a comforting hand on top of her roommate’s head, petting her as if she were an oversized puppy. Belle peeked up at her from between her fingers, then slowly moved her hands away from her face. Still blushing, but coaxed out of her shell of shame by Ruby’s comforting touch.

“You think he’s trouble?”

It wasn’t really a question; Belle knew that if Ruby wasn’t at least a little bit concerned, she’d be egging her on by now, making her giggle and blush even more. She’d be stoking the fire, giving her terrible but probably very effective advice, and in all likelihood, the wine’d have been out already.

Ruby was silent for a moment, her smirk making way for a thoughtful look as she absently ran her fingers through Belle’s hair.

“He could be,” she started, tilting her head to the side in thought. But then the corners of her mouth curled slowly upwards into a broadening grin. “But you definitely are.”

Belle gasped, indignant. She pushed herself up from Ruby’s lap to sit up straight as a ruler.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Oh come on, Belle. You’re gonna tell me you haven’t been flirting up a storm, then?”

“No! I mean, yes! I mean I haven’t! I mean, not really. We joke sometimes, but that’s banter.”

Ruby raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips in a look that screamed ‘you’re full of shit, Belle’, and Belle received the message loud and clear. Like a scolded child, she drew her knees up under her chin and avoided Ruby’s amused but stern eyes.

“Okay. I think there’s been some flirting. And I may have started it,” she mumbled.

“I bet.”

“But you know me, Rubes,” she pleaded, reaching out to grab at her arm, “you can’t just shove me into a situation with an intelligent, handsome, slightly mysterious man and expect me not to throw words at him like a 6-year-old throwing pebbles at her crush on the playground.”

Ruby smiled at the mental imagery, but shook her head.

“There’s no way it’s just ‘words’ at this point. You’re not eating and you’ve been staring at muted infomercials for the last hour. Who knows what you’ve been subjecting that guy to.”

Belle gawked at her with a look of utter incomprehension, and Ruby laughed.

“I’m willing to bet you’ve done the lip thing already.”

“What lip thing?”

“And the chin thing.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “Just tell me one thing,” she said, reaching over for the remote to turn the TV off. The flashing images fizzled out with a soft click, leaving the two in soft lamp light. “How does he make you feel?”

Belle shrugged again, a hint of a smile playing on her face.

“He makes me feel clever. And brave. A little dangerous. Funny. And sexy.”

Ruby’s grin almost split her face in two, and it was so knowing and smug it made Belle want to hide behind her hands again. Instead, she hugged her legs closer to her body.

“And a little bit terrified, in a good way.”

Ruby looked thoughtful, then nodded and reached over to pat Belle on the knee.

“Then he’s got Ruby’s seal of approval,” she finally spoke. Belle snorted and pushed away Ruby’s hand jokingly. “Because that’s important. How he makes you feel about yourself, I mean.”

Now, at the age of 26, Belle had had her fair share of school girl infatuations, so the feeling was not exactly unfamiliar to her. When her first crush (he was ten, she was nine, he gave her his chocolate chip cookie when an older boy had knocked her apple out of her hand and into the dirt, she split the cookie in two, gave him back half and hit the older boy squarely in the back of the head with the dirty apple) had asked her to meet her behind the bike shed in a hastily written note pushed into her hand by a classmate, she cried. Just cried. Her body could just not handle the unfamiliar intensity of her happiness, so she ran to her best friend and bawled, smiling through the tears and confusing the hell out of the poor girl whose arms she’d crashed into.

But to be sitting there, an adult, and to be reaching back seventeen years in time and somehow connecting with that little girl with the tear-stained note in the schoolyard, it was almost enough to make her eyes tear up. Like when you’re sitting on the bus, listening to music, and a particular song comes on that makes your tear ducts sting before you even realize you want to cry, you fight it down. Push it down until it settles in your belly, ready to bubble up again and embarrass you anyway. Perhaps at an even more inopportune moment, perhaps not. Belle let Ruby know all of this with a vulnerable smile, somehow. She knew she understood.

In her bed later that night, fragments of their conversations and flashes of the looks he’d given her ghosting through her mind, the utter absurdity of it all boiled over, and all Belle could do was laugh.

...

On a claw-footed coffee table in Mr. Gold’s pink house lay a small, rather thin book, bound in blue cloth and adorned with dainty gold lettering on the spine, spelling out ‘Katherine Mansfield’. It had been staring Mr. Gold down all evening, and he was beginning to regret taking it home with him. But he had made a promise.

He settled himself in his favorite arm chair and reached for the book on the table. With a deep sigh and a preemptive look of complete and utter boredom, he opened it to find a little hand-written note.

“Something Childish but Very Natural
– Belle”

He took the note out and blinked at it in confusion. When had she slipped that in? And what was she referring to? It sounded familiar to him, but he couldn’t place the words exactly. He freed his hands by putting a corner of the piece of paper gingerly between his lips and turned the pages until he got to the index and solved the mystery. It was the title of one of the short stories. Well alright, then. Certainly saved him the trouble of having to pick one out for himself.

“This had better be good, Ms. Belle French,” sounded his softly spoken words in an empty house.

Chapter Text

Belle had told him to read Something Childish but Very Natural, and Mr. Gold had promised in a moment of weakness that he would. That nagging voice in his head telling him the title sounded familiar was silenced, thankfully, when on the first page of the story, Mansfield had copied the Coleridge poem of the same name. Saccharine foolishness (that poem was nothing but) wasn’t Mr. Gold’s thing, but once he read something, its impression never left his mind. That’s why he was hesitant to read the things anyone recommended him; once it was in his head, it was there for good, at least partly. He had to be choosy.

He had to read the story twice before he could understand how he felt about it. Mansfield wrote well enough, there was no question about that. It was just that he had no particular interest in teen romance, however well written. The subject matter wasn’t purely that, though, he had noticed. It contrasted childhood with adolescence, reality with a dream state. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly where, but at some point, the story had started to unnerve him. The lines between those opposites were blurred so subtly that when he got to the end of the story, he felt as if he’d just woken up from a dream, right when something terrible had happened. But what that terrible thing was, he had no way of knowing. He read it again, but it was just as blurred then.

He glanced at the clock. Half past one in the morning, and he was tired, but not sleepy. From the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of white - Belle’s little note. He picked it up, held it between his fingers, turned it over (nothing there) and over again. Something Childish but Very Natural. And then her name.

…

Thursday morning, the cuckoo clock still refused to work.

“Are you sure you can do this, Mr. Gold?”

“Well we won’t know until I try.”

Belle stood behind Mr. Gold, holding a small flash light in her hand, aiming it as steadily as she could wherever he told her to. There was something wrong with the mechanism, he’d told her. The doors would open on the hour and the little bird inside would pop out and do its thing, but the doors wouldn’t close after, not unless you pushed them shut yourself. There was a small chance he could fix it, but whatever it was that needed wiggling or tightening was practically buried in between other unidentifiable bits of brass.

“Wouldn’t it be better to get it repaired by a professional?”

“Not worth the effort. It’s not a very valuable piece. Could you shine the light over to the left a little bit?”

Belle almost wanted to say she had no idea the man even bothered with things that weren’t of much value, but she felt it unnecessary, ultimately. Right now he was the picture of concentration, leaning over the clock’s wooden frame with his sleeves rolled up, and Belle thought it would be a shame if their idle conversation should distract him from his task. It didn’t really surprise her, how delicately he manipulated the cogs, hinges and wires. If anything, she was surprised he actually wasn’t an expert on the matter. Mr. Gold had given her the impression of being capable at whatever he set his hands to. He made things look easy.

“Aha,” he said, softly, allowing himself a victorious little smile, “move the light a little closer.” Belle did as he asked. He shot her a pleased look over his shoulder, then turned back again. Well, that was strangely adorable, Belle thought.

“If you look closely where I’m pointing the screwdriver, you can see a wire above the bird’s tail. That’s been the bother the entire time.”

Belle didn’t really have to lean over his shoulder; she could have crouched next to him or pulled up a chair, but this was nicer. Felt better. Words were all good and well, but she was running out of them. There’s only so many ways in which to tell someone you’re quite fond of them with affectionate barbs and half disguised come-ons, without actually telling them outright. With one hand on the back of his chair and the other holding the flash light as steadily as she could, she moved in closer.

“Over there,” Mr. Gold’s voice sounded closer to her ear than it ever had, and Belle felt the hair on the back of her neck and her arms stand up in reaction to the low, soft tones. Idly, she wondered if he’d ever smoked. He smelled of aftershave and black tea, so she supposed he didn’t. Not now, anyway. She wanted to laugh at herself, but this was too delicate an operation for that. She’d have to tell Ruby later. She’d do the laughing for her.

Oh, right, she was supposed to be seeing some sort of wire. Mr. Gold moved the screwdriver in a little deeper, twisted, pushed against the wire, and Belle saw it slip underneath the bird’s tail with a satisfying little clicking sound.

“Was that it? Did you fix it?”

“I believe I did,” he replied, tongue flitting over his lips quickly, absently.

“That’s amazing!” Belle cried. She almost felt a little proud. Of him. She put the flash light down so she could put her hands on Mr. Gold’s shoulders entirely without her having planned it, or realized it until for a brief but intense moment, his hand came up to cover hers. And then it was gone. Could very well have just been a friendly pat. She pulled her hands back.

“I do appreciate the praise, Ms. French, but it was a very simple fix. Just a stray wire. Nothing amazing about that,” he said softly, pulling back the screwdriver and, for the first time, watching the cuckoo clock’s little doors fall shut.

Belle stood back, blinked at the wall opposite them in mild shock, imagined she felt the warmth of his hand on her skin, still. She found it difficult to even believe it had happened. They’d touched before, and there had been these strange, barely acknowledged moments of sincerity, too, but those had been moments of calm in between their choreographed battles. They hadn’t crossed swords, yet, today. So this day, so far, was just this: It was the clock, it was his pleased smile when he spied the tricky wire, the smell of black tea and aftershave, it was the pride she felt, it was her hands on his shoulders, his hand on hers. It made her a little nervous to think that perhaps, if she tended to it carefully, she could draw out this moment, unfold it and spread it out like a blanket over their day.

Tea. Tea, for sure. She filled the electric kettle, plugged it in and reached into the cupboard for their mugs. Behind her she heard Mr. Gold push his chair back and move about with those unevenly timed steps that told Belle he wasn’t using his cane. Two bags of black tea - two sugars for her, one for him. More steps, the hollow sound of wood, and then the gentle ticking sound of a patiently repaired cuckoo clock. Belle looked over her shoulder to see that he had put the thing on the wall and was trying to adjust it so that it hung level. He was doing a shoddy job of it. Belle grinned.

“Bottom right corner’s too low.”

Mr. Gold glanced at her, then turned back and twisted the clock a little to the left. He crossed his arms and craned his head back a little as if to admire his handiwork. Belle snorted. Still crooked. The look he gave her then was equal parts indignation, confusion and pleading. Belle shook her head.

“Just a little bit more.”

The kettle clicked off, and Belle set to fixing them the tea Mr. Gold hadn’t actually asked for. Sneaking a peek, she saw him step backwards slowly, head first tilted to that side, then the other, arms crossed in front of his chest, until eventually he came to a halt and leaned his back against the wall next to her. It tickled Belle, the way his look of concentration could so very easily be confused with a glare. There was a subtle difference Belle felt slightly smug at having noticed. He was her puzzle, and she was getting good.

He took the tea she offered with muttered thanks, his eyes still glued to the clock on the wall. Belle turned around to face it, too, and shifted a little closer to him, back up against the wall. If she moved to the left just a little bit more, Belle thought, they’d touch. Somehow she was content with just that thought, that yet unfulfilled promise, and she stayed put.

“You got it that time. Perfectly level,” Belle declared. Mr. Gold nodded, and for a moment, the room consisted of nothing but soft white curls of black tea steaming up towards the ceiling, their shared silence as they stood side by side, and seconds clicking away into nothingness on the wall opposite.

In the days they had spent together so far, each time Belle was about to say or do something that constituted a step out of the ordinary and towards the unknown between them, she’d felt her mouth go dry. She felt it, then. Because the room was quiet apart from the steady ticking of the clock and they both stood perfectly still. With the tea in their hands, they couldn’t pick up arms. With their eyes on the clock, they couldn’t stare one another down. There was only potential. The silence screamed and bade her ‘shatter me’ once, but Belle refused, and it settled into comfort instead. Defeated, dejected, tail between its legs, but obedient.

Belle gave her imagination free rein for just a little while (why not, since she’d already personified the concept of silence, which is a pretty silly thing to do if you don’t happen to be writing terrible poetry at the time) and decided that this was a moment like a sea of warm water, pressing at them from all sides, muting outside noise and pushing them together. God help her, she’d gotten into the similes, now.

Belle had no way of knowing the picture the pair of them made. But if the clock had struck the hour, then, and the cuckoo had burst through the doors, hooting its preposterous little song, its tiny black painted-on eyes would have spied a man and a woman, standing side by side, so close they might as well have been touching, with their shoulders slumped and their hands wrapped around two tea-stained ceramic mugs in exactly the same way. But it was a quarter past ten, and the little bird stayed put. Blind and unknowing.

“That telegram bothers me.”

“Hm?”

Lost in her oceanic thoughts, Belle was almost surprised Mr. Gold’s voice reached her through air, not water. (Almost. She wasn’t delusional. Just imaginative.) Belle turned her head to the side and up, and met his gaze. His eyes were dark in this faint morning light. They’d be golden brown if the sun decided to make an appearance in the afternoon.

“I read the story last night,” he clarified.

“You did?” she cheered more than asked, letting her grin take over and shape her face into the very picture of happiness.

He hummed a small noise of affirmation, low in his throat.

“So you mean the telegram at the end? When he’s waiting to go pick up Edna from the train station?”

“Not only is there no way of knowing what it said,” he started, but he didn’t complete his sentence. He brought his tea up to his lips.

“You can’t even be sure if it was real,” Belle finished, “and what it means either way.”

Mr. Gold nodded and returned his attention to the clock. She could really, really look at him, this way. Let her eyes rove over his profile, or at least the part of it that wasn’t covered up by his lovely hair. She liked to think he was allowing her the chance to. Belle knew her fleeting looks (and the occasional long, thoughtful stare) couldn’t have gone unnoticed by someone as observant as him. And stealing secret glances wasn’t her specialty.

“Indeed. It was quite the exercise in denial of resolution.”

A wave had welled up and over their heads, came to a head and left them standing on dry land when it finally washed away. The moment was different, now, quite gone. He pushed himself away from the wall with his one free hand. As he walked away from Belle, she felt the moment stretching, thinning, the sea shrinking to a trickle when he turned the corner and disappeared into the front of the shop. And that was quite enough of that sort of inner monologue for now, Belle thought.

…

“Do you even eat?”

“Excuse me?”

It was lunch time. Mr. Gold had spent the last few hours peering at old coins and separating the worthless ones from the rare. His sleeves were still rolled up, his fingers nimbly handling the coins, flipping them over, comparing them to the pictures in his book, then putting them away in a wooden box or relocating them to a small heap of what Belle assumed were the ones unworthy of further appraisal.

“Just wondering. I’ve never seen you eat lunch.”

“Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Don’t they teach you that at school, anymore? You were there long enough,” he said, face a mask of indifference but the subtle lilt of his voice telling her in very clear terms that he was just teasing.

Belle pulled up a chair right next to him and tried to hide her amusement by drawing in her bottom lip and biting down firmly. It didn’t work, and her smirk broke free anyway.

“Still am. And that’s debatable, isn’t it? Role of the observer and all that.”

“Please don’t get all quantum physics on me when I’m sober, dearie.”

“Is that your way of telling me to be quiet or that you’d like me to get you drunk?”

The words had barely left her mouth and Belle knew that she’d won the day’s games already, because when he looked up to respond, Mr. Gold’s lips had parted for a swift riposte that, rather inconsiderately, never actually turned up. Belle raised her eyebrows. The clock clicked once, twice, three times, and suddenly a defeated grin took the place of the blank look on his face, and he covered his face with his hands. He let slip a dramatic sigh.

She’d caught him out! This was the most amazing thing in the world right now to Belle. She would have counted the three seconds of silence as a victory even if a damn decent come-back had followed, but there he was, voicelessly laughing into his hands. The way his upper body moved in small shocks was a dead giveaway. Belle herself was torn between laughing and gasping at this strange new sight, so she just clasped her hand over her mouth in silence for a while, her blue eyes wide as could be, until finally the laughter stuck in her chest burst forth and spilled from her lips.

“It’s okay, Mr. Gold. You can say both,” she finally managed, practically in tears.

He shook his head for no particular reason and finally moved his hands away from his face, but he couldn’t seem to fight down his slightly embarrassed grin. He sat back in his chair, ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair before dropping his arms to the table, and finally made eye contact with his assistant. Belle’s laughter was entirely in her eyes, now, because she’d bitten her lip to keep from giggling any more.

For what seemed like a mighty long time but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, they just looked at one another. He was bare without his mask, and he seemed in no great rush to slip it back on. What she really ought to do right now, some very persuasive but quite rash and not-to-be-trusted part of Belle’s mind told her, was reach over and cup his face in her hand. Or take his hand and guide it to her cheek. But she knew that if any of that were to actually happen right this instant, she would surely (not really, Belle, come on) die.

“So, anyway,” Belle said after needlessly clearing her throat with a fake cough, “what’s your deal? Do you photosynthesize?”

Mr. Gold rolled his eyes with a fond smirk and stood up.

“No? Okay, then, let me guess. You’re coin-operated?”

He almost snorted, she could tell. He rolled his sleeves down, fiddled with the buttons of his cuffs. For her next guess, she deepened her voice to a low whisper and leaned in, secretively, dramatically.

“Human blood?”

She wanted to applaud him for the way he stopped right in the middle of putting on his suit jacket and gave her a pantomime look of complete and utter evil, but all she ended up doing was laugh. He smiled back at her, calm and collected, now, without that earlier hint of embarrassment, and finished putting on his jacket. He took his cane from where he’d put it on the table and walked out the back room without a single word. She heard footsteps, and then the sound of the shop bell informing her that he was leaving.

Belle was left alone and confused, until his voice called out:

“Are you coming or not, Ms. French?”

And just like that, she could see, in her mind’s eye, that weeping nine-year-old on the school playground with the note in her small hand, clear as day. Her stomach flipped. Like a complete idiot, Belle French called back with a little tremor in her voice she hoped wasn’t that noticeable:

“Where are we going?”

No response. With a sudden start, she realized she should probably not be shouting questions at him from the back room. For some reason, she’d been frozen to her seat. She stood up, almost toppling her chair, and swiftly crossed the distance to the front of the shop, where he was holding open the door, looking at her with an indecipherable expression.

“Well, this is a setback. I was rather hoping you’d tell me that,” he teased, eyebrows raised. “Counting on it, in fact.”

But she gaped at him, her brain refusing to throw her a bone (or a word in response, even) and instead resigning her to looking like he’d just spoken in tongues. It took a few seconds of silence for Mr. Gold to take pity on poor Belle French.

“Your beloved diner, Ms. French. Lunch.”

“Oh... Oh! Oh, the diner, yes!”

Her face lit up and she half ran to his side. When they left the shop, his hand was in the small of her back for a brief moment until the door fell shut behind them, and Belle couldn’t help but smile.

…

The booth those two had chosen at the diner was like a little private world to them, Ruby noticed from behind the counter. They might as well have put up walls around it, it wasn’t like either one of them noticed anything that was happening around them, anyway. And the food was basically an afterthought, it looked like. Ruby was on best friend duty, so she was keeping a watchful eye on the pair.

Earlier they had walked in with Belle complaining about how he never let her open the door for him. Ruby heard her voice, dropped everything she was doing in the kitchen (not literally, thank you) and took a peek through the glass window in the kitchen door.

“I would be delighted to let you open the door for me, Ms. French, if only you ever got there before I did.”

Oh. Yes. That accent. She had to hand Belle that one. And he was well dressed. Not her type, but oh, was it ever Belle’s. Poor girl didn’t stand a chance.

Ruby had ducked when she saw Belle scan the room for her, waited a few seconds, then looked back out of the little window. That was when she noticed the limp, and the cane. Well, it was a nice looking cane, at least. And it’d be easy to outrun him if he turned out to be a murderous psychopath. Which Ruby now made it her mission to discover, should that be the case.

She’d left the kitchen and practically bounced her way over to their booth, grinning brightly at Belle when she greeted her, then shooting the man opposite her a quick, serious, critical look that would in no uncertain terms let him know that she would break every bone in his body, wait for them to heal and set, then break them again if he ever, ever hurt her precious baby girl. He had responded with the appropriate polite greeting and a slight inclination of the head. Message received? Good, then he wasn’t an idiot. She had smiled sweetly and took down their order, handed it to the cook, then placed herself squarely behind the counter and stared quite openly. And that’s where she was still standing right now.

She could only hear half of what they were saying, but it sure made Belle laugh a lot. He could keep up with her, definitely. She’d seen her with other guys, and they usually checked out if she kept at them long enough.

Oh, this was getting hilarious, Ruby thought to herself, smirking. She’d done her lip thing twice already, and from the tone of Belle’s voice she could tell that she was going to go for the defiant chin-tilt in three, two, one... and there it was, without fail. This was no conversation; this was theater. But not for the benefit of an audience, even though there was one. They were playing up to each other. Was that what they did all day in that dusty little shop? Was that not exhausting as hell? How was it they hadn’t jumped each other yet?

It took them ages to finish their food. They’d ordered milkshakes, but Ruby waited a while to bring them over, because something strange had happened – they’d fallen silent. Ruby scarcely dared to breathe. The air between them was thick with something, but Ruby couldn’t for the life of her figure out exactly what had triggered it. Belle had said something clever, Gold had replied with a joke of his own, and then: nothing. They just sat there, smiling. Then Belle reached out and briefly, very briefly, brushed a crumb from the lapel of Gold’s jacket. He didn’t take his eyes off hers in that moment, and Ruby damn near wanted to scream, it was that tense. A few more seconds of... well, gazing. Gazing was appropriate, Ruby felt. And then the two fell back into the flow of the world around them without a glitch or a comment. Back to the endless banter.

She brought over the milkshakes and declined an offer to sit with them for a while. There was no need. She had made up her mind. Whatever the hell this was? It should be allowed to happen.

He offered to pay the bill, which was the only correct option for as long as he wasn’t paying her for her work, so he had chosen well, and she rewarded him with a friendly smile on their way out, to make up for her death glare before. He looked like a man who’d gotten the message. Which was a very good thing. Because she wasn’t kidding about the bones.

...

The rest of the afternoon was spent dealing with a sudden rush of customers, so there was very little time for admiring sideways glances (though Belle did manage to sneak a few in; maybe she was getting better at them) and their game of words. But Belle didn’t really mind all that much. Today had been a good day. And Ruby seemed to like him well enough, and that was important.

When she left him behind in the golden afternoon light and walked the long way home, Belle thought about how strange it was that the day had been so rich in meaning, but when she looked back on it, it had already become a little bit blurred. There were no particulars, no details, and there had certainly not been any deep conversations. Yet it had all been so meaningful! And it still was. She probably just had to close her eyes to feel it all again. All of it was still there. Fragments and impressions. The warm glow in her belly. The smile still on her face.

Chapter Text

It was Friday. Friday was entirely too close to Sunday for Belle’s comfort, because on Sunday, the shop would be closed for the day – a prospect like a flue shot or a dentist appointment. But it was still Friday, she told herself, and there was no need to think about anything other than the huge cardboard box of books Mr. Gold had dragged out of storage for her to dig through. The smell of old books, the slightly yellowed pages, the possibility of someone having left a little personal note in there, or an interesting makeshift bookmark, like an old ticket stub or something similar – her personal brand of catnip. And this was a great big cardboard box, the size of a dishwasher.

“Would you like to have a look at these, Ms. French?” he had asked her, prompting her to laugh at his prudence, because in what universe would she not bodily dive straight into that box and deal with the paper cuts later?

“I think I can probably bring myself to have a bit of a sort-through, yeah,” she’d replied with a coy smile. Then she mouthed ‘thank you,’ and he tipped his imaginary hat with one hand and drew out an elegant gesture with the other (making her giggle) and left her to her own devices.

And now she was here; sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor in the back room with her back against against the wall for support, in the last of the morning sun as it streamed through the window. Dust everywhere, but she was used to it by now. The sound of Mr. Gold’s voice in the background, dealing with a couple of particularly inquisitive customers, was lulling her into a state of calm and content. She knew that if she were to close her eyes right then and there, she’d probably slip into a shallow sleep. But that was no good – there were dozens of old books clamoring for her attention, and Belle French was not about to disappoint.

The first thing she did was empty out the box, stacking the books on the floor. The result of that was that she’d accidentally constructed a little book fortress all around herself – a half circle of towering tomes almost but not quite obscuring her entirely. She would reach up, grab a book, look at the edition and check for signed dedications, make sure the pages were all there and the spine wasn’t too badly damaged, inspect for mold and inexplicable sticky stains, and then stack them somewhere else if they passed her scrutiny.

But this certainly was a strange little collection, Belle thought to herself as she thumbed through a book titled ‘The Complete Planetary Ephemeris 1950-2000 A.D.’, a thick book bound in a dark green cloth and adorned with gold lettering. This one was just full of dates and coordinates, and that was it. Not very valuable, but unusual enough to hold her attention for a little while. Then there was a set of early 20th century books on stamps. Reference books for a collector, perhaps? And then a book full of wood carvings, a historical account of certain iconoclastic events during the Protestant Reformation, and some delightfully illustrated children’s encyclopedias written in what Belle recognized as German, amongst some other things.

But then she got to the novels. Finally! She was beginning to think there was nothing but non-fiction in that box, but then she realized that whoever filled it with books must have stacked them together, and she’d inadvertently left them for last. There were about a dozen novels, most of which she recognized, some of which she’d read, only two the author of which didn’t even ring a bell, and, she noted with a fond smile, there was another copy of Middlemarch – the novel with which she’d exposed one of Mr. Gold’s secret affections. It was big and heavy. The printer had used a thicker paper than the copy on the top shelf – unusual for such a big book. Placing it in her lap, she opened it carefully and looked for peculiarities. It was leather bound, and that was interesting. If it was a very early edition, this would be worth a pretty penny.

She had to read it for a particular class a few years ago, early on in her studies, and she was one of the only people in the class who even bothered to finish it. It wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, to put it lightly, but Belle was voracious and the book was relentless, almost invincible, because every time she’d read for a good hour, put her bookmark (a receipt for another book) between the pages and closed the book, she was surprised at how she hadn’t actually made much of a dent in the thing. Belle loved a good literary challenge, and this one fought back.

Why was it so special to Mr. Gold, though? Could she ask him, now? For days they’d been firing arrows at one another, and oddly enough, those arrows had only served to lower their defenses so far, so perhaps, Belle thought, she could ask him now, and he would tell her. When she heard the bell chime and the voices fade, she hoped he would come sit with her. So, really, if you think about it, it was only logical that she smiled at the sound of Mr. Gold’s footsteps and the tap of his cane on the floorboards, moving towards her.

The only thing Mr. Gold could see behind that wall of books was the top of Belle’s head, until she stretched her neck, peeked over the walls of her paper fortress and greeted him with a smile and a wave. He shook his head in mock disapproval and made his way over to his assistant, pulling up a chair and lowering himself with a deep sigh.

“So, Ms. French,” he started, tongue flicking over his lips very briefly, “this,” he delighted Belle with another one of his accentuating flourishes in reference to the line of defenses she’d built with his books, “is what I don’t pay you for?”

Belle’s smile only grew into a grin, because at this point, she could never mistake his ribbing for genuine criticism. She nodded, then held up the book she’d been holding in her lap and leaned forward a little with outstretched arms to hand it over.

“Ah, Middlemarch,” he said, reaching over the fortress walls to take the proffered book, “and leather bound, I see.”

Belle kept silent for a few moments and watched as Mr. Gold traced the embossed letters on the book’s spine with his thumb. His hair fell over his face, leaning over the book like that, obscuring his expressions and for the millionth time making Belle want to reach over and brush it back. She grabbed another book off the pile to stifle the urge and busy her hands, but couldn’t quite tear her eyes away from his. He turned it over a few times, brushed away a spot of dust, then carefully, mindful of the spine, opened it.

“You’re fond of this one, aren’t you?” asked Belle.

He looked up, nodded, then closed the book again. But instead of putting it back he kept it on his lap, folding his hands over it with his fingers woven together.

“I’ve read it, too,” she said, “but only because it was required reading. I’m not sure I’d ever have picked it out for myself, even though I enjoyed it.”

That statement was an unasked question – it was several questions, in fact – and Mr. Gold had heard them all loud and clear. His ears were practically ringing. He took his time to answer them, though, but Belle was patient. No need to start reeling in when the fish hooks itself willingly. Might even swim up to you and launch itself into the boat.

“I was fifteen when I read this.”

“Fifteen?” Belle half-gasped, half-laughed, making Mr. Gold smile quite against his will. He rolled his eyes to balance it out. “What kind of teenager willingly reads this 900 page monster?”

“Wouldn’t you have?” he countered with a knowing smile. “If it was just sitting on a shelf in your house, wouldn’t you have read it at some point?”

That silenced her. In all probability, if it had been lying around long enough, Belle would have gotten to it eventually. She shrugged in acknowledged defeat, then changed her position so she could curl her legs under her, her arm stretched out behind her on the hardwood floor for support.

“Are you sure you’re comfortable down there?”

“Don’t worry about me, Mr. Gold. You were saying?”

So she wouldn’t let up until he’d drawn her a complete picture of him at age fifteen, reading that book, would she? He’d chosen himself a particularly persistent bookworm as an assistant, so he supposed he only had himself to blame, here.

“It was the only book in my grandparents’ house I was allowed to touch. Great big library in one of the rooms, but all I was allowed to read was this one. I read a little bit each time I came to visit, but one time, just before summer, I actually took it home with me.”

Belle was beaming at him now, and it was more than a little distracting, so he paused and gave her a stern look, one eyebrow raised questioningly.

“You’re entirely too amused, Ms. French.”

“I’m sorry, I just find it difficult to picture you willingly reading George Eliot,” she said, trying her best not to laugh. “Can’t really imagine you being anything other than trouble at that age.”

Mr. Gold sighed a particularly dramatic sigh.

“Would it help if I told you that right around that time, I was stealing tobacco, rolling papers and sweets from the local corner shop, too?”

“Really?” Belle replied with a devious grin.

“I could put a book down long enough to partake in some adolescent roguery, yes.”

“Good. Well that mental image certainly helps,” she chimed, scooting closer to where he had placed his chair. She dismantled her construction halfway so she could fold her arms on top of the books and rest her head, there, tilting it up a bit so she could watch him as he spoke. “Carry on.”

“That’s about it, really. I took it home, and I read it all through the summer.”

“And you loved it?”

“I suppose I did. I started reading it because there was absolutely nothing else to do in that old house, but I took it home with me because...” Mr. Gold paused, there, leaning back in his chair with a thoughtful look. He placed the book on the table behind him. “Because it had the potential of being a constant.”

Belle tilted her head to the side a little in a curious look. Mr. Gold picked up on her confusion and leaned forward again, his elbows on his knees, fingers of his hands interlaced.

“Like you said, it’s a 900 page monster. Three years worth of narrative and tons of characters. I looked at this book and I saw the promise of permanence. Temporary permanence, if that makes sense to you at all, but a bit of permanence nonetheless. I could get kicked out of school, dragged from one town to the other, strike up and destroy friendships, but for as long as I could draw it out, I’d have this book. As a constant.”

Belle stayed silent. She’d been watching his face as he spoke to her softly, and she’d never seen it quite this open before. He looked so very tired, now, and she wanted to-... no, she would. This time, she would do what the moment dictated her to do. She sat up on her knees and moved around some books so that there was a gap in her wall of fiction and non-fiction, an operation that had Mr. Gold staring at her with a questioning frown on his face.

Belle smiled at him, reached out and took his hand in hers, tugging him gently towards her. He could not have looked any more confused; his eyes flitting from where her hand touched his to her face, and back again. For a very brief moment, he looked as if he was about to bolt, but then she reached out and clasped her other hand around his, too, and gave him a pleading look.

“Come on. Sit with me. We can go through these together.”

Belle’s heart was beating like mad, frightened by her own sudden determination, scared that she had gone too far, misread him entirely. But then he moved up from his chair (Belle read the physical pain in his face and felt a sudden pang of guilt) and stepped closer, entered her little book fortress and slowly, as she scooted to the left to make room for him, letting her support his weight a little bit, he sank down and sat next to her. Only then did she let go of his hand.

Side by side again, both sat with their legs crossed. They touched at the knee, and neither of them looked much like they wanted to change that situation. And he looked at her, all questions and worries for a few seconds, until Belle reassured him with a kind smile, and he visibly relaxed.

“If you ever tell anyone about this, Ms. French...” he started, giving her his best, most theatrical, ominous, threatening look, somewhat enfeebled by the fact that he was currently sat on the floor in a book fortress, couldn’t seem to wipe away those last hints of a smile, and consequently looked about as menacing as a toy soldier.

“You’ll what? Because I’m pretty sure I can take you.” Belle laughed, playfully pushing a book against his chest for him to hold. Mr. Gold let out an exaggerated ‘oomph’, but took the book in his hands and inspected the front cover.

“Oh, there’s no doubt in my mind about that,” he muttered, deftly handling the book and determining with a few quick looks the worth of it. He relocated the book to the pile Belle had told him was for the not very valuable but otherwise interesting books, then motioned towards his bad leg. “But I am, after all, incapacitated.”

“I assumed that’s what the stick was for. Extra reach for when someone tries to run,” offered Belle with her most innocent look, prompting Mr. Gold to laugh. God, she loved that sound, but not as much as she loved being the one to provoke it.

“Well it is now.”

They shifted through the old books, talked quietly and tried very hard not to look at each other for too long in moments of silence. They’d somehow managed to move a little closer without either of them really having any memory of it – they were shoulder to shoulder now, and Belle could feel the warmth of his leg against her own. The feeling was nicer than it really had any business being, she thought, pursing her lips and keeping her eyes glued to whatever book she happened to be holding whenever Mr. Gold shifted a little bit.

But when she wasn’t distracted by his proximity, Belle would offer her insightful, sometimes scathing commentary on some of the works of fiction (Hemingway couldn’t please her, it seemed) and Mr. Gold would tell her all about the special books, the old ones with strange things in them, the ones that Belle couldn’t place. He found an admission ticket for a traveling circus dated 1955, Belle’s face had lit up, and Mr. Gold had told her to take it, if she really liked it. And of course she did. They sat until their little pool of sunlight was gone, the sun having moved over the shop and away from the windows.

She was the one to abandon their fortress first, and held out her hand to Mr. Gold. He took it with a sigh of resignation and a tired smile, which made the simple act of letting Belle help him up feel like an act of surrender, to her. It spurred her on, perhaps a little rashly, to ask of him something she had wanted to ask for a while, now.

“Mr. Gold?”

“Yes?” he replied as he reached for his cane.

Belle, suddenly struck with nerves, let her fingers play with the hem of her shirt.

“Can I stay and close up with you today?”

He blinked at her, once, in genuine confusion.

“Why would you want to do that?”

How strange, Belle thought to herself. How could this man still be so cautious, so self-effacing, when she’d all but told her she thought him amazing? This wasn’t his good-humored self-deprecation making another appearance; this wasn’t even conscious on his part. The almost vulnerable look he gave her then melted away her nerves. No two actors can play a single part, and Mr. Gold had taken it upon himself to play the part of the clueless innocent in this moment, so there was nothing left for Belle to do but to suck it up and match his steps backwards with a clear, determined forward stride.

“Part of the job, isn’t it?” she muttered, gazing at her shoes for a few seconds until she finally finished gathering her courage and tore her eyes up and away, and fixed them to Mr. Gold’s.

She had tried so very hard to tell him what she was about to say, but in looks and actions – even with touch, on occasion – and it seemed that that had all slipped his mind somehow. It almost made her fall prey to doubt, herself. But no, Belle thought to herself, that wasn’t right. He was fond of her, she knew, and he felt that very same promise of a connection – he must have.

“And I like being here with you,” she said, in a tone of voice that suggested she might have affectionately tacked on ‘you idiot’ at the end of the sentence, if the situation had registered as slightly less delicate to her at the time.

Brave Belle French waited, because that was all she could do, frozen to the spot by Mr. Gold’s stare. He looked at her as if she were a trick of the eye, like she couldn’t really have been there, and it was almost enough to make Belle want to grab him by the shoulders and snap him out of that look. It didn’t come to that, because a sudden change filled the room like a welcome summer’s breeze, and his expression softened. Did he read something in her face that made him stand down?

“As you wish.”

...

“Are you sure you’re not going out of your way, Ms. French?”

“Not at all.”

It wasn’t a lie if she didn’t know the truth, Belle told herself, and that’s how she rationalized it. They walked at a leisurely pace, Belle clutching her binder to her chest – finally! – and Mr. Gold staring off into the distance. Belle tried hard not to glance over at him too often. It wasn’t very easy; she hadn’t seen him outside of his shop much. He looked a little bit out of place in the outside world; the dark suits and the dark looks were tailored for that place, it seemed. Oh, but he was still handsome in this light – just a little bit brighter, that was all.

They talked about the books, of course, and she asked him about the pieces he’d sold that day. A gilded mirror, an antique metronome, a painted portrait of someone whose name would forever be lost to history, and a set of silver cutlery had all sold for a very good price, that day. He told her who had brought the items to his shop (he never seemed to forget a name, or a story) and why they had caught his eye, and explained to her how to tell if something was real gold. He promised to show her in the shop.

In the moments of silence, Belle thought about how good he was at hiding his pain. When he told her, after flipping the sign and locking the door, that on good days - warm days - he never drove, Belle was visibly surprised. She didn’t have the courage to ask him about his leg, but she knew from the way he avoided putting too much weight on it, and the way he sometimes grimaced (if even for a split second) when sitting down or standing up, that by the end of every day, he must be absolutely exhausted. But right this instant, he showed no signs of it. Instead he smiled, joked, teased and even handed his cane to her for while when he was explaining to her the way to tell real gold from fake, because the handle, of course, was gold.

Belle wanted to hook her arm into his. To let him lean on her. She could feel all of his energy go towards making her forget about his pain, and all she wanted to do was tell him that it was okay. To make him forget, to talk about pleasant but meaningful things until the pain was secondary. But he wasn’t going to let her, today. She already knew. Not today.

It was only when Mr. Gold stopped in front of a large pink house that Belle realized she had practically followed him home like a hungry stray dog. There was half a second of pure, all-consuming social panic, until she realized she hadn’t gone out of her way, exactly. She didn’t have to backtrack... very far. This was all still justifiable.

“Yours?” she asked with a small smile that grew wider when Mr. Gold responded with a shrug. “I think it’s lovely.”

“Which is why everyone doesn’t quite believe I live there. They can’t picture this sarcastic old grump living in anything other than a dungeon, I think. Or a cave. A lair, perhaps. And I do see their point.”

Belle scrunched up her nose and huffed (failing to notice the way that made him smile) as if he’d just said something completely preposterous and worthy of a verbal smack-down of biblical proportions. She moved towards him, closing the distance between them with a few determined steps.

“Look. I’m not saying you have to start singing your own praises, but-” she poked him in the chest, making him laugh silently in that way he did. “- if you don’t temper your rampant self-loathing, I shall see myself forced to compensate for it.”

Standing this close to him, she had no choice but to look up, and he no choice but to look down, as if bowing his head to her will. At least, that’s how she liked to interpret it.

She smiled, narrowing her eyes just a little bit, then continued, “And you know I’d embarrass you.”

He smirked in a certain way that made Belle acutely conscious of how close they were standing. Oh, she felt herself shrink in that very moment. How could she think in terms of bowed heads when she knew very well the effect he had on her? Why did she let herself rush in whenever his defenses were down, as if he couldn’t rear his charming, handsome, clever head once she was close enough, and turn the tables on her?

Oh, that’s right. Because she adored this dynamic. It made her stomach flip, her chest constrict and her throat swell with unspoken words and demands, like ‘I like you a little too much considering the limited time we’ve known each other’ or ‘would you just grab me by the waist for a moment and maybe kiss me silly, please and thank you,’ and she didn’t want it to end. (‘Sunday’ tried to force its way into her consciousness again, but she refused, absolutely refused to acknowledge it. Willed the thought back down.)

Belle didn’t even realize her finger was still pressed to his chest until Mr. Gold wrapped his hand around hers and gently moved it away. But he didn’t let go right away. They were stood close, their hands clasped between them for a moment (her heart beat faster, louder in her ears) until he let go, and broke away.

“Fair enough,” he said, smile tugging at his lips as he took a couple of steps back, “I’ll try and be nicer.”

“To you,” she clarified.

“To me.”

Mr. Gold made his way up the little path to his house, and Belle walked slowly backwards with her binder (good thing she hadn’t dropped it) at her side. She waved, almost tripped over a pebble on the pavement, thanked no-one in particular he hadn’t noticed (but he had) and then, after she heard the door shut, walked off in the opposite direction. Because brave, lying Belle French, had gone out of her way.

Chapter Text

When Belle, bored and procrastinating as students do best, decided to finally take an eraser to the more embarrassing things she’d written inside her binder over the years, something quite unexpected looked straight back at her. It seemed her little stick figure cartoon of Professor Jerk (née Handsome) had received an update.

Belle wasn’t sure whether to laugh or silently admire the detailed pencil drawn dragon’s head that was looming over the stick figure with its terrifying jaws wide open, ready to swoop down and finally deliver justice. The contrast between her quick, childish little doodle and the intricate detail of the ferocious beast with the fiery eyes made her want to laugh – the way the unsuspecting stick figure was now cast in an ominous shadow did it, really – but Ruby was asleep in the room next to her, so Belle willed the laughter to pool in her belly instead.

When had he drawn this? After she’d left? She imagined him at his counter, staring at the binder she just kept forgetting, a disapproving look on his face until slowly his mouth started to curl up and into a smirk. He’d have taken a pencil, leaned on the counter, head bowed over his makeshift canvas and hair hanging in front of his face. Quietly he’d have sketched this marvelous thing. He’d have been quite pleased with himself, Belle was convinced. And when he’d finished, he would have gone about his evening, content with the knowledge that some day, Belle would see.

She looked at the eraser in her hand for a moment, then put it back in her desk drawer. No need. Belle crawled onto her bed and between the covers, grinning madly in the dark until by some miracle, sleep overtook her, prying from her all those sleepy thoughts she carried close to her chest like treasures from a wrecked ship (his eyes, his hands, the golden light), and gently carried her off into nothingness.

…

Saturday was strange. Different. Mr. Gold was quiet, and Belle couldn’t blame him; each time either one of them broke the silence, it didn’t feel quite right. Anything she said, anything at all, wasn’t quite the right thing to say. Not that there was a wrong thing to say instead, no, it wasn’t that. Maybe it was Sunday creeping up on the both of them – a dark, empty, unknown beast, staring them down from a corner of the room and silently demanding their undivided attention and respect. A beast that shook its monstrous head disapprovingly any time their words rang hollow, plucked them out of the air and threw them down, clattering to the floor to lie there, ugly and lifeless.

Because there was a conversation they needed to have. Well, there were several, to be completely honest. But the creature staring daggers into their backs, well, she knew which particular conversation that one was waiting for; the one about contracts, terms, clauses, numbers, signatures. Oh, she dreaded it. She cursed whoever had invented it. Calm down, she implored the creature, wait until the end of the day, and I’ll give you what you want.

There were plenty of customers that sunny Saturday morning, and enough chances for Belle to try and use the register a few times. Mr. Gold stood at her side, giving her a reassuring smile whenever she turned to him and looked uncertain, letting her know she was doing just fine. This was alright, Belle thought to herself. Whatever did they need words for? The creature couldn’t shoot down their looks and smiles, it turned out. If the only thing left to talk about was something quite as desperately profane and murderously dull as a contract, then Belle would throw her words overboard and let them sink to the ocean floor.

So they worked in silence. Belle dusted, Mr. Gold did the books, the creature sat quietly pouting. When Mr. Gold brought Belle her tea, she made sure to brush her fingers past his as she took the mug from him. He’d pointed the handle towards her, but she cupped her hands around it instead, telling him with that slow, deliberate touch that it was okay, they would be fine; the creature would hush for as long as they did the same. And when the sun climbed over the shop and reached its windows, the air didn’t feel quite as oppressive as before.

He was the first one to pick up arms and turn towards the creature, staring it right in the eyes.

“Would you care to join me in the courtyard, Ms. French?” he asked. “I believe there’s something we need to discuss.”

“Of course,” she replied. The creature cheered.

“You go on ahead. Take one of the chairs out with you. I’ll be right there.”

See, Belle told the creature, I told you we’d get to it; you needn’t have made such a fuss. Belle dragged out not one chair, but two, and left the door open for Mr. Gold. Did he think she’d let him take his own chair? She placed them side by side, angled them towards each other just a little bit, in the last strip of sunlight as the sun moved up and over the shop.

When he walked through the door holding an envelope in his hands, suit jacket missing and sleeves rolled up, Belle greeted him with a smile. He smiled back, but it felt different. There was too much dry air between them at the moment, too vulgar a thing standing between them and their usual place of comfort. They’d banished the thing for a while by simply refusing to talk in its presence, but now Mr. Gold had taken the wheel and driven them straight to it. Perhaps it was for the best. Maybe they could go back once it was over and dealt with.

“Why is this such an excruciating conversation to have?” Belle complained to no-one in particular, shaking her head.

When instead of words of agreement, Belle’s ears rang with a deafening silence, she looked up. Mr. Gold stared at her – serious, calm, brow furrowed. His lips didn’t move but she knew exactly what he was asking her, because the moment the words had left her mouth, she asked herself the same thing. Did she really want him to answer that right now? Were they going to put it into words?

No, not yet. Not now.

He sat down and handed her the unsealed envelope, thick and heavy in her hands. She didn’t have to open it to know what it was. She blinked at the object as if she’d never seen an envelope before in her life, unsure of what it was she was feeling exactly. She had no urge to open it and count, for one. She simply didn’t care. It was dead weight in her hands. She wanted to drop it to the floor like the anchor it was and swim safely to shore before it dragged her down.

“You know I was never going to let your work go unrewarded.”

“I know.”

This conversation wasn’t going down without a fight, or some strange, unnecessary silences, at least. But they were facing it together, and they were trying as hard as they could. It was warm out here, the sun had done a good job warming up the bricks and concrete, birds sang and white fluffy clouds dotted the blue sky. Really, there was no better place for them to have this conversation, if they really must.

“Do you really want to work here, Ms. French?”

“Of course I do. Do you want me to work here?”

“You’ve been invaluable.”

“So I get to stay?”

“For as long as you care to. But know that once you’ve graduated, you’re out of here. You have better things to do with your skills than to waste them here with me.”

Struck with a sudden bout of courage, Belle reached over and placed her hand over his, clasped over his own knee.

“I’m not wasting a thing.”

He looked at her, faintest ghost of a smile on his face, his eyes dark and half-lidded for a moment. His hand was warm, hers was warmer, and the feeling grounded her, pulled her out of the sea and onto dry land. His thumb brushed against her hand, just once, and the feeling traveled through her arm, crept up her neck and made her face feel unbearably warm. But then he drew away and stood, leaving her sat on her chair with that terrible envelope on her lap and her face slowly turning red.

“You needn’t worry about the contract. I’ll draw something up, and you can take your time to read it over.”

She couldn’t possibly care any less about that contract. If she never heard the word ever again, she’d die a happy woman. Was it over? That was all she cared about. Was this dreadful conversation finally over? Could they settle into their familiar patterns and have fun again? There was nothing else to do but to find out.

“Please, wait.”

Mr. Gold stopped in the doorway, waited a few seconds before turning around.

“What is it?”

“Can’t we just sit here for a while? It’s so nice out. We can hear the bell from here, can’t we?”

“If I sit down right now, Ms. French, I’m not getting up again any time soon, customers or no.”

Belle smiled brightly and patted the chair next to her.

“Good. Sit.”

Mr. Gold sat down with a deep sigh, and it was only when he leaned back and closed his eyes against the last of the late morning sun that Belle’s feelings came to a head and rushed over her all at once. He’d hired her. She’d won. She’d won ages ago, she knew that, she wasn’t oblivious, but it was real, now. And he was sitting there, and she’d touched his hand so often in the last few days, and he’d touched her back just then, and this wasn’t normal, was it? No, it wasn’t – how could it be? What was she doing? What had they been doing all this time?

And why was his brow so deeply wrinkled just now? Was the pain that bad? She wanted to reach over, cup his face and smooth the worry from it. Was it strange that she couldn’t stop staring at his arms? Could she come up with an excuse to wrap her fingers around his upturned wrist? No, no, don’t be an idiot, Belle. Do that and you might as well go and sit on his lap while you’re at it.

Well, actually...

No, no, no, no, no. Words, Belle. Words.

“Loved the dragon.”

“Hm?”

Mr. Gold’s eyes cracked open and he turned his head a little to face her. Belle raised her eyebrows and grinned a slowly widening grin until his memory kicked in.

“Ah. I take it you’re referring to my little sketch.”

“It’s genuinely really good. I’m impressed.”

“Yes, well, I got bored,” he said, dismissing her praise with a wave of his hand, “and you kept leaving that thing in my way.”

“You fictionally murdered my arch nemesis’ effigy for me, Mr. Gold. That’s just about the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me that was also a tiny bit psychotic at the same time.”

Mr. Gold smirked and closed his eyes again, hands folded over his lap.

“I must insist I did absolutely no murdering whatsoever – fictional or otherwise.”

Belle held up her hands in surrender and laughed.

“Alright, fine. The dragon did it. But it was still very sweet of you to put him there.”

“Peculiar definition of ‘sweet’ you’ve got there,” he muttered under his breath.

“Hush, you. You’re about as good at taking compliments as you are at taking hints.”

Oh. Oops.

Belle’s eyes were wide as can be, and in that moment she was convinced her heart had stopped beating. Because how could it still be beating when she felt so strongly as if she’d just died? She just hoped the ground would open up and swallow her whole before Mr. Gold opened his eyes to look at her.

The ground, luckily, didn’t open, but then neither did his eyes at first. His brow slowly furrowed, but at the same time his mouth twisted into a smirk, then a grin, and then he burst out into laughter. She couldn’t help but break her own rules, could she? Poor thing.

Belle, meanwhile, had all but slapped her palm against her forehead, and for the second time in about ten minutes, that infernal blush set fire to her skin. The worst part was that there was no doubt in her mind that, in fact, he had taken every single hint she’d so clumsily lobbed his way – he’d just been playing by the rules, the very ones she kept tripping up on herself. Why had she even said that?

Belle forcefully tore her gaze up from the ground and found Mr. Gold looking at her through half-lidded eyes again, a fond smirk on his face. There was no way in hell he didn’t notice her blush.

“Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?” he said, poking at the wound just once and ending her misery at the same time. How simultaneously devious and compassionate of him, Belle thought. How very perfect.

“Yes, it’s lovely, it’s very nice. Nice weather,” she replied, rolling her eyes at herself and flashing him a quick smile to say thank you for letting this one slide, too; I know I keep doing this, and you’re being perfectly decent about it, and I appreciate it. At least, that’s what she hoped it said. It was, after all, a lot to expect from a simple smile.

“Tell me about your thesis,” Mr. Gold finally said, smirk fought down (but the mirth in his eyes still there), throwing her yet another lifeline. He was being particularly generous today, Belle noted. Good. Because she was being particularly careless, apparently.

Her embarrassment melted away with every word (and they fell freely from her lips, now) about narratological trends in early modernist literature, under-appreciated theoretical frameworks, focalization, applying psychology to narratology, the pitfalls thereof, and the merits too. Words sounded soft in the warm air - mostly hers, but also his - and they spiraled around them and kept them safe in the moment. Everything was fine. It would all be alright. Belle knew then that they would always bounce back, and he would always help her up again.

She ate lunch alone that day. Mr. Gold had business to attend to that, apparently, took priority over a timely meal. The massive milkshake she brought back for him was revenge, in a way. Defiance. And also, perhaps, concern. He took it from her with no protest whatsoever.

“Thank you,” he said, and he took a sip through the straw. Belle only just managed to keep herself from laughing. The intimidating Mr. Gold, drinking chocolate milkshake through a straw; if only those few customers who visibly tensed when he came out to greet them could see him like this.

“So, what did you get up to while I was out?” she asked, leaning against the desk where he was peering over a document of some sort.

“I drew up the contract.”

“Oh. It sounded a lot more mysterious than that,” said Belle, disappointment audible in her voice. Mr. Gold huffed, then shifted in his chair a little bit to face her. So now he was holding a milkshake and looking up at her with a stern look, and Belle really couldn’t hold back her grin.

“Exactly what sort of sinister business do you think I get up to, Ms. French? You have the strangest ideas about me; it’s remarkable, really.”

“Black market organ trade,” Belle spoke with a shrug, “I just assumed.”

Mr. Gold narrowed his eyes at her and took a long, noisy sip through the straw. Now Belle really couldn’t help but giggle – he was doing this on purpose, surely!

“You won't know for sure until you wake up in my basement, missing a kidney,” he replied, deadpan, face of stone, for all of four seconds until Belle’s laughter infected him and made him shatter his poker face with a grin. “No, but really, if that does happen, I still expect you to come into work. It’s in the contract. I advise you to read the fine print when you take it home with you tonight.”

“Don’t think I won’t! I like my kidneys. I use them all the time.”

“Why, I’m sure they’re exemplary.”

With a fond roll of the eyes and a bright grin, Belle pushed herself away from the desk, and then, quite without her own conscious approval, she brushed her palm over the back of his head as she passed him on her way to the front of the shop, fingers slipping through his hair just long enough for her to register the softness first with an absent sort of satisfaction. Then came shock, of course, just as she turned the corner and could hide herself away in the other room.

She really was on a roll, wasn’t she? She was slipping up all over the place, today. Maybe it was silly of her to be at all surprised with her increasing carelessness; she’d spent hours with this man, quietly appreciating all the things she liked about him from a distance, at first, then throwing pebbles. Oh, but then the pebbles wouldn’t do anymore – how could they? – and she started to poke at him with a stick, chase him and run away, giggling.

And now, rather predictably (predictable for anyone but Belle) she was in danger of escalating things before she was ready to leave whatever this was behind. Whatever this dynamic between them was, this strange mixture of thrills and comfort, it was a precious thing. And she couldn’t shut the door on it before she knew they were through playing. Before they jumped.

And he was so patient. As she swept the front room, her face red (again, really) and her lips pursed in forced concentration, Belle idly wondered why she thought that it was patience, and not a lack of interest. If she squinted, if she tilted her head and tried really hard, she could see how all of this might be construed as her reading too much into everything. But that just wasn’t the case. Was it? No, no, of course not.

Belle and her broom rampaged through the room. She almost knocked over a side table in her sudden fervor, but managed to stabilize it before it tipped. When she saw the book case from the corner of her eye, she slowed to a halt. If she closed her eyes, she could picture the scene again. The way he looked a little concerned even as he took her wrist into his hand, put his other hand at her waist and slowly spun her around.

It was patience.

And her stomach flipped. Because it was patience. It was certainty. It wasn’t a question of if, it was a question of when, and she knew she was going to have to be the one to answer it. She’d started the game, after all, so who else knew how to end it but her? She would have to be the one to come closer, wrap her arms around his neck, move her lips against-

“If you sweep any faster-”

His voice shocked her out of her thoughts, startled her. She spun around with a gasp, dropped the broom and jumped again at the noise it made when it clattered to the floor.

“- something is going to catch fire,” he finished his sentence, but he sounded more concerned than amused, now.

He stepped closer so he could use his cane to flip up the end of the broom for Belle to catch as it righted itself.

“I’m aware I’m not very easy on the eyes, dearie, but don’t you think that was a bit of an overreaction?” he teased.

Belle laughed, but it sounded nervous even to her own ears. If only he knew. Well he would, soon enough. But not now. Not today. Not with her heart in her throat and her stomach in knots. Not unprepared, not unarmed and not without Ruby’s pep talk. Valiantly she picked up the pieces of her shattered composure and fitted them together in some semblance of a well-balanced individual who did not just have a minor heart attack because the object of her affections had a strange way of sneaking up on her just when she was drowning in some deeply embarrassing thoughts.

“What did I tell you about being nicer to yourself?” she finally managed.

“Oh, that’s right. I do apologize. Let me rephrase: I’m aware my ravishing good looks can be intimidating in this light, but don’t you think that was a bit of an overreaction? There. Better?”

“It’s a start. Less sarcasm next time.”

“You’re asking for a miracle.”

Belle shrugged and returned his smile.

“We’ll get there.”

“Anyway, Ms. French, if you’re done attacking the antiques with your broom for the day, I’d like to close up.”

“Already?”

“I always close early on Saturday.”

“Oh. I didn’t know.”

“Well, now you do.”

He took the broom from her, leant it against the book case and fished something shiny out of his pocket.

“Keys to the front and back door. I do believe you’ll need them if you want to work here,” he explained.

Belle gawked for a few seconds, until Mr. Gold jangled the keys to snap her out of her strange little trance just then. She cupped her palm underneath, and Mr. Gold dropped them into her hand.

“Really?”

“Yes, really. If you’ll just go lock up the back door for me, that’d be very kind. I left the contract on the desk, too.”

“Of course.”

The keys were warm against her skin. He must have had those inside his pocket all day. What a useless thought, Belle berated herself, before sliding the key in the lock (always a satisfying sound, isn’t it,) twisting it, pulling it back and moving the handle to make sure it was really locked. She snatched up the folder containing her contract on her way back out into the front room.

“Are you going to go completely out of your way again this evening, or shall I go out of mine?”

Belle’s mouth fell open. How did he know? Did he see her walk back the way she came, yesterday evening? And was that a genuine offer?

“Your address is on your resume, dear. I looked it over again when I drew up the contract earlier today,” he clarified, rescuing her from herself yet again.

“Oh. Oh, okay.”

All she had heard was ‘dear’. Not ‘dearie’. Dear. But he was still looking at her, waiting for her to answer. She’d assumed he was joking and that he’d insist she take the short way home.

“I’ll go out of mine. Yours is a nicer neighborhood.”

“Yes, I hear those literature majors are a rowdy bunch.”

Belle rolled her eyes and deliberately bumped into him as she passed him on her way out of the shop, a gentle, playful shove she wouldn’t have attempted had he not had his cane with him. She opened the door and gestured for Mr. Gold to go first. She could lock up, now.

And off they went on their walk. A little quieter than yesterday’s, but in a good way. It was peaceful. Much less of a performance, this time, because now there was certainty. There was a contract, there were keys. There was them walking home, her going out of her way, and she didn’t have to pretend she did it for any other reason than spending just a little bit more time in his company.

Monday, Belle thought to herself as she waved goodbye just before Mr. Gold disappeared into his pink house. Monday evening, she’d hook her arm into his, and he would just have to deal with it.

Chapter Text

Hair a mess, pajamas crumpled, Belle stabbed at her eggs with one hand and supported her head with the other, slumped on the table the way she was raised not to. Sunday wasn’t that bad so far. Not so much the dark, shadowy monster Belle had envisioned the day before; more like a wolfhound napping at a fire. A cosy sort of boredom. Belle had woken up to the sound of rain ticking against her window and the smell of coffee and scrambled eggs – Ruby’s Sunday morning habit – and it kept the more unpleasant thoughts and fears at bay for a little while. It helped that she was half asleep, still, but mostly it was breakfast.

“The money in that envelope you left on the counter...” Ruby started, expecting Belle to jump in and explain, but she didn’t even look up from her plate.

The first unpleasant thought of the day had imposed itself with a little help from her roommate and best friend. Ruby sighed and sat herself next to her roommate, poked her in the arm and then slid Belle’s giant mug of coffee a bit closer to her. Belle blinked, put down her fork and took the hint.

“So is that a week’s pay?”

Belle nodded from behind her mug, gulping the hot liquid down, her eyes squeezed shut in obvious discomfort, but with nary a whimper to prove it. Ruby cringed – there was no way that didn’t hurt like hell.

“Wow. That’s more than decent,” she said, taking Belle’s mug from her and putting it just out of her reach. Clearly she couldn’t be trusted with hot substances just yet.

“He’s a decent man,” Belle replied before shoveling the last of her scrambled eggs into her mouth, then pushed the empty plate away, folded her arms over the table and rested her head there.

Ruby sighed and sat back in her chair. It wasn’t unusual for Belle to get a little gloomy on a Sunday morning – especially on an overcast day such as this – but Ruby was no fool, and Belle was obvious. She’d mentioned him – well, not directly – and it had made Belle crumple into a mopey mess on the table.

“Sweetie. Did something happen, yesterday?”

“No. Or yes. You know. The usual.”

“Flirting? Subtext?”

“Sure. Seas of subtext. But then I also put my hand on his like that’s a normal thing to do, and then I said something clichéd about him not taking any hints, which doesn’t even make sense, because he totally does, and he didn’t call me out on it because he’s nice, and then I sort of stroked his hair.”

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, right, yeah, and then I didn’t hear the man with the limp and the cane and the creaky floor boards walk up to me, so I had a heart attack and dropped the broom I was holding, because apparently, Ruby, I’m an idiot in a terrible rom com,” she mumbled into her arms.

Ruby gave Belle a look that one might give an adorable kitten that had gotten itself into a box it couldn’t get out of, and patted her on the head accordingly.

“Are you worried it’s one-sided?”

Belle lifted her head just enough make eye contact.

“I’m not. Not really. Should I be? Because it’s mostly just been me flirting and him just... letting me. Am I being presumptuous?”

“I don’t think you are. He’s probably just being careful. It’s not exactly a straightforward situation, you know. Besides, the way he looked at you at the diner...”

Finally, a smile. Belle lifted her head from her arms and tilted her head to the side just a little bit.

“How did he look at me?”

“Let’s just say I don’t think I saw him look at anything else.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Belle’s smile transformed into a grin.

“You’re the best, Rubes. I’ll do the dishes.”

“You better.”

The rest of the day was quiet, dreary even though the rain had let up. Belle sat and added a paragraph or two to her thesis, checked up on the coursework for the one class she was supposed to be taking that semester (but didn’t feel like attending; it was all memorization and regurgitation and she could do all of that from home) and then sat and stared at her bedroom wall for a while. The contract, the money, it seemed so irrelevant, so inconsequential, but it was like a massive brick wall standing in her way and blocking the view. She knew she couldn’t just keep skirting around the issue, but Belle wished the world would stop throwing it in her face like that, just as she’d managed to forget, just as she thought that they could just keep carrying on like this in his little shop, drinking tea, flirting, standing just a little bit too close. Hard numbers and paper cuts blocking the view.

This time, before Belle could spend too much time gawking morosely at the TV screen, Ruby intervened.

“Belle, would you stop moping? He hired you, didn’t he? All you wanted was to work there.”

“I do want to work there. It’s just that I also want to-”

“Make out with him all of the time? They’re not mutually exclusive.”

“Shut up! You know what I mean.”

“I do know what you mean, that’s why I said it. It’s pretty much exactly what you mean.”

“It’s more nuanced than that.”

“Whatever. You should kiss him. You want to, right?”

“I do,” Belle muttered, hiding her face behind her hands, “but I can’t. It’s complicated, now.”

“What’s complicated about you two liking each other?”

“I work for him. And he probably feels like a creep because I’m younger than him. If it blows up now, it really blows up, you know.”

“You didn’t sign anything, yet. Why don’t you talk to him outside of that stuffy shop, for once? You know where he lives, right?”

“You know fully well I do. You laughed at me for about five minutes for following him home.”

Ruby threw her head back and laughed. “I know, I just wanted to hear you admit it again.”

“Can we get back to you trying to talk me into this stupid decision that I really, really want to make?”

"It's simple, Belle. Just go. Show up and talk to him. You’ve both been at this for long enough.”

Belle fell silent. It really hadn’t been that long, in reality. Only a week. But she was beginning to slip up and felt herself being pulled closer to him the more time she spent with him, and if she was going to jump and ruin everything, well, she’d rather do it while she still had a modicum of self control left. And yet...

“I can’t just show up at the man’s house on his day off for no reason.”

“You’ve got a perfectly good reason,” Ruby replied, rolling her eyes.

“The reason can’t be kissing him, Rubes.”

“Why not? Do you really need pretext, at this point?”

“Well, no, I guess not. But it’d be nice, you know. Less terrifying.”

“Fine. Pretend you’re not clear on something in the contract.”

“I don’t even want to think about the contract!”

“Well, I don’t know. Return that umbrella or something. It’s his, right?”

“Ruby, you’re a genius!”

“I know. Now get the hell out, sweetie.”

...

Not once in her life did Belle ever think that one day, she would be intimidated by a pretty pink house. But now there she was, standing right in front of one, terrified to put one foot in front of the other and approach it. It was true, of course, that it was what waited for her behind its door that made her anxious, but right then, right there, all of that and more was projected onto the house. In her defense, it was almost completely dark out, and the streetlights were casting their ghostly orange glow on the house’s exterior. Orange was scarier than pink, right? Sure.

Oh go on, Belle, she told herself. It’d be stupid to turn around and go home, now. So she stepped up to the front door, and with a finger she told herself sternly was not trembling, no, not at all, she pressed the doorbell. Maybe he wasn’t home? No, the lights were on. Belle checked her phone. Almost nine. Did people usually show up uninvited to other people’s houses after eight? Maybe she should have rung ahead. He left her waiting outside the shop on her first day of work – why would he open the door for what he thinks is an impertinent stranger on his day off?

And then she heard footsteps on the other side of the door. The closer they got, the faster all thoughts and words left her mind, abandoning her and leaving her to her fate so that all she could say when he opened the door was:

“Hello.”

Belle stared. She couldn’t help it; he wasn’t wearing a tie. And his shirt was blue, the sleeves were rolled up, and the buttons weren’t done up to the top. Where else was she to look but right there, right where there was usually an expensive black shirt blocking the view?

“Ms. French. Good evening.”

Right, yes, words. Belle cleared her throat, then motioned towards the umbrella she was still, by necessity, holding up above her head.

“I just wanted to return this.”

“I see,” he said, looking from her face to the rain dripping off the edge of his umbrella, then back again. Did she expect him to just take it back and send her on her way to contract pneumonia?

“And then it started raining on my way over,” she added apologetically, as if she had any control over the weather whatsoever.

“I think you had better come in,” said Mr. Gold, his small smile sharply contrasted against the concern still etched in his brow.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to disturb you...” said Belle softly, looking down at her feet for a moment. Oh, but that was exactly what she wanted to do, and it was silly of her to pretend otherwise. Ruby was right. Pretext was ridiculous at this point. When she looked back up, Mr. Gold had taken a few steps back, making room for her to pass through.

“Don’t be silly. Come in.”

“I’m sorry if I’m bothering you on your day off.”

“No matter. You can put that umbrella over there.”

Of course he had an umbrella stand. Belle didn’t even have an umbrella. She felt suddenly childish, like such a fool, so small under these tall ceilings and under his cautious gaze. The fear came quickly and washed over her so fast, with such a chill, that when the wave had passed and left her surprisingly clearheaded, Belle knew exactly what choices she had. She could apologize, ask to borrow his umbrella and run home, tail between her legs. Or she could charge straight ahead the way she knew she could. She had been brave this week, after all. She could be brave, now.

“I also wanted to talk to you before I sign the contract on Monday.”

As she moved to shrug off her coat, Mr. Gold stepped behind her and took it from her shoulders as if he’d done it a million times before. He hung it away and with a hand against Belle’s back, he guided her through the hallway and into what she assumed was his living room.

“What would you like to discuss?”

Belle opened her mouth to speak, but changed her mind instantly, with the unfortunate side effect that she looked a little bit like a gasping fish. Perhaps not that brave.

“Where are my manners. Would like something to drink?” Mr. Gold asked, swooping in and rescuing her from her loss of words.

He wasn’t going to fix this for her; he wasn’t going to be the one to lead them into the unknown. But he watched out for her – for both of them. He caught her when she was about to stumble off a cliff, threw her a lifebuoy when she slipped and fell into the deep end of the pool. Dignity was important to both of them, and she loved that.

“Yes, please. Thank you.”

“What would you like?”

Wine, of course, but Belle couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. She conjured up her most simultaneously embarrassed and mischievous smile and hoped he would read her mind instead. He looked at her, narrowed his eyes and smirked.

“Red or white?”

“Red,” she replied with a devilish grin.

Second rescue of the night. She would have to start thinking up some knight in shining armor metaphors if he kept on at this rate – and those would definitely clash with her construal of him as a treasure-loving dragon.

“Correct answer,” he said, and with that, he disappeared, leaving her alone in his living room.

It was all warm colors, dark wood and soft fabrics. She wasn’t sure what she had expected – she hadn’t tried to visualize it – but this was oddly perfect. A man who took such care with the objects he chose to sell would take even greater care when it came to decorating his home, would he not? And it was busy, in a cosy way. Books, little vases, figurines cast in bronze, and even more books. She spotted Middlemarch on the coffee table. So he’d taken it home after all? Good.

She settled down on the sofa, then reached for the book. This was the clothbound one he’d been keeping on the top shelf of the book case for who knows how long. And he’d been reading; there was a bookmark, about (she opened the book and leafed through) fifty pages in. She was going to see where he had left off, curious and a little bit nostalgic for her own time with this book as her silent companion, but what caught her attention was the bookmark itself.

“Something Childish but Very Natural
- Belle”

He’d kept it - her little note, the one she’d written without a second thought, and now it was there, between the pages of the book he spent an entire summer reading as a teenager. It was strange, the lump in her throat, because she was smiling, too, and she wasn’t quite sure why exactly this was affecting her so strongly.

She closed the book (careful not to dislodge the bookmark) and put it back on the coffee table, but in doing so she noticed he’d put the book on top of his unopened mail. Oh, dear, should she? Probably not, her conscience told her, but it wasn’t exactly illegal, either, so really what great harm could it do?

And so when Mr. Gold returned from the kitchen with two glasses of wine in his hands, he saw his curious guest holding an unopened envelope and giving it a critical look. He cleared his throat, eyebrows raised.

“Snooping, Ms. French?” he asked, handing a very guilty looking Belle her wine. He sat down in an arm chair opposite and brought his glass to his lips to hide his amused smile behind it.

“I was just curious about your name,” she said, putting the envelope back where she had found it. “And you do know mine, after all.”

“Asking me would have been more straightforward.”

Belle took a small sip of her wine, then decided that she needed as much help as she could get and took a bigger sip straight after.

“We’re doing straightforward, now? You and I?” spoke Belle with a faint half smile.

She felt the wine slide down and settle warm and heavy. Mr. Gold smiled a careful smile in response. He was guarded. She couldn’t blame him. With their dynamic, this wasn’t so much a social call as a home invasion, in a sense.

“I like your last name better, I think.”

“That makes two of us, Ms. French.”

“Gold suits you. It’s a name befitting a man who likes precious things,” she added, looking thoughtful.

Good name for a dragon guarding his treasure, Belle thought to herself with a secret smile.

“Well, French doesn’t suit you and your Antipodean roots,” he replied, sitting back in his chair with a pleased smirk that made Belle want to roll her eyes at him until they fell out of their sockets. “It really is the accent, I’m afraid,” he explained.

Belle gasped in mock dismay.

“It’s diametrically opposed to the French language, in my mind.”

“Hey! I don’t knock your accent!” she exclaimed, trying her best to look indignant, but finding it quite impossible under his entertained grin.

“I’m only teasing,” he assured her, “the accent is utterly charming.”

“So. French doesn’t suit me. But what about Belle?” she dared ask, sitting back as Mr. Gold had, but crossing one leg over the other.

“Really?”

One eyebrow raised and half a smirk tugging at his lips, it wasn’t really a question; it was almost a caution. She mirrored his expression, and nodded, indicating yes, really, she was fishing for it. Why not? The wine didn’t excuse it yet (she’d only had half a glass) but she’d get there. Mr. Gold sighed, but there was no annoyance behind it, no boredom. It was theater, indulgence. He was sticking to the script, allowing Belle her little shots.

“Almost perfect.”

“Almost?”

“Well, it fails to paint a complete picture. By itself, ‘Belle’ does not a fair warning make.”

“Warning? You’re making me sound like a poisonous plant!” she blurted, but Mr. Gold paid no heed to her objections and carried on.

“But a regal byname could level the playing field,” he continued.

“What, you mean like William the Conquerer? Charles the Bald?”

“Belle the Brave would do nicely, I think.”

Belle chuckled softly but shook her head. “Oh, I’m not so sure, lately.”

Mr. Gold sighed, raising his glass just a little bit. “We all need a little help being ourselves, sometimes. Doesn’t mean we need to strip ourselves of our bynames and titles when we do.”

“Why, Mr. Gold! How inspirational!”

He smiled sweetly with a flourish of the hand and bowed his head, making Belle giggle into her glass just as she was going to finish it off.

Emboldened, now, Belle scooted forward on the sofa, practically perched on the edge.

“I love all that, by the way,” she said, voice lowered just a little bit, head inclined slightly.

“What are you referring to, exactly?” asked Mr. Gold, leaning forward in his chair, a half-hearted mockery of Belle’s own posture. But she didn’t seem to notice.

“I don’t know. Theatrics seems too strong a word. Pomp’s not it, either.”

“I’m not sure where it is you’re going with this, dearie, but I doubt I care to find out.”

“Oh, come on, you must know what I’m talking about. That thing you do when you channel a late 18th century dandy every so often.”

Mr. Gold laughed and shook his head, proclaiming his ignorance with a shrug of the shoulders.

“Fine, we’ll just pretend that’s not a thing, then,” Belle teased, and then she finished off the last of her wine.

She reached over to put the empty glass on the table. When she looked up again, Mr. Gold was giving her a pensive look. Belle raised a questioning eyebrow.

“I’m torn, Ms. French,” he explained.

“How so?”

“The part of me that prides itself on a certain sense of decorum would rather die than to let a guest’s glass stand empty for too long.”

“But another part of you thinks two glasses of wine will fell me?”

“Oh, no. I’m not so naïve as to assume you’re a lightweight, nor would I want to patronize you in that manner. That’s not what I meant to say. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything at all.”

Belle saw a certain unease in his eyes, and she understood; Mr. Gold knew why she had come over. He knew where this was supposed to be heading, what she was gearing up to do, and he – well, he didn’t want to be the man who got her drunk to do it. Belle didn’t have the words to properly explain to him how ridiculous that thought was. She and Ruby could go through an entire bottle each on some occasions, and still they managed to get their make-up off and get into the right bed at the end of the night. Usually. She wasn’t about to tell him that, of course (decorum and all that,) but she understood. The role of willing victim of her advances, his mask of passive interest mixed with a put-on air of superiority, of being above her silly games – those things couldn’t have been easy to let go of.

Well, he’d just have to get over it.

“Don’t worry about me,” said Belle, reaching over the coffee table to slide her glass within his reach, “I would love some more wine.”

“As you wish,” he replied, picking up his own empty glass. “If you wanted to rifle through my mail some more, here’s your chance. I’ll be right back.”

“Actually,” Belle started, standing up and crossing the distance to where Mr. Gold was about to disappear into the hallway and leave her on her own again, “I think I’ll come with you.”

“Just as well, I suppose. If you got tempted to open my mail, that’d be a federal offense, and I’d be out of an assistant.”

Belle could tell he was trying very hard to cling to his grumpy, self-deprecating persona, but then there was that hand in the small of her back again, guiding her out of the room and towards his kitchen – and it was no brief touch this time. It struck her how reassuring and, at the same time, exciting that determined, deliberate touch was to her. That’s how being near him felt all of the time; like being strapped down safe in a roller coaster car, or a 3D horror movie with a giant bucket of popcorn to hide behind if it gets too scary.

He thrilled her, but he never made her feel unsafe. Did he feel that, too? Could she explain it to him somehow if he didn’t?

“You’d turn me in, huh?”

“In an instant.”

“Liar,” she teased.

He merely smirked at her, walking over to the island countertop where he’d left the open bottle. While he filled their glasses, she walked slowly around the island, feigning interest in the quality of the craftsmanship of his kitchen, fingers tracing the edge of the counter, until she reached him and stopped right by his side. He handed her her generously poured glass.

“Thank you.”

Belle looked at the glass in her hands and carefully swirled the liquid around with an idle fascination, and as it swirled a deep red maelstrom, a storm at sea in the palm of her hand, something changed. Her smile fell away. It was that odd powerful feeling again. She was in his kitchen, she was drinking his undoubtedly expensive wine (she couldn’t tell the difference but she bet he could) and she was standing so close to him, so close that she might as well. Yes, she might just as well.

She put her glass down, then looked up and reached out to take his just as he was putting it to his lips. Her fingers brushed against his, and she could just see his confused look before he had the chance to hide his surprise with a mask of calm indifference. She gave him a look back she hoped said ‘it’s okay, we’ve got this,’ and it was all the eye contact she had left in her.

She moved towards him, those two small steps between them like swimming through warm water. Close enough to touch, she reached out, splayed her hands flat against his chest (don’t look up, don’t look up) and pushed gently, guiding him back, moving with him with slow, determined steps, until his back met the wall and their dance came to an end.

Her heart in her throat, beating, fluttering, shaking her to her core. And she really was shaking, just a little bit. His arms had been slack at his side, and Belle was starting to worry, her chest constricting. But now they moved, slowly, up and around Belle’s waist, and it was safe to breathe again. He was reaching out to her; he at the edge of the cliff, she stood on the tightrope, tense and trembling. But still she couldn’t look up, still she couldn’t tilt her head up and look, really look at him.

And now her arms felt like twigs, powerless and yielding, and it threatened to weaken her resolve, so she pushed her hands against his chest a little harder. She needed to feel her own strength, needed to feel that she was really doing this. A million sparks went up her spine, traced by one of his traveling hands as it slid up her back slow, but with increasing pressure. And then she felt his chin against the side of her face, stubble and warmth, comfort. Oh, but this was easy. Why did she ever think this could be anything but? This was the easiest, most natural thing in the world, and if she just tilted her head up...

His eyes were golden brown in the soft lamp light, and they were staring right into hers. He wanted to say something - she could tell - but he mustn’t. He absolutely mustn’t right now. There was no room for their words between them, and especially not for apologies, or warnings, or doubts, or questions. So when his lips showed the faintest hint of parting for something useless and jarring to come out, Belle knew what she had to do. With her fingers, she brushed past his lips, up his jaw, then just cupped his face in the palm of her hand. Her other hand now grasped tight at the fabric of his shirt, because she’d forgotten whether she wanted to push against him or pull him closer, or if it mattered at all. He inclined his head ever so slightly, made her feel so close to him, and his soft hair fell forward and tickled her fingers.

Bravely, before the needlessly guilty look on his face broke her heart, she tilted her head up, nuzzled her nose against his cheek, placed a single kiss against his jaw, then, finally, with her heart steadily trying to beat a way out of her chest, she slid her lips against his in a determined kiss. His lips were soft, warm as they moved against hers, and the sensation stole the breath right out of her lungs and the fear out of her heart. His hand was at the nape of her neck, now, and then his fingers were in her hair, the other arm tightening around her waist in a way that made Belle want to fall against him in surrender, sink into him completely. But she wouldn’t; he needed it just as much as she did. Needed to be held onto in this teacup storm.

So she broke the kiss for just one second to throw her arms around his neck, and then fit their lips together again. Almost magnetic a pull. All of the sudden they were moving; he was guiding her back (and she refused to stop kissing him) until she bumped into a counter. With him away from the wall she’d pushed him up against, Belle could run her hands down his back, wrap her arms around his waist and pull him close. She tasted wine, now that he’d let her deepen the kiss, and she could dig her fingers into his hair, his soft, soft hair.

Until it stopped. They broke apart. She with a soft, frustrated moan, he with his hair a mess and his lips slightly parted. He took a few steps back, stared at his shoes. That was no good. She wasn’t going to let him retreat completely, not before she knew that everything was okay; that they were okay. And her heart was still pounding so strong that she imagined she could feel the blood race through her veins and guide her limbs to his.

She moved closer, brushed the hair that fell in front of his eyes away, then gently tilted his head up. Darker in this light, his eyes fluttered up to meet her imploring gaze.

“Are you alright?”

He nodded, and Belle felt the touch of his fingers at her shoulder. He was trying to reassure her, make her feel like he was still there even though his mind was getting ready to bolt.

“You don’t really look like you’re alright.”

“I am. I promise. I’m sorry, I’m just...”

But he didn’t finish his sentence.

“You’ve been so patient and so kind, but if you don’t stop worrying about breaking me or manipulating me, or whatever it is that’s got you so frightened of me right now, you’re going to make me feel bad.”

He nodded, but he couldn’t bring himself to look straight at her. Still he reached up and softly, so carefully tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Belle caught his wrist and nuzzled her cheek into the palm of his hand. It was her turn to be patient, now, and his to be courageous.

“Ms. French, I-”

“Really?”

“Belle,” he corrected himself with a hint of an embarrassed smile.

“That’s better,” Belle soothed with a soft chuckle.

But really, though. If it was still ‘Ms. French’ after she had pushed him up against a wall and kissed him the way she just had, he really wasn’t kidding about that sense of decorum. He brushed his thumb over her cheek just once, then pulled away. Belle let his wrist slip from her gentle grasp and allowed him his space.

“Belle the Brave,” he started again, bowing his head as if to royalty, making her smile again, “I do want this. I have wanted this. I’m just not as brave as you are.”

“You don’t have to be. Not for me. How about you just trust me to know what I’m doing?”

“You’re right. You’re perfectly capable of knowing your own mind, and it would be wrong of me to doubt you.”

“That’s good to hear, because your insecurity is baffling and, quite frankly, infuriating at this point. I can be clear, if it helps. I want this. I want you, us, the banter, the comfortable silence and the books. And this,” she paused and leaned in close to place a quick kiss on his lips.

When she pulled back, he was smiling at her, and the sincerity of it warmed her heart. He didn’t look quite so fearful anymore.

“That in particular, in fact. Are you okay with that?” she asked, taking her long since abandoned glass of wine in one hand and handing Gold his.

“I think I can just about manage that, dear,” he replied, raising and tipping his glass just a little bit.

“Good,” said Belle, mirroring the gesture and beaming at him as if he had just told her she’d won the lottery.

“But the kidney-removal clause in the contract still stands.”

And with that, he made his way back to the living room and left her standing in the kitchen on her own. Belle grinned. Because the fact that she had just kissed him silly and preached to him about his insecurity and he could still threaten her with organ theft, well, that was a good sign.

When she joined him, he’d placed himself in his arm chair again, and Belle tutted and shook her head.

“Come on, now. Really? Sit with me.”

“Darling, I do so hate how demanding you get when you drink,” he muttered with a devious smirk and a theatrical roll of the eyes, but he stood up and joined her on the sofa anyway. Not nearly close enough, of course, but Belle simply scooted closer to him instead. There. Teamwork.

They talked and laughed all the way through their second glass of wine, and if you’d asked Belle right then and there, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you why she was so nervous before. That odd feeling of impending doom when she was halfway to his house and the rain had started to fall was a million miles away. With every kind word and affectionate touch, the fear and doubt faded away just that little bit more, until the very idea of fear itself was ridiculous, foreign. Impossible in this climate.

And when the wine was gone and they were left with that warm feeling of dizzy content, Gold suggested he walk her home while they were tipsy enough not to care about the rain – the best idea tipsy Belle had heard in her entire life, she told him, making him laugh. They had barely made it past his house before Belle demanded to be the one to hold the umbrella, playfully scolding him for his constant need to be the chivalrous one.

“Why not?”

“For practical reasons, Belle. You’ll have my eye out.”

“You’re not that much taller! Let me hold it! You’re already holding your cane!”

“I have two hands. Don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

“Precisely, and I can think of better things you can do with one of those.”

“That’s a very good point well made, and very tempting indeed, but ultimately moot. I’m holding it, and that’s that.”

Belle sighed. She’d had her arms folded over her chest all this time, but now, with her eyes narrowed, lips pursed and her chin pushed out, she reached out to grab at the umbrella. He reacted much more quickly than she’d expected and held it out of her reach. They’d get wet this way, but this was a matter of principle, clearly, for both of them.

“Really? You want to make me play keep-away in the middle of the street?”

“No, I just want that umbrella.”

“Well, you’re not having it,” he replied with a fond smirk.

“But I am.”

She swooped in, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him hard. Belle sneakily opened one eye and saw him lower his arm slowly, the fight leaving his body just as his lips moved against hers. So she snatched away the umbrella, jumped back and cheered. Gold’s eyes were wide, his lips parted in surprise for just a few seconds until he managed to gather his composure. ‘Oh,’ he mouthed, shaking his head in disbelief and narrowing his eyes. Belle’s grin was victorious.

“You fight dirty.”

“Got me what I wanted, didn’t it?” she shrugged.

“Alright, Machiavelli. You’ve made your point.”

“And I’ve got your umbrella. So come over here and let’s walk.”

Belle was never going to tell him that her arm was getting a little sore trying not to knock the umbrella against his head, and Gold was never going to call her out on it. Not with words, at least, because he did shoot her a smug, knowing smirk (which she decided to ignore) when she switched sides so she could use her other arm. The walk was slow, the rain soft and glowing orange in the streetlights. Everything was wet and reflective and colored with lights. Shielded by their umbrella and wrapped close in their conversation, they didn’t even notice the rain stop after a while. They talked, poked fun, gloated and teased until they reached Belle’s apartment building. Much, much too soon, she felt.

She folded the umbrella and held it out to him with a thankful smile, but he waved the offer away.

“Keep it. Until you get your own.”

“What if it starts raining again on your way back?”

“It won’t,” he said, pointing towards the sky.

She followed his gaze and looked up. The dark grey clouds were clearing away to reveal a deep blue, star-dotted sky. Distracted, Belle didn’t notice Gold move closer until his lips had pressed a soft kiss where her jaw almost met her ear. And then he moved away.

“See you tomorrow,” he said. Belle blinked, felt the heat rush to her cheeks.

“See you tomorrow,” she replied.

But her voice was weak and her mouth wouldn’t quite close after she’d said it. He was walking away, cane in hand, and all she could feel in that moment, all that was real was that last kiss still burning on her skin. Nothing else was anything at all.

Chapter Text

Gold walked home alone under a starry sky. He looked at his watch – still Sunday, for a little while, at least. Sunday. The day Belle French had walked through the rain to show up at his house, kissed him in his kitchen, then again in the middle of the street in the dark and in the pouring rain. He’d opened the door, saw her staring up at him with those impossible eyes, and he knew. What she was there for. What she wanted. And for a split second, right before her hands were on him and her hair felt soft against his cheek, it felt like they were in a burning building and she was locking the door and pulling him deeper inside. He had been scared, wanted to run, to drag her away from danger, put her somewhere safe and leave her there so he could want her from a distance. But then her lips were on his, and the burning walls silently fell and sank into nothingness until it was just them, the taste of wine on her and his heartbeat drowning out the soft hum of his refrigerator.

The two empty glasses on his coffee table made him smile, so he left them there. Just so he could smile again in the morning.

…

Belle knew she was being ridiculous again, but the closer she got to the shop that Monday morning, she more convincing the idea became. She felt herself being tugged along, pulled by a string wrapped and tied firmly around something warm, certain, solid and central, just underneath her ribs. And with every flash of wine or lips or eyes her memory conjured up for her, the string was pulled taut and trembled. If she tried really hard, she could time it so that it resonated; the memories and the thrill of the day to come, the excitement of seeing him again and the ghost of his wine-stained lips. So that’s how she made her way to the shop that morning – alternately grinning like a madwoman and forcefully folding her face back into something she hoped would read as neutral. Or sane, really. She’d settle for sane.

Pushing the door open, the string broke and snapped back to leave her floating and indefinite for just a second or two, before she saw him behind his counter. He seemed to her all angles and straight lines in a suit – nothing like last night’s man with the rolled up sleeves and the unbuttoned collar who opened the door and took her out of the rain. He looked up.

“Good morning,” he said.

His smile was polite. And he’d only looked at her for a fleeting moment before going back to fiddling with his register. The door fell shut behind her, the bell snapped her out of her suspended state.

Oh, no. No, that won’t do at all, Belle thought.

She made her way over to the counter, reached over it to grab the lapels of his jacket with both hands, pulled him close, and kissed him. To make a point. He smelled like aftershave and coffee that morning. It took a few seconds for him to soften and lean in, but when he did (with a soft, low sound at the back of his throat and fingertips ghosting at the side of her neck), Belle felt her knees go weak. Her grip on his jacket loosened; there was no need for any of that anymore, because he was kissing her right back. Besides, she needed her hands to hold herself up, now that her legs were starting to turn into jelly. She was one nip of his teeth away from crawling over the counter and launching herself at him completely.

Better not.

She broke away, out of breath and grinning. He had turned away and was smoothing out the front of his jacket with a small smirk that Belle didn’t fail to notice.

“Well. That was,” he paused to run his fingers through his hair in a slightly embarrassed gesture that Belle was beginning to absolutely adore, “more effective than coffee.”

There it was again; the softness of him. Relief washed over Belle.

“What was that for?” he asked with a slightly crooked grin, watching her carefully as she came over to his side of the counter.

She hoisted herself up on it, crossed her legs and tried not to smirk at his well-disguised but still fairly obvious struggle to keep his eyes somewhere halfway professional. Hilarious to her, of course, because she could have sworn professionalism had gone of the window right about the time she grabbed at his jacket and kissed him good morning. That damn sense of decorum.

“First of all, because I quite enjoyed doing that last night and I wanted to do it again. Secondly, because you looked like you were about to pretend it didn’t happen. Weren’t you?”

“Perhaps I didn’t want to be presumptuous.”

“Oh, I know. The thing is, I don’t generally pounce on anyone I’m not completely sure wants me to. So presume away.”

“Pounce,” he repeated with a soft chuckle. “That’s good. I like that.”

“I thought we cleared all of that up last night, though. I don’t mind reminding you, but...”

“But what?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just, well, it might get a little boring to do all of the pouncing, you know,” she said with her most innocent look, sliding off the counter and bouncing off to clean something or other and leaving Gold to stand and gawk.

And a few hours later, Belle knew her message had gotten through, because as she was trying to reach a shelf hung high above Gold’s desk, she suddenly found herself being pulled down into his lap, his hands firm at her waist. She sank down with a high-pitched squeal followed by a fit of giggles, and then in complete silence as he drew her into a long, soft kiss, fingers guiding her chin down and closer. No stubble today, Belle noticed as she ran her fingers up his neck, along his jaw and into his hair.

The sound of the bell coming from the front of the shop made Belle jump off his lap, blushing and grinning madly. Gold tried to fight down a smirk, but it was a futile effort.

“How was that?”

“Good. Really, really good. Excellent pounce.”

The customer was dealt with in record time.

…

“What on earth are you up to?”

Gold sat in the darkest corner of the back room. The curtains were drawn and all the lights were off save from a small flashlight that, turning to face Belle, he pointed at himself while putting on his scariest face. A little campfire trick. Belle rolled her eyes, shook her head and tried to bite down on her smile.

“You don’t scare me,” she sang, moving closer and pulling up a chair to sit next to him. That’s when she noticed a strange, rectangular black box in his hands. It took her a few seconds to recognize it as an old camera.

“Found this at the bottom of that trunk. The mechanism’s fine, so I’m just checking for leaks.”

The trunk he was referring to was brought in by the customer with the atrocious timing earlier that day. It was stuffed various odds and ends that weren’t all very valuable, but caught his interest nonetheless. There were a few books, a shaving set, a tin box filled with broken watches, amongst other strange things. Belle knew people often brought in boxes, suitcases and trunks such as this one into the shop and sold whatever was in it as a single lot. What couldn’t be sold or fixed could be scavenged for parts, he had told her as they pored over the contents together. And then she’d gone to dust the shelves, and when she came back, he’d transformed the back room into this light-starved cave, with only one or two thin, sharp strips of sunlight making it through the curtains. Spotlights for the dust to dance in.

“Leaks? What do you mean?”

“Well, you open it up, shine a light anywhere you think might have gotten damaged, and if the light shines through, you’ll know there’s a hole. A light leak.”

“So that’s why you’re sitting in the dark like a weirdo.”

“On this occasion, yes.”

Belle laughed, shoved him in the shoulder playfully.

“So, are you going to get it fixed?”

“If there’s a leak, I’ll probably just cover it with tape. It’s not a valuable piece. Used to be a very popular, cheap camera. You’d see a lot of children with these.”

“It looks old.”

“I suppose it is. They stopped making these in the thirties.”

“Oh, I see,” she chimed, pushing her chair right up to his and scooting, inching up so close to him she may as well have been sitting in his lap again. “Tell me how it works.”

“I would, but it’s quite difficult to concentrate like this.”

“Tell me about it. All alone in a darkened room with a handsome man like this; it’s pretty intense.”

“You’re a preposterous little creature and you need to have your eyes tested.”

“Hush. You’re gorgeous,” she replied, nudging him with her shoulder.

He laughed, the sound of it dark and low.

“It’s hard to believe you walk into the right shop every morning with your terrible eyesight.”

“I said hush!”

“I bet if I moved the furniture around before you came in, you’d bump into literally everything.”

“I swear to-”

“Like a human pinball.”

And then there were arms around him, soft hair at his cheek and her face in the crook of his neck. He nearly dropped the camera to the floor. She sighed deeply, breathing hot on his skin and oddly enough the heat only served to freeze him in his place.

“Belle?” he tried, cautious, worried.

“You’ve reached your daily limit of self-deprecating jokes, okay? No more. Be nice,” sounded her small voice against the skin of his neck.

Oh. That’s right. She really did mind whenever he went off on himself like this. He knew, but he kept forgetting. Logically, objectively, he knew she didn’t think him hideous. That she wanted him. He’d felt it, and she’d told him often enough by now. How sweet of her to care so much, though. How annoyingly, cloyingly, perfectly sweet.

He balanced the camera and the flashlight on his lap to free one hand, then reached up and cupped the back of her head, fingers stroking gently.

“I’m sorry. Force of habit, dear,” he soothed.

She rested her head there on his shoulder for a little while, until with a soft kiss somewhere he supposed was meant to go near his cheek (it was pretty dark, after all) but ended up nearer to the corner of his mouth, she sat back in her chair again.

“Carry on,” she said.

So he did, and she sat and watched, asking questions every so often but mostly listening. He was so warm next to her and she was feeling a little sleepy in this artificial darkness. A bit hot, feverish. She vaguely registered these things as symptoms of a cold, but she refused to fully acknowledge it. She was not about to get sick. She didn’t want to be anywhere but here, at work, with him. Nevertheless, she was nodding off, and it was only the occasional sudden flash of light from the torch that kept her from sinking away completely and sliding off her chair.

“Belle?”

His voice reached her through a thin veil of sleep, and her conscious reached out to meet the sound, shocking her back into reality.

“Hm?”

“I asked if you would like to try it out,” he clarified.

With his cane he managed to reach the light switch from where he was seated, and the room was flooded in bright light. Belle blinked, scrunched her face up, couldn’t quite adjust to the brightness right away.

“What, the camera? Are you serious?”

“There were some rolls of film in the box. I’ll show you how to load it.”

“I’d love that, but... how do you even know how to load this thing?”

“It’s not that difficult to figure out. Spool goes here, film goes there,” he explained.

“And the film is still good, then?”

“Sure. The pictures might turn out very grainy, at worst. Black and white film handles itself pretty well if it’s kept in a cool, dry place.”

“Even after this long?”

“The film is only about thirty years old. See, it’s paper-backed, so you don’t need a darkroom or a changing bag. You just load it, advance the film until you can see the number in this little window, and that’s that. That’s how you can tell how many shots you have left.”

Belle watched his nimble fingers at work, sleepy eyes greedily taking in the movements so she could remember every step and replicate it later. It was difficult to keep up with her mind drifting back to the heat of his shoulder and the strange pressure in the back of her head that was threatening to swell into a headache, but she managed. He closed the back of the camera, twisted the film advance knob a few times and showed her the number in the little dark red tinted window. But she was looking nowhere near it; she was staring at him with a dreamy smile on her face. Proud.

“Is there anything in this world you know nothing about?”

“I’m sure if there is, you’ll be the one to tell me.”

He stood up, aimed the camera at her, pressed the shutter release, then motioned for her to stand up. Looking over his shoulder, now, she observed.

“Look. Turn this until the next number shows up in that little red window. You see?”

“Oh, I see! Two!”

He nodded, then handed her the camera.

“You’ll probably get eleven more shots from this roll.”

“And then?”

“Just keep winding until there’s no resistance anymore. That means the film’s gone on the other spool completely. Then you can take it out and I’ll find a way to get it developed.”

“You’re going to invent time travel?”

“People still shoot film. Maybe try some photographers, first, yes?”

“Sure, if you wanna be boring about it,” she teased.

By the end of the day, she had taken several pictures of him as he went about his business, and Belle was pleasantly surprised that he had just let her. No objections, no hiding behind things, no frowns; just tacit permission. She didn’t know much about photography, but she knew about light, and she knew exactly when and where the light would make him look exactly the way she always pictured him. So she hovered, watched and waited for him to step into a little pool of light and angle his face just the right way, and then – snap – she’d catch him. He’d hear the sound of the shutter, and he’d smile and shake his head just a little bit, but he didn’t admonish her. Willingly captive.

…

Early Tuesday morning, Belle sounded positively deceased. Or at least very unwell, and very sleepy. The poor thing had no business coming into work that day, and yet she was on the phone at eight in the morning, babbling with the strained voice of someone whose nose was terribly congested, practically begging him to demand she come in anyway.

“I can come in if you need me; it’s not that bad.”

“And infect me with whatever it is you’ve managed to contract? No thank you.”

“I’ll try and keep my hands off you. I can’t promise I will, but I’ll try.”

“I was joking. Your bacteria-smothered hands are welcome to any part of me, dear, and you know it. You should stay home. You sound terrible.”

“Yeah, bu- Hold on. Oh. Ruby just walked in. She’s sort of shaking her head and looking angry. I don’t think she’s going to let me out of the apartment.”

“Good. I can manage on my own. You just rest up and listen to your friend.”

“Don’t strangle the customers, will you?”

“You know I can’t promise you that.”

“I know. But still: no murdering.”

“No dying.”

“Deal.”

For years he had spent day after day in that shop, on his own. Content, calm and at ease with his treasures in his solitude. But now, for the first time, it felt empty. Lonely. Too quiet. He only just managed to stop himself from making two cups of tea instead of one. There was no-one to pick up on his subtle insults whenever a customer exhibited poor taste or manners. No milkshakes after lunch, and no gentle ribbing and sniping. No lingering looks and unexpected touches. No outrageous and poorly-veiled attempts at flirting. Belle French had swooped into his shop and his life, and rather inconsiderately left this massive, gaping hole where she ought to have been fluttering about and chirping away at him. How inconsiderate, indeed.

Oh, it was almost excruciatingly dull, alright. But, above all, the thought of her being anything less than comfortable and cheery was the worst. And that’s why round about lunch time, Gold climbed the three sets of stairs (slowly, painfully, but determined) to Belle and Ruby’s apartment and knocked on the door.

“Oh. Hello,” said Ruby with a strange, unreadable smile.

“Hello. Ruby, yes? Gold. We met before.”

“Oh, I remember. You’re here to see Belle,” she stated, her smile broadening and changing into a devilish grin.

“If she’ll see me. Just thought I’d check up. Make sure she’s not malingering,” he said, offering up a smile to let Ruby know he was only joking. Couldn’t quite bring himself to do away with feigned indifference altogether.

“Sure,” she replied with a smirk, “I’ll just check and see if she’s... decent, or whatever. You know.”

He stepped inside, closed the door behind him and straggled politely as Ruby went up to what must have been Belle’s bedroom and knocked. She cracked it open and peeked inside.

“Belle, sweetie. Your, uh... whatever he is is here to see you.”

“Hm?”

“Your boss, I guess?” said Ruby, shooting him a strange look Gold wasn’t quite sure was meant for him. (But who else?) It was entirely too knowing and it was almost enough to make him squirm, but then she motioned for him to enter.

“I have to head back to work. Make sure she doesn’t sneak out with you,” she said. “She’s in full clingy puppy mode. She gets a little weird when she’s not feeling well. Dangerous.”

“Consider me warned.”

Carefully, quietly, he walked into the room and closed the door behind him. He wasn’t sure why he was trying so hard to be this quiet; she was awake, after all.

“Hiya,” Belle croaked.

Peering at him from underneath the covers of her bed was a pitiful mess consisting of little more than brown hair, bright eyes, pathetic little sniffles, blankets and what looked suspiciously like a onesie. Dangerous? This heap of germs? Her laptop was on the bed next to her, and it looked like she had been typing away at something. Gold narrowed his eyes at the screen before she had a chance to push it out of the way and to the other side of the bed. She scooted to the middle of the bed a little bit and patted the newly freed up space next to her; an invitation for him to come and sit.

“You weren’t working on your thesis, were you?” he asked, sitting himself on the edge of her bed, mindful of the discarded tissues.

“I... may have been, yeah. A bit,” she replied, refusing to make eye contact.

“Belle, really? When’s the deadline?”

“In a month.”

“How many words until you hit the minimum word count?”

“Ten thousand,” she muttered. Gold huffed and shook his head.

“You can do that in your sleep. You really ought to just rest up today.”

Belle sighed and looked at him with the telltale watery, reddish eyes of someone with a frightful spring cold. He wanted nothing more than to reach over and touch her face – puffy and snotty as it may have been.

“Please,” he added, brow furrowed in a pleading look.

And with that, Belle reached over and shut the laptop with another, more dramatic sigh that transformed into a pitiful coughing fit halfway through. She flung herself around and pushed her face into her pillow to avoid spraying the entire room (Gold included) with spittle, and Gold couldn’t help but place a comforting hand on her back as her body convulsed.

“Not fair. With that puppy dog look...” sounded her muffled voice from the pillow when the worst had passed.

“Excuse me?”

She turned around, face red from her sudden coughing fit, grinning at him with half open eyes.

“Saying ‘please’ and looking at me all worried with those beautiful brown eyes. So transparent.”

“Well,” he started, voice cold and stern but visibly the slightest bit flattered, “I think I’m permitted a little bit of emotional blackmail, what with the things you put me through on a daily basis.”

“Oh? And what are those, exactly?”

“Nice try, French. I’m not spelling out my weaknesses for you. Figure it out.”

She grinned up at him and curled up on her side, supporting her head with one hand, elbow pressing into the mattress. She was silent and her strange look was unreadable to him, if not slightly disconcerting, so Gold took the time to look around the room. Books, of course. Books everywhere. CDs, DVDs, a stack of notebooks and that silly binder she walked into his shop with the day they met and subsequently kept leaving about the place for days. When he finished his little survey and looked back down, he found Belle still staring at him, biting her lip.

“What are you looking at me like that for?”

“You’re in my bedroom,” she stated, as if that was even remotely an answer to his question.

“So I am,” he said, brow furrowed in confusion.

But then her lips twisted into a steadily growing smirk, and she raised a single eyebrow, and- oh. Oh, okay. And evidently he had made some sort of surprised, perhaps shocked face, because Belle was laughing at him now. Laughing, coughing, wheezing, covering her face with her blanket so as not to paint him with a thick layer of germs. He shook his head, a tiny smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He could see Ruby’s point, now. She was odd like this. Amusing, but odd. Better than miserable, though, he concluded, even if her cheer did come at his expense, in a way.

“Were you swilling heavy duty cough syrup before I walked in?”

“Maybe. Did you come to see if I’d died so you could take my kidneys?”

“Maybe. Diseased organs don’t sell very well,” he said softly, reaching over to hold the back of his hand against her forehead, “but you’re not running too high a fever. So, perhaps. We’ll see. Maybe after you’ve fallen asleep.”

“But I can’t sleep,” she whined, rubbing her eyes.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a terrible liar? Your eyes are falling shut.”

It was true. Her eyes, red and watery still, were small and getting smaller by the minute, and he could see her struggle to keep them open. There had been a couple of poorly hidden yawns, as well, and none of them had escaped Gold’s watchful eye.

“Okay, fine, I’ll try,” she conceded, lower lip jutting out in a look of petulance.

“Good,” he said, “and don’t drag yourself in tomorrow, alright? Bravery and stupidity are close relatives.”

But as he started to get up from the bed, something curious happened; he simply couldn’t. She’d grabbed his sleeve and looked at him with her tired eyes, barely dulled even in her poor condition, and he found himself immobilized. It struck him with a sudden, intense feeling deep in the pit of his stomach that she was utterly, utterly beautiful. Possibly high on cough syrup, full of phlegm, slightly delirious, and painfully beautiful.

“Stay until I’m asleep?” she murmured, lids slowly falling shut and fluttering open again, fighting against the sea of sleep behind her eyes.

“Of course.”

There wasn’t a parallel universe in which he stood a chance.

She turned, wriggled, pulled the covers up over her shoulders and gave him one last sleepy smile before letting the sea take her. It didn’t take very long for her to fall asleep, but he sat there for a few minutes longer, anyhow. His break wasn’t over just yet and he couldn’t think of anything more important to do. Anything at all.

The rest of his day didn’t matter one iota.

…

Wednesday started with another early morning phone call and a slightly less poorly-sounding voice on the other side.

“Good morning.”

“I hope you’re calling to tell me you’re not coming in, Belle.”

“Just wanted to say I’ll be back in tomorrow.”

“I don’t want you to force yourself.”

“I feel a lot better, I swear. I wanted to come in today, but Ruby said she’d chain me to the bed if I tried to leave.”

“You know, the more I hear about your friend, the more I like her. She sounds perfectly sensible. You would do well to follow her advice.”

“She’s the one who told me to come over to your house and kiss you, actually.”

“Case in point. Now rest up, sweetheart.”

Yesterday was dull, but today he came to his shop armed with books he had been meaning to get to for months, and at least that way, the day felt just a little bit less empty. Not that he got much reading done; the sun had drawn out plenty of curious customers, and come closing time, Gold’s face ached from his polite, fake smiles. At least he could close up and go home, now. Perhaps drop by Belle’s and check up on her. Joke about organ theft, let her make some inappropriate cough syrup-fueled comments, tuck her in and then go home.

Ah, but then there’s no accounting for the inconsideration of strangers. There was nothing more annoying than a customer swanning in just five minutes before closing time as if Gold had nothing better to do than to wait for latecomers and indecisive stragglers. So when the bell sounded from the front of the shop, Gold didn’t even bother with the polite smile.

“Shop’s closed, I’m afraid.”

“I've heard that one before.”

He turned around. It was her – bright and beautiful, not nearly as heartbreakingly weak as she looked the day before. Some color on her cheeks, even. She smiled at him, and his tiredness melted away. Effortlessly he returned her smile.

“Well, well. Look who managed to gnaw through her chains.”

“Just wanted to make sure the bodies weren’t stacking up.”

“Long since chopped up and disposed of, dear. Sit down, I’ll make you some tea.”

She sat at his table in the back room as he went about fixing them tea; he half-heartedly, jokingly scolding her for leaving her bed, she rolling her eyes and letting him pretend he wasn’t pleased she’d come to see him until he put a steaming hot mug of tea right in front of her.

“You’re glad I came, really,” she said.

“Well, perhaps it was a little too quiet in here,” he conceded, a half-smile tugging at his lips. “And you did miss the most spectacular boor I ever had the misfortune of meeting. I think the universe needs to reward me for having tolerated him.”

“Well,” she started, absently stirring her tea, “I can think of something, but it’ll have to wait until I’m germ-free.”

No response. Belle smirked into her mug, then looked up and over the ceramic edge to wink at him. Complete silence, until the almost frightened look on his face finally made Belle burst out into laughter, nearly spitting tea all over herself. Full of wit, charm and crippling self-doubt, her Gold.

“You’re going to have to tell me where you get your cough syrup. I think I want in on this,” he finally managed.

They were hollow words meant to cover himself up, but Belle allowed him his little hiding place. Tea was perfect, for now. Tea and idle conversation and her knee against his underneath the table as the sun started to set.

“I’m glad you came.”

Chapter Text

“Can we meet?”

“Of course. Something wrong, dear?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I’ve gone too long without kissing you.”

“That does sound like an emergency.”

“Mhm. So I’ll come over, yeah?”

“Or I could come pick you up, if you like.”

“And take me for a drive? I’d like that.”

“I can be there in thirty minutes.”

“Great! Bye!”

“Bye.”

When Belle turned around, Ruby looked like she wasn’t quite sure whether to smile or be sick, or both.

…

It was a nice enough night, and Belle didn’t want Gold to have to climb the three flights of stairs to her apartment, so after getting ready (lipstick, cute dress, hair in a bun, Ruby teasing her relentlessly) she stood outside and waited, leaning against the building with her purse at her feet and her arms folded. The moon seemed impossibly bright, and Belle wished she could switch off the streetlights for one minute so she could see just how bright it really was. Turn everything a ghostly white color, maybe, instead of that orange glow.

She knew it was him the moment she saw that car. How perfect. She was laughing softly to herself as she opened the door and climbed inside, and Gold glanced at her with a certain look that told Belle she had better explain herself before he dropped her off at a psychiatrist.

“Nice car. Did you steal it from a mafia member?”

“Well. Let’s just say somewhere out there there’s a don riding a bus to a shootout.”

That set her off again, until she realized she had something more important to do and willed her laughter down. She reached over, fingers under his chin, brought his face near and kissed him. She felt his fingers in her hair – just slowly sliding through, not grabbing – and she smiled into the kiss, breaking it.

“So, where are you taking me?” she asked, settling in her seat and grinning in response to his faint, slightly dreamy smile.

“No idea. Any suggestions?”

“I kind of just feel like driving around, if that’s okay with you.”

He turned the key and the car shook into motion.

“Sounds good to me.”

The car’s interior was dark and vaguely luxurious – kind of like him, actually, Belle thought to herself with another barely stifled chuckle. She didn’t know what was wrong with her today, but she felt giddy, and everything made her want to laugh. He glanced at her with an eyebrow raised questioningly, and she shook her head.

“Nothing, just thinking.”

“Thinking what?”

“It’s nothing, really. Just... I don’t know. Everything you own is kind of an extension of you, if that makes sense.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“This car, for one.”

“It’s a car like any other.”

“No, no, this is definitely your car. It’s perfectly yours,” she said, smoothing a hand over the dashboard.

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“It just suits you. Dark and intimidating, piques your curiosity. And then you get in, and it’s just... comfortable. I can’t explain it any better than that, really.”

“You’re not really doing your best, though.”

“Well, take your house, then.”

“What of it?”

“It’s pink. Throws people off. And then on the inside, everything is kind of intimidatingly expensive and important looking at first glance. And then once you get comfortable, the warmth of it seeps through.”

“Warmth,” he repeated. It was more of a question.

“Yeah. Warm colors, fabrics, dark wood. Colored glass. Sort of like a heady wine. And then there’s your shop...”

She stopped, because his smile had faded away, and she didn’t know what that meant. Did he want to say something? Did he want her to stop?

“I’m listening, dear,” he spoke. Gently, encouraging, pushing a heavy weight off her shoulders and clearing the path for her.

“The shop is very dark, until the sun reaches the front of the shop, late in the afternoon, and then everything’s sort of golden.”

He laughed softly and glanced over at her with a fond smile. Just briefly – long enough for Belle to notice the mirth in his dark eyes and feel her heart swell with something of that very headiness she tried to describe to him. Then he looked back at the road ahead. Belle had no idea why he’d felt the need to laugh. She meant it.

“Everything you surround yourself with is all very,” she added with a shrug, “I don’t know. Just very you.”

“I don’t know if I agree. Sometimes objects are just objects.”

She wondered if she could ever truly convey to him her image of him. She wanted to hold up a mirror to him and make him see, somehow, the warmth Belle read in his eyes. Her mind raced with fractured thoughts, flashing images, but nothing adequate. Nothing she could really put into words. But she’d try anyway. Words were supposed to be her thing, after all.

“Well then, how do you see yourself?”

“Old. Ill-tempered. Pragmatic. Tired. Distant.”

“Oh God. You really are relentless in your self-loathing.”

“Just being realistic, I think.”

“First of all, no. No, you’re not. Secondly, why would I be interested in the person you just described?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering, myself.”

“So I can flirt with you for days on end, show up at your house in the pouring rain, kiss you, kiss you some more, ask to spend more time with you even though we work together, kiss you again, and you have no idea why I might want to do all that?”

“Well, no, I’ll admit I’m beginning to catch on,” he said, smirking and shooting her a look that disarmed her entirely. He was trying. She knew he was. “I’m just used to thinking about myself in a certain way. It’s difficult to let go of those thoughts. Do you understand?”

“I understand that you’re trying,” she offered.

He was silent for a little while, brow furrowed in concentration as he turned the corner and headed into the center of town. Belle took the opportunity to stare at him a little more. He didn’t seem too bothered by her attention. Driving past streetlights, the shadows and the orange glow danced on his face. The shifting shadows his features cast on the rest of his face were endlessly fascinating to Belle. Eventually, his tongue flicked out to wet his lips, and he spoke.

“How about I try to talk to you in your native language? I’ve just realized you have a tendency to think in metaphors and similes. Might help.”

“Sure. Give it a try.”

“You know how in most horror films, there’s always a moronic, insolent skeptic?”

He looked over to her, so she nodded.

“That’s me. And characters like me usually die a gruesome death at the hands of whatever it is they’re too stubborn to admit is right there, looming over them. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“Even though I’m seeing it with my own eyes, I still want to explain it away. Blood everywhere, maimed corpses all over the place, claw marks on the walls, dog breath over my shoulder, fur tickling the side of my face, full moon out - the works - and I swallow and say ‘No, it can’t be. Werewolves aren’t real.’ And then I get mauled.”

“Rightfully so. I’m with you so far.”

“Good. You’re the werewolf.”

“I’m what now?” she gasped.

He couldn’t help but grin at her reaction, but smoothed his face into a neutral expression soon after.

“You’re the werewolf. You’ve been hunting me down and even though you’ve got your lovely claws in me and you’ve been chomping on my head, I still find it difficult to believe it’s happening.”

“Now, I understand what you’re getting at, I think, but you’re making this sound a lot more one-sided than it actually was, mister,” she scolded, folding her arms and narrowing her eyes at him.

“Ah. True. You’re right. Admittedly, on second thought, my metaphor isn’t as relevant to our situation after all. Perhaps the skeptic’s been a believer all the time, but he was just so stuck in his ways that he couldn’t bring himse-”

“Hey, hold on. Dog breath?” she said, feigning dismay and glaring at him.

“No! No! Oh, scrap the entire metaphor, darling, I’m so sorry,” he said, clasping a hand over his mouth, the sound of his laughter making Belle forget about trying to look angry.

“You’re terrible at this!” she managed in between giggles.

“I know, I know! I’m never trying that again, I swear.”

“Pull over before you crash the car and let’s walk through the park.”

With his face red and his eyes unwilling to meet hers in his embarrassment, he obeyed and pulled over, parking the car near the park gates.

“Maybe I can salvage your horrible metaphor, still,” said Belle, waiting for Gold to reach her and hooking her arm into his. He pulled her closer, just a little bit, arm tight around hers, and she felt herself getting just the tiniest bit giddier.

“If I’m the werewolf, you’re the insecure skeptic. You’ve come to terms with the fact that I exist, but you have no idea why I’ve been chasing you through the woods. How’s that for a start?”

“Good, so far,” he admitted.

They walked into the park, calm and desolate, small bats flying overhead, chasing after tiny winged bugs attracted by the streetlights. The lights were sparse in the little park, just bright enough to keep you on the path and dark enough to discourage you from straying from it.

“Okay. So, I obviously want to rip you apart and devour you, and you keep thinking I’m mistaking you for someone more delicious. Oh, this werewolf is clearly out of her mind to want me for dinner, you think to yourself. Look at her licking her chops and salivating all over the shop like an absolute moron. Poor thing’ll get food poisoning, for sure. But I wouldn’t mind being dinner-”

“I’d love to be dinner,” he corrected, grinning quite openly now.

“I’d love to be dinner,” she continued, her own smile growing into a grin as wide as his, “so I’ll just stick around, throw her a bone every so often, see if she really thinks I’m that tasty. Still accurate?”

He nodded, and she could tell he was trying to hold back his laughter.

“Okay. So then she pounces.”

“I do so love how you manage to find so many opportunities to use that word.”

“She pounces,” Belle pushed on, “and she takes a bite, and she doesn’t recoil or drop dead of food poisoning. In fact, she seems to be coming back for more.”

“Okay. True.”

“So the logical conclusion here is...” she started, motioning with her hands for him to continue.

“I taste good,” he muttered, grinning quite against his own will, head lowered and hair falling in front of his face.

“Now you’ve got it.”

She felt more than a little victorious and she wanted to see his face, but she let him hide behind his hair as they walked on, for as long as he liked. She was patient. And his grip on her arm (and hers on his) was just as tight, just as strong, pulling her close to him and making her feel like they fit together perfectly. Everything was fine. How could it not be? With the moon out like this, reflected in the pond up ahead, there was just no room for unpleasant things.

“I’m sorry, Belle. I’ve been acting like a fool.”

“Just a bit, yeah,” she said, leaning her head against his shoulder for a moment.

“And a coward.”

It was easy for Belle to stop, turn, slide the arm that was hooked in his around his waist, let her other arm wrap around him too, tilt her head up and capture his lips between her own. Softly, briefly, before drawing back and looking at him with an eyebrow raised in expectation. He seemed to be scanning her face for something for a fraction of a second, but then he caught on. His one hand on her shoulder, sliding up to rest against her neck, he swooped down and kissed her in a way that made her heart beat faster in her chest. Belle vaguely heard something drop to the ground – his cane – and then felt the fingers of his now freed up hand leave a trail of goosebumps up her arm, slowly, maddeningly, until finally he cupped her face, thumb brushing against her cheek. As his lips moved against hers, all Belle wanted to do was unbutton his jacket and slide her hands underneath, but she knew that if she did that, she would want more, and the park wasn’t exactly the place for that. Nor was this the time. Not with him still worrying about her attraction to him. And those thoughts set her to worrying, herself.

So she broke away, wanting to give him space, her arms unwinding from his waist, his hands falling away from her face, taking a step back. She meant to pick up his cane and hand it to him, but then suddenly she was pulled forward again, flush against his body, and before she had a chance to express any sort of surprise, he kissed her again. Harder, this time, more insistent, and the little appreciative sound she couldn’t help but make made him tighten his grip on her waist. Belle sank into him, threw her arms around his neck and, gathering her courage, faintly brushed her tongue against his upper lip.

Terrible, terrible idea, Belle thought to herself for exactly half a second, until he took the hint and deepened the kiss in such a way that all thoughts left her mind without so much as a goodbye and she briefly forgot how to breathe. Best idea ever. All she knew how to do was slide her fingers into his hair and, miraculously, how to stand on her own two feet.

When they pulled apart, Belle knew she was blushing, and if they’d chosen a slightly better lit place in which to make out like a couple of ridiculous teenagers, she would have noticed that Gold wasn’t so calm and composed, himself. His hair was a mess, though, Belle did notice, and for some reason, all she could think to do was laugh; laugh as she picked up his cane, laugh as she pressed it into his hand. But then when she felt him place a soft kiss on the top of her head, her laughter stilled. It flowed down, settled into a glowing pool of warmth somewhere in her chest and left her smiling. She reached up and smoothed his hair down, then wiped away a small smudge of lipstick at the corner of his mouth – making him grin and complicating the procedure somewhat.

“Stop that. I’m trying to make you presentable,” she said. He forced his grin down so she could rub away the red at the corner of his lips. When she tried to pull her hand back, he caught it in his own, bowed his head just a little and kissed the back of her hand, making her want to latch onto him all over again. So she forced herself to step back and wrap her arm around his again, nearly bouncing as they walked. The man was so full of affection, and Belle couldn’t fathom why he’d tried to hard to pretend he wasn’t.

“That pink house of yours is such a double bluff,” said Belle. He looked at her, laughter in his eyes but confusion etched in his brow.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“I mean you’re an adorable, welcoming, harmless pink house,” she explained, nodding to accentuate each descriptive term, wanting to drive the point home.

“Perhaps that’s just what you bring out in me, Belle. You haven’t seen me with other people very often.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt you’re a right jerk to people a lot of the time – especially when they have no intention of buying anything from you.”

He laughed and nodded, but when the hair fell in front of his face this time, he brushed it back on his own.

“That’s true. I can be... unpleasant.”

“But that doesn’t invalidate my idea of you.”

“It does mean that I’m not entirely who you think I am.”

“Of course not. I don’t claim to know everything about you. But I didn’t just make you up out of thin air, either. I saw something in you, and you let me pick away at you to find it. It was there. I just badgered you into showing it.”

Soft, solitary grey clouds glowed silver as they passed in front of the moon. The bats still flew overhead without much sound. Gravel crunched under their feet.

“And,” she paused, reached over to put her free hand on the one he used to wield his cane, “I’m not going anywhere any time soon. So it doesn’t matter. Who you think you are without me, I mean.”

He stared at her, eyes locked with hers, just looking. They were dark under this dark blue night sky. Deep. Not even brown; just black. It almost made Belle a little nervous. Was he going to object, again? Was she going to have to give him another lecture on insecurity? She would, she absolutely would if she had to, and she’d do it a million times over, to see him visibly relax, the worry fall from his face like dried up leaves from a tree in autumn, let his ridiculously well-armed guard down and just give in to her. Time and time again.

“You’re right. It doesn’t matter,” he spoke, his face softening.

“So, you’re stuck with me, handsome,” Belle said, and he huffed, grinned, and turned his head away, clearly embarrassed. “Tell me I’m stuck with you and I’ll get off your case for the rest of the night.”

“You’re stuck with me,” he muttered, rolling his eyes but not quite at her, exactly. In this pale moonlight, Belle could read his face like an open book, and with a sudden wave of relief, like a breath she didn’t know she was holding, she realized something – in this moment, he was happy. With her.

“Good,” she said, standing on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. The way he inclined his head and leaned towards her a little bit, making it easier for her to reach, was like a pebble dropped in the pool of glowing warmth in her chest, rippling through her and making her feel so weightless, so good, she couldn’t wipe the smile off her face throughout their little nocturnal tour of the park.

Through soft conversation and the occasional bout of laughter, that dizzying feeling didn’t subside. She took it with her in the car, held it close to her chest, fed the flames by reaching over and placing her hand on his leg as he drove. Her bravery brought her that far, and then it was nowhere to be found (but likely cowering in the corner), because she couldn’t quite bring herself to look him in the eye the first few minutes after she’d touched him there. They talked, and her hand stayed put, but she feigned an intense interest in the passing scenery until his soft, low voice talking about precious old things and well-crafted treasures and the flashing rhythm of orange lights as they drove past them lulled her into a strange, semi-conscious state of complete and utter content. And then it wasn’t his leg underneath her hand, it was just the knowledge that he was there with her; warm and reassuring and definite in this bubble of theirs.

So when they stopped in front of Belle’s apartment building and she showed no sign of budging, Gold covered her hand on his leg with his own, gently drawing her out of her reverie. She looked over to her hand, and his. Then tore her eyes away and upwards to finally meet his gaze. It wasn’t really concern, what she read there. Caring, maybe. Affection.

“You’re home, sweetheart,” he said, voice low and soft, almost a whisper. As if he didn’t want to jolt her out of her fairly obvious dream state. Carefully, slowly, so as not to make him draw back, she turned the hand on his leg over, palm up, and interlaced their fingers. The back of her hand still resting on his leg. He squeezed, just a little bit, and she did the same. A silent gesture screaming ‘I don’t want to be anywhere else but here with you.’

She shifted in her seat a bit, angling her body towards him. His head was turned towards her, too, resting against the headrest, his shoulders relaxed. And they just looked. No smiles, no words. But she’d have to ask, she knew. She would just have to. She had his hand in hers and she would have to tug him over the line.

“Can I stay over tonight?”

Her stomach flipped as she spoke the words, but the steady pressure of her hand caught between his palm, fingers and leg kept her outwardly calm. Grounded her, anchored her to the moment, to what had to be said and done. He looked at her, eyes flitting over her face, brow just the slightest bit creased – in thought, not in worry – and it felt like an eternity. But she would not look away.

Until the heat fell away from her hand, and it fell, laying limp on the seat. Dutifully she withdrew and folded her hands in her lap. What was that he had said about bravery and stupidity? She bowed her head, drank down the guilt, felt it slide from her red hot face down to her stomach and settling there like a ten ton truck crashing into the side of a bridge. She was gathering up words, preparing herself to lay them all down at his feet in some form of damage control.

When the engine sputtered to life, she snapped her head up and turned to face him. His profile against that orange glow again. He looked at her, offered her a faint half smile (her heart jumped, the ten ton truck in her stomach exploded into thousands of butterflies), shifted his attention to the road again and drove off.

Brave Belle French claimed that spot on his leg again, and this time, with a grin.

…

Eventually they stumbled rather than walked into his pretty house, because she wasn’t exactly cooperating while he was trying to unlock the door. Warm, heavy weight on his back, arms wrapped around his waist, murmuring something rather interesting but, for him, also slightly terrifying over his shoulder and making him drop the keys and laugh.

In the car, she’d flustered him by reaching over and undoing his tie as he drove. At first she’d seemed content with just that, but then she reached over again and undid the top buttons of his shirt with a devilish grin she didn’t even care about hiding, her only explanation when faced with his deeply confused and questioning look being a careless shrug and something about liking him a little undone. It was a miracle they reached his house without crashing the car and getting themselves killed.

“Belle, for goodness’ sake,” he almost giggled, stooping down to pick up his keys but seeing them snatched away in front of his eyes.

Belle sidled up next to him and deftly slid the key in the lock, turned it, opened the door, practically hopped inside and then held the door for him with a subdued curtsy. He shook his head with feigned disapproval, but couldn’t help but return her curtsy with an elegant little bow of his own. When the door fell shut behind them, Belle wordlessly drifted to the kitchen. After shrugging off his jacket and hanging it away, Gold followed.

“Where did my tie end up?” he asked as he uncorked the bottle of red Belle had picked out from his sizable collection of wine. She was opening each and every cupboard in the room, trying to find his wine glasses.

“My purse,” Belle replied.

He narrowed his eyes at her, but she pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows as if to ask him whether he was going to do something about that. He tried to glare, but a crooked smirk broke through his mask soon enough.

“Cupboard to your left, dear,” he muttered. But to her ears, it sounded an awful lot like ‘Fine, keep the tie.’

She found a pair of wine glasses and placed them in front of him on the counter. But before he could pour the wine, she caught his wrist and started to fiddle with the buttons of his shirt cuff.

“What are you up to now?”

“I like it better when you roll your sleeves up,” she said, as if that was glaringly evident and he was an idiot for even asking.

“You could ask me, you know.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” she asked, grinning up at him.

Because she’d noticed that each time she touched him, he got this softer look on his face that made her proud to know was all her doing. He could be in full performance mode, babbling away about some asinine comment a poor, unsuspecting customer had once made, gesticulating elegantly and fitting fancy words into beautiful sentences, but she had only to reach out and touch him – touch him anywhere, skin or cloth, and he’d falter and fall silent and the mask would slip right off.

“Sometimes I’m struck with how odd you really are, dear,” he said, but there was no bite behind it, no real intent behind the words.

Belle let her fingers flit over his skin until she got what she wanted and his sleeves were pushed up his arms. Then, and only then, did she let him pour the wine.

In the living room, Belle sat with her legs curled up under her and her elbow on the back rest of the sofa, hand supporting her head. He settled next to her, close, one leg crossed over the other, his body angled towards her as much as it possibly could. They drank, talked in lower voices, let their eyes rove just a little more freely than they usually allowed themselves. Halfway through that first glass, Gold decided Belle needed to see the latest addition to his collection of first edition books and after letting her help him up (his cane long since abandoned near the door), he put a guiding hand in the small of her back to walk her to his bookcase.

In other circumstances, on any other day, with anyone but him and without that warm heady feeling that wasn’t really there yet after half a glass of wine but was right around the corner anyway, Belle would have cared immensely about the books. But it just so happened that in this mood, this climate, every word he said made her want to swallow the sound with her lips, every look he gave her made her want to bare herself, each page turned with his fingers made her want to take his hands in hers and put them somewhere else.

She took the book from him and closed it, effectively shutting him up and conjuring up that confused look again. Belle slid it back into its rightful place on the shelf, then leaned her shoulder against the bookcase with her arms folded and stared at him with slightly narrowed eyes, a faint smirk pulling up the corners of her mouth.

“So, when can I start calling you my boyfriend?”

His brow furrowed and his mouth dropped open for the briefest of moments until he regained control over his own facial expressions and composed himself.

“How about when I miraculously stop being a grown man and turn into a boy again?” he countered, a theatrical look of defiance on his face.

One step. Two steps. Her lips were at the base of his neck and they moved slowly up, leaving a trail of kisses all the way up to his ear, where, on her tiptoes, she murmured:

“No. I think I’m just going to start calling you my boyfriend now.”

He swallowed.

“You can call me whatever you like.”

She smiled against his skin.

“I know. Bedroom?”

“Upstairs.”

Brave Belle French took her boyfriend by the hand and guided him through his own house, to his own bedroom, and closed the door behind them.

…

Several months later, Belle secured herself a lesson in revenge.

“Is that the one?”

“Yup. Note the smug bumper sticker.”

“Awful. Catch.”

Something shiny and sharp flew through the air and jingled in an elegant arc. Belle caught Gold’s car keys in her hands. She looked from the keys to his face - dark, smirking and encouraging, and he nodded. Belle grinned, then drew quite a long line in the bright red paint job all along the side of the car, with Gold proudly looking on, and occasionally glancing over his shoulder to see whether the man who had upset his girlfriend years before he had even met her might be getting in reach of a well-deserved thwack of the cane. Unfortunately, he was nowhere near.

“That was terrible!” she laughed, pressing the keys back in Gold’s hands.

“Oh, I bet it felt good, really. You just don’t want to admit it.”

“No, I’ll admit it. It felt good. And he did have it coming.”

“That, and more. He’s lucky you’re not that well-versed in the art of revenge,” said Gold, beating Belle to the passenger side of the car and holding the door open for her.

“Willing to learn, though,” Belle said, right before she climbed inside and let him slam the door shut.

“Are you proud of me?” she asked after he had joined her in the car.

“For what? Graduating magna cum laude today or straying from the high road and joining me down below?”

“Both. Either.”

“Yes. I’m very proud of you,” he said, reaching over and cupping her face to draw her into a soft kiss. A very brief one. “For both.”

She sighed, smiled and leaned in to continue the kiss, until-

“But you’re fired.”

“Oh, come off it! No, I’m not,” she blurted, pushing him in the shoulder playfully. He merely laughed and shrugged in response.

“That was the deal, though, love. You need to find an actual job and better the world through the healing powers of prose, or whatever it is you literature majors do.”

“I know, and I will, but I’m not letting you kick me out of that shop until the summer is well and truly over, and even then, I’m not budging until I find something else. Okay?”

He looked at her, saw the laughter and determination both equally present in her bright blue eyes, and with a deep, exaggerated sigh, he conceded.

“Fine.”

“Really?”

“You’re like that mold in the corner underneath the sink. Probably never get you out of my shop,” he grumbled.

“Oh, you love it, really. Stop roaring like a cornered animal and take me home.”

He turned to shoot her one more attempt at a glare, or maybe fire off one more half-hearted gibe, but she’d anticipated his little protest, and reached over to press a quick kiss to his nose before he could even blink. She sank back in her seat with a satisfied smirk. He sat there with that softened expression he never did quite learn to hide whenever she touched him or kissed him out of the blue, until he got a hold of himself again, slid on his mask of smug indifference and spoke.

“Which one would that be? Yours or mine?”

Belle threw her head back in laughter, and he couldn’t help but grin at the sight; her laughter was infectious. She always pulled his disguises up with absolutely no effort whatsoever. And now she put her hand on his arm, a gentle but insistent touch.

“Yeah, see, I know you were trying to be cute just then, but at this point, with my toothbrush in your bathroom and half of my books on your shelf, we might have to have a little chat about that soon,” she said, quirking an eyebrow at him and biting down on her bottom lip to stop from grinning quite so incessantly.

He nodded, a faint, knowing smile on his face. They’d have that chat.

When he turned the key, the engine shuddered and came to life. She gazed at him, let her eyes travel over his profile (he looked serious now, concentrated) and then watched his hands wrap around the steering wheel.

“But for now? Yours,” she said. And as they pulled out of their spot and drove off, the campus disappearing into the rapidly changing landscape behind them, Belle French leaned back in her seat and silently enjoyed the handsome, devilish smirk on her boyfriend’s face.