Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sorry this took a while, but here it is! The final part of Locked Out.

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Locked Out – Final Run

It took Gold all of three seconds to realise that he had made a terrible mistake and this was not, in fact, the hotel room bathroom. It took another half a second for his blood – pleasantly warmed from an extreme excess of gin the night before – to run cold at the realisation that the hotel room door had swung closed behind him and he had no way of getting back inside to correct this incredibly terrible mistake.

In his circumstances, he thought that he ought to be commended for not giving blind panic immediately. He took an entire minute to fully consider his predicament before he started to panic. There were several reasons why panicking was a perfectly legitimate reaction, in his opinion. Firstly, he was locked out of his hotel room. Secondly, he was still drunk. Thirdly, there was a very pressing reason why he had gone through what he had thought was the bathroom door. Fourthly, he was not wearing any clothes. Fifthly, he could not remember why he was not wearing any clothes. He thought that the reason he was not wearing any clothes probably had something to do with Ella, but he really couldn’t be certain of that.

Having processed all of this information, Gold began, as any other self-respecting man in his position would have done, to panic.

Ella was asleep. He knew that Ella was asleep because he could still hear her snoring from inside the hotel room, which he felt was a somewhat impressive feat. What was more impressive was the fact that he had managed to sleep through it.

“Ella!” he hissed through the door, but he already knew that it would not be enough to wake her. “Ella, open the door, for fuck’s sake!”

He rapped his nails against the hard wood; somewhere in the back of his gin-addled brain he remembered that Ella was scared to death of mice and perhaps if the sound of something akin to scampering feet pervaded her dreams and she would wake screaming thinking that mice were taking over the hotel room. Although, if that happened, it was likely that she would run screaming out of the door and end up in exactly the same position as he was currently in.

Well, at least if that happened he would have company in his misery. At any rate, his efforts were to no avail.

“Ella!” he whispered a little louder. He had no idea what time it was, but it was obviously the small hours of the morning and no-one else along the corridor would appreciate being woken up by a naked Scottish drunkard attempting to break into his own hotel room. “Ella, please open this damn door!”

He knocked sharply. “Ella!”

Why had he and Ella got so blind drunk in the first place? Why were they sharing a hotel room? Why was he naked? So many questions… All of which paled into insignificance next to the fact his bladder felt like it was going to explode.

“Ella, you gin-soaked albatross, wake up and open this fucking door!”

He rested his head against the cool wood and resisted the urge to rhythmically smack his forehead against the door. Although, some part of his inebriated brain said, that might have been the sound that Ella needed to draw her out of her slumber. He slammed a fist against the wood. Short, sharp, loud. It might wake everyone else up but hopefully Ella would have let him in before anyone could investigate.

Ella’s snoring stopped for all of twenty seconds, and during those twenty seconds Gold thought that perhaps he was saved.

Sadly, it was not to be, and he only just managed to stop himself from howling in frustration.

“For goodness sake, Ella, how can you be asleep at a time like this?” he exclaimed. “Have you been snoring so loudly you’ve deafened yourself? How is this even possible?! This doesn’t even happen in real life! This kind of thing only happens in films! Why is it happening to me? Ella, open this fucking door!”

A door opened.

Sadly it was not his own hotel room door.

“Look, I don’t know what you think you’re playing at but some of us have to be up at six in the morning for a long haul flight and…”

The voice – the female, Australian accented, very angry voice – died away in the middle of its whispered rant.  

Gold was not quite sure what kind of metaphysical force compelled him to glance over his shoulder down the corridor at the source of the voice, but he thought it might have been the alcohol still in his system, because he was certain that had he been completely sober, he would just have pretended that this wasn’t happening and ignored the irate person whose sleep he had disturbed.

Scratch that. Had he been completely sober, this wouldn’t be happening in the first place.

Four doors down from him, a young woman wearing pyjamas that were almost too short to be decent emblazoned with a picture of Kermit the Frog was leaning out of her room, her mouth open and her bright blue eyes wide. For a moment they just looked at each other, and it was clear that each was expecting the other to say something. Gold realised that it should probably be him. After all, it wasn’t every day that you looked out of your hotel room to find the source of a disturbance and came face to arse with a naked man.

“I locked myself out,” he said feebly.

“Naked?” the woman exclaimed.

“Evidently.”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t exactly intentional. I was looking for the bathroom.”

“I… No. Wait. I can’t have this conversation with you like this, your backside is too distracting.”

She ducked back into her hotel room and Gold gave a sigh of relief. The respite did not last long however, as a moment later she was back, covering her eyes with one hand and holding out a towel with the other. Gold grabbed it gratefully and wrapped it tightly round his waist.

“Thank you.”

“My… pleasure?” The woman uncovered her eyes and looked him up and down. “What happened?”

The blurred memories of the previous evening were coming back to him, and he cringed.

“That is a very long and possibly fascinating story, but before I tell it, could I please ask a somewhat personal favour?”

The woman raised an eyebrow, arms folded. “What kind of a favour?”

“Can I use your bathroom please? There was – is – an urgent reason I was looking for my own.”

The woman looked him up and down for a moment, all five-seven of him wearing naught but a borrowed bath towel, and Gold received the distinct impression that she was trying her utmost not to laugh at him. If she was figuring out whether he was dangerous or not, he sincerely hoped she decided on the latter. He did not feel at all dangerous at this moment in time.

“Come on then,” she said, and she led the way into her own room, gesturing towards the bathroom and standing outside in the corridor. Probably sensible. Young women travelling alone did not usually invite strange naked men into their hotel rooms. Well. Not ones that they had just met in the corridor two minutes previously. They were on the twentieth floor with non-opening windows and he had no pockets, he wasn’t likely to grab her purse and make a run for it.

He stopped overthinking the situation and concentrated on the task at hand, not entirely sure quite how drunk he still was.

Finished and with hands washed, he left the strange hotel room and nodded to the young woman.

“Thank you, Miss…”

“French,” the woman filled in for him. “Belle French. And you are…”

“Rum Gold. Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise. I think.” Belle cocked her head on one side. “So, Mr Gold… How come you locked yourself out of your room naked at three in the morning?”

“Gin,” Gold admitted. “Rather, ah, too much gin.”

Belle raised an eyebrow.

“Is there a reason for the excessive consumption of gin or is this a normal occurrence for you?”

“My friend invited me to help her commiserate a romantic failure,” Gold waved at his own room door, from behind which Ella’s snores could still be heard. “Too much gin had been imbibed for us to get home safely, so here we are.”

“And the, erm, nudity?” Belle asked.

“The air con’s broken.” At least, he thought that was the reason. All he knew was that given Ella’s preferences, he was very certain nothing of that ilk had happened between them.

She nodded slowly, seeming to be satisfied with that explanation.

“And yourself?” he asked. They both seemed to be very awake now, and there was not going to be any getting through to Ella until she woke of her own accord.

“I’m off to Australia to visit my family,” she said. “It was easier to get a room here in Boston for the night than try and make the journey all the way to the airport from home.”

“Where’s home, may I ask?”

The young woman laughed. “Storybrooke, Maine. Tiny place, you’ve probably never heard of it.”

Gold blinked. He had indeed heard of Storybrooke, Maine. It was where his son and daughter-in-law and soon-to-be grandson lived.

He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, he heard the rather strangled sound of Ella waking up in the middle of a snore. If he didn’t take this chance now then he’d never get back into his room before dawn, and as nice as it was to be chatting to Belle in the corridor, she had a long flight ahead of her and he had the world’s worst hangover to look forward to.

He banged heavily on the door, and the sounds from inside the room stopped.

“Ella!” he hissed through the wood, much to Belle’s mirth behind him. “Let me in!”

There was a long pause, and then the sound of padding footsteps, and finally Ella appeared in the doorway, wrapped up in her bedraggled fur. She looked an absolute sight, her make-up smeared all over her face and her two-tone hair sticking up at all angles.

Ella looked Gold up and down several times before furrowing her brow.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked.

Gold rolled his eyes. “Never mind how I got out here, will you let me back in?”

Ella stood to the side, her face still the picture of puzzlement.

“You can keep the towel,” Belle called to him, and Gold felt the heat rise in his face again.

“Thank you, Miss French.”

“You’re welcome, Mr Gold.”

She disappeared back into her own room as Ella closed and locked the door behind them.

“I’m not even going to ask,” she grumbled, shedding the fur and collapsing back into her bed as Gold got comfortable in its twin. “Also, since you’re awake…”

Gold raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Did you know that I was eating a KitKat when I went to sleep?”

“No.”

“Neither did I until I woke up to find I’d been lying on it.” She licked melted chocolate wafer off her fingers. “Still tastes all right though.”

Gold sighed. “Good night, Ella.”

“Night Gold.”

She was snoring again almost before Gold had turned the light off, and as he lay back against the pillows, he thought about his saviour, Belle French, trying to commit the details of her pretty face and beautiful blue eyes to memory before the haze of alcohol chased them away from him.

Would it look like he was stalking her if he happened to look her up the next time he visited Neal and Emma?

He fell asleep before he could come to a conclusion.