Lacey watches the man who sits on the bar stool next to her carefully - there are six free seats round this bar, and he took the one directly next to her. He's early fifties, she'd guess, shoulder-length brown hair with grey wisps which he pulls off surprisingly well. She caught his eye as he walked into the bar and he's been staring at her since, and even now his eyes track her as she leans over the sticky counter to ask Barman Nick how his husband's new salsa class is going.
Nick wears a proud smirk as he dives into the dirty details. "You would not believe the positions he was trying out on me last night. I'm too old for that Lacey! My innovation days are over." She smirks back, not sparing too much sympathy for Nick's complaints about how vigorous the sex life in his long, happy marriage is.
But the guy next to her mutters a grumpy little "I can see that." It pisses her off. Whether it is at Nick being gay or having happy married sex, the guy's being a dick. Nick is ducking his head and turning back round to the drinks behind him, which makes her realise how much shit he must get, working in a bar like this, living in a town like this. Storybrooke, where you're only allowed one kind of story.
"Have you got a problem?" she asks the guy, popping a handful of the bar nuts into her mouth after she's spoken.
He looks up at her, face full of surprise and almost delight that she is talking to him. A weird amount of delight, when she's here crunching her nuts, and calling him out.
"With Nick?" she prompts. "With the bed-salsa?"
"Oh," he shakes his head. Laughs into his breath, one of those depressing laughs, at your own stupidity. "No, I can simply tell his innovation days are over. He hasn't changed this vile bar in years."
And yeah, while Nick is looking none too pleased, she'll kinda give the guy that. The Rabbit Hole is your stereotypical dingy basement, windowless and crowded, with pumping music and uneven pool tables, and she's only here herself because they do the cheapest shots in town.
"What's got you here then?" she asks.
"Have you ever felt like you've met someone before?" he asks, leaning in towards her. "Like you have an instant connection. Unexplainable, but undeniable."
Wow. Really? He looks intelligent, that's the thing, and he's clearly wealthy, wearing a polished suit and either a Rolex watch or a very good knock-off. The lines on his face are actually attractive, in an unexpected way. The fact that he has got to this age and has his whole life sorted but is still using terrible lines is just depressing. It also tells her he's married, or very recently divorced. Only a guy who had a woman legally bound to him could be this crap at flirting, by that age, and not know it.
"You know this someone," he presses. "From a past life, a different world." His eyes are intent on her, a fervent gleam. He looks so determined.
"Guess the story about me getting amnesia from a concussion is going round, then?" Guess he was hoping the town's slut couldn't remember, and he could tell her whatever he liked, make her do whatever he wanted, all on the pretext of "we've done it before". Unlucky for him she had recovered her memories yesterday morning, and he wasn't in them.
"I know you, dearie." His voice is low and intimate. Creep radar warnings are blaring. "You weren't dolled up like this," he waves his hand up and down her dress, her false eyelashes, her heels, and yeah, she's really pissed off now. "But you were mine."
"Great to hear I feature in your wet dreams," she replies, voice sharp. "Haven't seen you around before, but great you've been watching me. I'm gonna head off now." She stands up, ready to get away from him. She nods at Nick, who is sending her worried looks, to say she's got this. The guy stands too and touches her arm.
"Give me a chance," he honest-to-god pleads. "I know she's inside there, and she loves me."
If she had known that she had ingested a woman who was in love with creeps, she would have vomited more than once in this morning's hangover, to get her the hell out.
"I don't even know who you are."
"Mr. Gold," he says, with the half-bow of a goblin about to steal your home. "At your service." He gives a strange giggle. This is weird. Mr. Gold, the town's landlord. Untouchable. The most powerful man in town, and ruthless with it. Only ever at a bar like this if he's debt-collecting. She knows his reputation from childhood, and clearly Nick does too, because now he's watching warily now.
"I would be honoured if you would leave this hole and join me at a dinner establishment. Allow me to get to know you better." It's not the worst attempt at charm. Still.
"I appreciate what you're trying to do, man, but you're not my type." There's been enough bars in her lifetime. A guy like this, rich, solo, full of the potential of a mid-life crisis, looking at a girl like her… Yeah, he's probably not looking at her because she can recite spoken word poetry, or because she's good at talking people out of their heartbreaks, or because of, what did her high-school ex call it, her cute little obsession with all that book stuff.
A man like this has instincts a touch more crass. Not that they'll always admit it, not even to themselves. And a lot of nights she wouldn't mind that - there's something about simple instincts, about forcing a guy to see what he's doing with her, that turns her on. But she's not in the mood for that kind of attraction tonight.
"And what is 'your type', pray tell?" he asks, voice full of disdain. "I didn't realise you had just the one." She's been called a slut before, a problem child, a whore. But this guy doesn't know her, and he's trying to hide behind the shield of a classier vocabulary, pretending he's not saying the same things as the guys who can't lose beer money at pool without calling her names.
So she heads for said pool table, not bothering with a reply. Mr. Gold has had his polite rejection, and she's done with it. She's glad to see Piper there, a girl her age so sweet that she first entered this bar because she honestly loves rabbits. With a mix of extreme flirting (Lacey) and skill (mainly Piper, because Lacey's a little thrown off her game), they smash Craig, then Dan, then three other guys she never learns the names of. It wins them drinks and ten dollar notes and what feels like the prestige of the whole world.
And every time she glances at the bar, there is "Mr. Gold" (and isn't that a pimp's name if you ever heard one) studying her.
Eventually they run out of drunken idiots willing to play them. She and Piper start daring each other into more and more ridiculous trick shots: facing backwards, one handed, one leg on the table. She's her favourite kind of drunk, pleasantly, tipsily, not yet off her face. The locals are cheering on their crazy stunts, and she feels finally free again.
She pulls Piper's scarf off and wraps it around her own eyes. A shot blindfolded? Damn right she can. She hears someone approach behind her as she lines up the shot, trying to picture where the balls were placed.
"I can tell that's you, Mr. Gold." She won't let him throw her off her shot, which might be the most difficult of the night, so she keeps her the scarf tied round her eyes. She is just about to (hopefully) make a connection with the ball, when a hand presses on her side. Another hand is laid over hers on the cue.
She is too far into the shot not to take it, but she knows it's off. She rips the scarf off of her face and whips around to face this dick who wasn't content with trying to ruin her night, but also ruined her moment of blindfolded genius. She sees the white ball bounce off the sides and hit nothing, an instant loss.
She very obviously removes his hand from her side. "Yeah, no, that's cheating. Isn't it, Pipes?"
But Piper looks wary, more cautious than she is in the company of powerful-looking men (Piper's last boss was a creep, that's all Lacey knows, and she's not sure she wants to know more).
"It's fine," Piper says. "I'm just gonna - just gonna," and then she gestures vaguely in the direction of the restrooms. Thirty seconds later and Lacey's phone buzzes, which will be Piper giving her whatever info she knows on this guy. It's a system they developed when one of them is considering going home with a guy that the other knows. She is worried about Piper and her rapid fleeing though; she sounded nervous, and when Piper is nervous she drinks, and nerves and alcohol sometimes cancel each other out but sometimes just end in panic attacks leaning against the wall outside the bar.
Anyway, she doesn't need to get out her phone and check the message, because Gold's chances of getting her home with him have plummeted below zero.
Mr. Gold picks up the black ball and throws it up and down. "I'm sorry your friend is nervous. Perhaps you'd like to rethink my dinner offer though? It's late now, but tomorrow night would be my pleasure. You can select the establishment, as fancy as you wish."
She keeps it simple this time. "No."
He looks shocked, clearly not expecting to be refused. "I assure you, I would give you everything you wanted. Good food, good wine, goodcompany. I don't know what you've heard of my reputation," he say it like it's a dirty word, like he's the only one who's ever had lies about him spread across town. "But I am reformed."
"I'm pretty sure you can't declare yourselfreformed. I think other people have to agree first. Does everyone you've ever hurt agree, Mr. Gold?"
He looks wounded, but honestly? She doesn't have time for this. "Look, mister, I just want to try to pocket it blindfolded again. So if you wouldn't mind? You're kinda in my shot."
He steps closer towards her so his face is inches away, and she can feel his breath. "Someone hurt you," he says, like this is a revelation. "You wouldn't have turned out like this, not my…"
"Your what?"
"Unimportant," he says, and the dismissal is clear. She turns her face away, stares at the pool table and lines up the next shot in her mind, trying to work out the best angle to pot the red. "But you always turn out well, when you are treated kindly, that I know. So for you to be so untrusting… Who did this to you?" he asks, his voice gentle, like he cares.
"This being the ability to see through your bullshit?"
"I assure you, with you by my side, I can be a goodman."
He loads the word good like it's all he's ever craved to be. But just looking at him she knows he would never be content living a quiet life. Even now, even in his promises of reform, he's trying to pull a power-trip on her and acting like she should be some pure virgin that smiles prettily at his great benevolence.
"You know what? Sure," she says, the warmth and freedom she had felt earlier sharpened into hard lines. For a moment his eyes shine, and she quickly continues so he'll get that she didn't mean sure to dinner. "There probably is a man behind the beast that we're told about. Most bad men I've met usually have something they've told themselves, the tragic story of why they became so evil. And they might all have a redemption waiting to be found, and maybe it'll be in a girl's eyes."
He's watching her intensely. He looks nervous, shy, angry, hopeful; he's a whole mix of emotions. But now she's the one with the upper hand, and she's playing it.
"But what I don't get is why I should provide those pretty eyes, Gold. I don't plan to get myself hurt again, again and again until I'm near breaking with it, while you take your time figuring yourself out." She strides towards the bar, and of course he follows her.
When she reaches it she turns and faces him. "So yeah, I know your type. And it's not one of the many that I'm willing to go home with."
She slaps down her empty glass on the bar, texts Piper to meet her round the front and grabs her purse from Nick. She's leaving. Maybe she's missing out on some epic love story by rejecting him. But she has Piper, pool money, and a life she's built around herself. She'll make it through.
Author Notes:
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time isn't mine, and this Lacey doesn't remember Mr. Gold visiting her in the hospital.