My first Once Upon a Time fanfic – YAY!

So, I'm absolutely in love with this show, and hopelessly devoted to Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold and the pairing with Belle. It makes the hopeless romantic in me just swoon. Usually I'm pretty anti-AU stories, but for some reason I'm just drawn to writing these characters and their stories into alternate realities…I think perhaps it's the Once Upon a Time concept that has opened my mind, lol. ANYWHOOOO, please forgive my little dalliance with these characters and any smut that I get them into (I really love their simmering romance and their angsty true love. What?! I'm a sucker for a good love story!)

Oh and I own nothing! Also the concept origins for Mr. Gold's work is so blatantly ripped from the movie Up In the Air…but I have a very, very, hazy recollection of that movie so unless my subconscious remembers more than the sketchy bit I remember none of that plot at all pertains to this story… I just sorta of started writing and realized, 'dude…that's like that movie you saw and didn't like with George Clooney' …so I thought I better I add that to the disclaimer :D

Oh…(really I'll hush after this, promise!) begging you to roll with me here on this…I have this brilliant (okay that might be pushing it here) plot in my head and I'm DYING to get it all written for you guys…but I can't promise consistent updates, they might come daily…maybe every other day…maybe…well you get the idea. Perhaps this all cliché and indulgent but reviews really REALLY do help this process and are SO GREATLY appreciated… Writers you know what I mean, we don't get money for this, we write for pleasure – yours and ours, and letting us know you like it is liking giving us Christmas presents… it's like manna, it feeds our souls…and increases our typing speeds* ;-)
Lots and lots of Love –R

(*data not proven or scientifically studied…but it does really SOUND good right?!)

Chapter 1: Crocodile

Mr. Gold liked his job. He was exceptionally good at his job. It wasn't a job a lot of people liked and in fact he thought perhaps only second to lawyers his job was one of the least liked. The people who hired him called him a 'fixer'; others however called him things with fewer letters.

His job was money. Saving money predominately. Saving companies money by downsizing their employees and bringing in more automated processes or moving production oversees, more precisely. He had an office of nearly a hundred people now, he no longer dealt hands on with the downsizing process but at one point he did. Now he has his protégé partner and specialize in that aspect of the job, but nevertheless he has become known as Dougal "Crocodile" Gold, as he was as cold blooded, deceptively quiet but wickedly brutal when striking, as a crocodile. His smile too, he knew people liked to compare to the aquatic reptile. Or perhaps it was simply because he had a penchant for crocodile skin boots, but he was doubtful of that one.

His job was a nasty bit of business unfortunately, or fortunately if you looked at it from his perspective, for many people, and he was strikingly good at it. Businesses that came to him were usually desperate, usually in debt, usually ready to give anything to have their worries solved and Mr. Gold was always the man to do it. He negotiated deals with boards, banks, governments when required and overseas identities of all kinds. There was not a deal Mr. Gold could not make and companies paid more than handsomely for it.

Baelfire Consulting did far more than fire people but it was rather what they were most notorious for and after all it had been Mr. Gold's first job. He was nineteen working a summer job in finance firm as was requested to fire a co-worker that their boss was too yellow to fire himself. A scant six months later Mr. Gold was replacing that boss, and thus Mr. Gold's brainchild was born, making a business out of someone being cowardly. Procuring and delivering miracles, wishes, and deals to the desperate…for his hefty, hefty fee. "All magic comes at a cost, dearie" he was fond of saying darkly when a client would remark his work was next to magical.

He was looking over the large summary collected file on a more recent a client, more specifically a money pit, miniscule business represented as a red figure in the overall in-the-red conglomerates owned by this particular client. It was a small bookstore in a small town in Storybrooke, Maine called My Father's Shop. It had been an oddity purchase by a now nearly bankrupt millionaire Rupert Gaston. The store hadn't turned any sizable profit that Mr. Gold could see going back 10+ years. This didn't surprise him and he wasn't even sure why he was spending his time looking at the details of the story, it was clearly an easy sell-off for the floundering Gaston. He had already amassed a list of recommendations in property sell-offs, business downsizing, and business sell offs. He ruefully thought Gaston rather deserved this current plight, as he was a simply horrid businessman, worse money manager and over all a brat man-child that believed his good looks and 'suave' personality would ensure his every want and need.

Perhaps it was because he disliked this particular client so deeply much he was taking a good deal of it on personally. He didn't really even need to handle any of the clients now, his business was booming and it had much drifted from it's purely downsizing roots – thought it was still a great deal of his business. He had teams of accountants, analysts, lawyers, brokers and like at his disposal, he was superfluous he well knew but Mr. Gold was not an idle man and despised the very idea of it.

So, to keep himself busy and to pick the mind of this oily client Mr. Gold sat well into the night reading with bemused fascination the paper trails of a spendthrift playboy.

The town of Storybrooke didn't come up in a Google search, which Mr. Gold found wildly intriguing. The shop, My Father's Shop, had a very interesting purchasing history. Obviously the majority of purchasing was books – new, used, rare, New York Time's Best Sellers, some he had never even heard of. There were purchases of antique tea services now and again along with newer but still traditional ones. Coffee and tea along with the standard accouterments for such – it was also a tea and coffee house, he mused.

It employed two people. Belle French, the former owner and Emma Nolan, clerk. Through further research and digging through carefully filed boxes he came up with more history of this fascinating little shop. Moe French, presumably the 'father', had first conceived it as a flower shop but quickly ran it into the ground by what was very clear to Mr. Gold as outrageous spending and a very obvious ignorance of exactly how cash flow worked. Moe French took out a series of high interest loans and made an impressive myriad of bad decisions nearly losing the business to foreclosure.

Enter Belle French, now confirmed daughter. With little credit of her own, but of good standing she appeared to take over the business reinventing it as a bookshop. He's curious from where she gets the stock for this as there are no records of any purchases in the first year but there are sales. Though the bookstore does break even and even starts to show a little profit it never does well enough to keep up with the loan payments and such. 18 months previously the storefront, the business and its debt, was auctioned to the highest bidder.

Rupert Gaston. It's at this point in the history Mr. Gold has put together that he begins to scratch his head. Gaston left the business just as it was with no changes; in fact he begins to sink money of his own into it. There are bills for renovations and updates and even advertising that baffles Mr. Gold. He could have seen perhaps purchasing the property, liquidating any assets to clear the debt then try to put in a more profitable business, or just renting the space but Gaston bought the property and business in all and tried, though exceedingly badly, to save it. But not a single loan was paid off or even caught up; it was still in the negative, which he didn't understand in the slightest.

Mr. Gold understood that men of means had a penchant for lost cause businesses, why they did he couldn't fathom, but he knew they did but why in the world didn't Gaston cut his losses with this ramshackle blip at the very beginning of all the other failures in the Gaston Enterprises? What was special about this shop?

(yes, short teaser type chapter…y'all like where I'm going with this? PS Looking for a beta reader! Message me if you are interested!)