A/N: After breaking up, Mr. Gold sees Belle out at the Rabbit Hole one night.

Based on the song "Sometime Around Midnight" by the Airborne Toxic Event.

It's around midnight on a hot July Friday night in Storybrooke, Maine, and Gold is halfway to drunk.

His corner booth at the Rabbit Hole affords him a view of the seedy establishment without having to actually involve himself with the rabble that tends to congregate there. Sitting with his back to the wall, he has a clear view of the exits through the smoky haze of the bar. It is blessedly empty for this time of a night. Leroy is slumped over the bar, having clearly had a few too many already. Mr. Clark is shooting pool with Doctor Whale while Ruby watches them appreciatively. A few other patrons he doesn't know are congregated here and there, talking or drinking, but all ignoring him.

That is just fine by Gold. He doesn't require company.

In fact he rarely patronizes Storybrooke's one and only bar. Usually he stops in for the rent and leaves as quickly as possible.

But tonight, the prospect of going home to his big empty house and drinking his expensive single malt scotch in solitude seemed like the closest thing to torture he could imagine. So after collecting the rent from the easily intimidated bartender, he'd moved over to the corner booth, ordered a glass of sub standard, overpriced whiskey, and said to keep them coming.

Throwing back the last of the drink in front of him, and enjoying the way the swill burns down the back of his throat, he signals the bartender for another. This was penance he supposed. He deserved every bit of misery heaped on him, cheap whiskey least of all.

So why was Mr. Gold, successful businessman, richest man in town, getting pissed by himself in some shit bar in the middle of the night? There could only be one reason for that.

Belle

They'd broken up three months ago. He'd been remarkably able to hold himself together until tonight. That miracle aided by the fact that he'd barely seen her since the blow up fight that had ended their relationship. She'd packed her bags, moved out of his house, and he'd seen neither hide nor hair of her since.

Until today.

He usually avoided Granny's, knowing it was a favorite spot of hers. But he had to stop by for rent on his lunch break, and she just had to be eating there at the time. She'd looked up from her hamburger and caught his eye, and he'd nearly dropped dead on the spot. How had he forgotten how intensely beautiful those crystal blue eyes were? How had he managed to sleep at night without curling around her soft, petite body? How did he bloody well put one foot in front of the other without that remarkable woman in his life?

So he did the only thing a coward like him could do. He'd turned around and walked right out of the diner. Granny would hardly be upset if he waited a day to collect.

He'd hobbled back across the street to the sanctuary of his shop, his heart in shreds. He's ashamed to admit he cried like a little bitch and realized again for the 47th time what a mistake letting her go had been. Realized that he still loved her. That he'd always love her.

He'd fucked up beyond repair. Belle would never forgive him. She was gone from his life for good, and he had to get used to being alone again. But just for tonight, he didn't want to be alone.

The bartender approaches and drops another glass of whiskey in front of him, and retreats without a word. Gold must be getting drunk because the whiskey doesn't burn quite as much anymore, and the lights over the bar have gone kind of hazy.

He lets out an audible groan when he sees Keith Nottingham approaching a make shift stage on the far end of the bar. The walking libido in a leather jacket sits at a stool and starts strumming some god-awful song about lost love. And Gold is stuck in a shit bar, drinking shit whiskey, listening to shit guy sing a shit song and his whole life has devolved into one massive pile of shit.

Then the unthinkable happens, because really it's just been that kind of day, and if you're going to run into your young and beautiful ex girlfriend once in a day, you might as well run into her again later when you've had more than your share of alcohol and you've been pining away over her for the last twelve hours.

Belle wanders in to the bar, wearing a sweet little white sundress that perfectly displays her long pale legs – legs that only a few months ago would have been wrapped around his waist as her perfect pink mouth moaned his name. But those days are gone, and he'll never get them back.

His eyes are riveted to her as she makes her way across the bar to the pool table. Ruby gives her a hug, Dr. Whale says something and then they're all laughing together and isn't he pathetic sitting in the corner alone watching this. Ruby hands her a gin and tonic – her drink of choice, he remembers. She's flipping her long chestnut curls and smiling around the straw in her drink. He'd give anything to be that straw.

She knows that he's watching her. She spotted him the moment she entered the bar. She keeps glancing back over her shoulder at him, and he knows he should look away. He knows he should get up right now and head home. But if he goes home he'll be surrounded by her memory. The kitchen where he made her breakfast in bed. The sofa where she fell asleep in his arms while watching Casablanca. The bedroom where so many of his favorite memories took place. Somehow seeing her now, in the present, casually aloof and uncaring is easier than going home to the memory of her love.

So he stays, hand clutching at the cracked vinyl of the seat cushion beneath him, taking short breaths through his nose, and staring at the one that got away.

By the time Belle acknowledges his presence, Nottingham has moved on to another song, this one no less melancholy than the first. She walks by on the pretense of getting another drink from the bar. But he knows her too well, and she's never been a good liar.

She stops by his booth and gives him a smile, causing the whole world to spin on its axis.

"Hey, Aiden. How are you?"

She's too close. He can smell the lilac scent of her perfume and it calls to mind so many images. Images of her lying naked in his arms, spent and satisfied and oh so happy.

"I'm fine, Belle." He says tightly.

"I haven't seen you in a while. What have you been up to?"

Gold puts on his patented condescending smirk. "As I recall, you didn't much care what I got up to. I could 'limp out into traffic' if I remember correctly."

Belle stares at him shocked as if he's slapped her. And he shouldn't have said anything. He should have been polite, but he's an asshole and it always comes to the surface.

"Don't act like I wanted any of this, Aiden." She replies tightly. "Things could have been very different."

With that she walks back to the bar, ordering another drink and heads back to the pool table.

Gold wants to slam his head against the table. He wants to chase after her and tell her he's an idiot, that he loves her, that if she just gives him one more chance he'll be the man she always thought he could be. The man she believed he was for a time. He'll be better.

But he can't seem to pull himself up from the booth, to put one foot in front of the other and make his way to her. She's right. He has no one to blame for this but himself. And if he were in her shoes, he'd never forgive him.

Belle is very forgiving though.

He signals the bartender for another refill. One more cup of liquid courage and he'll do it. He'll apologize; she'll take him back. She always does.

He's halfway through his next whiskey, which really is getting better by the glass, when the world seems to shatter.

The group at the pool table that he's been watching so closely is stirring to leave. Whale puts his arm around Ruby and steers her out of the bar. Mr. Clark goes to rouse Leroy from the bar. Finally Nottingham comes down off the stage after a truly dismal set and heads straight for Belle.

She smiles at him as he snakes an arm around her waist, and Gold is overcome with the desire to break every bone in his body. Nottingham leans in and kisses her cheek, and Belle lets him do it. Gold feels a bit nauseous and he's sure it's not the fact that he's probably consumed 2 straight bottles of whiskey tonight.

Next thing Gold knows, Nottingham is leading Belle out of the bar, her tiny hand wrapped in his large meaty one. Gold wants to scream but no sound will come from his throat. Belle is keenly aware of his eyes on her. She looks right at him, with a smile that can't quite hide the sadness in her eyes. And then she's gone with the sleaziest guy in town's hands on her.

Gold's blood is boiling. He's never been so angry in his life, and that's saying something. Belle isn't supposed to be with some small town gigolo who spends his nights assailing the ears of patrons of a shitty small town bar. She's too good for Nottingham.

She was too good for Gold. She's too good for this whole damn town. It breaks Gold's heart that she feels stuck here, working at that tiny library, taking care of her incompetent father and dating lowlife scum like Nottingham. Because Belle is the most brilliant, beautiful, amazing person he's ever known. And she deserves so much better than any of this.

It's that thought that finally propels him from the booth. He drops a wad of cash down on the bar on his way out.

Once he's out on the main street of Storybrooke, the alcohol starts to catch up with him. Combined with his limp, he's probably a stumbling mess, but he flat doesn't care about appearances for once in his life. There's hardly anyone out at this time of night anyway.

There's only one thought in Gold's mind. He just has to see her. If he sees her, he can tell her the truth. He can break through to her. He'll take her far away from Storybrooke and they'll escape this dismal town together.

He somehow makes his way to the library, and stops at the stairs that lead up to her apartment. He has memories here too. Their first kiss was in her kitchen. After weeks of flirting, she'd invited him over for dinner. She'd been so nervous she burnt the lasagna. She'd looked so adorable, he had to kiss her.

Gold starts up the stairs to her apartment with mounting trepidation. The lights are on, and he can sense movement behind the closed curtains.

And then he hears a laugh. The kind of loud, full body laugh that he hasn't heard from Belle in months. The kind of laugh she used to have when he'd say something sinful, and she'd smack him on the arm and feel bad for laughing at someone else's expense. He's missed that laugh.

And so he turns and heads back down the stairs. Because if Belle is laughing like that, then she's happy, and who is he to determine her happiness.

Inside the apartment, Belle flips off the Friends rerun that was playing on her TV, and starts to change into her pajamas. Really he should be here by now. She thought flaunting Nottingham in his face would get him to act. She knows how much he hates the man.

She'd bid Keith goodnight once they were outside the bar. She's not ready to go home with someone. She might never be ready.

Belle thinks she hears something, like the scuff of a cane on stairs, and runs to her front door, throwing it open hoping to see him.

But there's no one there. He hasn't come. He really is over her.

If only she could get over him. But her silly muddled mind can still smell his cologne on the air.