It wasn't something he enjoyed, entering Neal's room. Gold did it as rarely as possible these days, leaving the housekeeper with the unpleasant task of venturing in to his thirteen-year-old son's room to fish dirty underwear off the floor and plates of food from under the bed. He wasn't entirely sure when his sweet child had transitioned into disgusting teenager, but he figured it was high time to have a talk about cleanliness.
It was high time to have a talk about something else as well, he realized, grimacing at the sight of the dirty magazine sticking out from under the boy's half made mattress. He was fairly surprised to find it. He thought boys these days got most of their porn from the internet. Not that he was speaking from personal experience, of course.
He'd only meant to drop off Neal's schoolbooks that he'd left on the stairs, a hazard for both his cane wielding father and the elderly housekeeper alike, but he was arrested by the sight of the magazine. He pulled it out, finding that it wasn't porn at all. Instead it was a rather tasteful looking lingerie magazine that, judging by the address on the back, had been pilfered from next door.
Gold shook his head. Was it possible Neal was innocent enough not to realize the world of depravity at his fingertips if he only used google?
Chuckling to himself, Gold flipped through the magazine for a store called "Arabian Nights". The lingerie seemed to have an exotic bent to it, sheer fabrics and copious gold body jewelry. He was about to put it back where he found it, already planning to wash his hands and have a conversation with Neal tonight, when a pair of long pale legs caught his attention. He stopped, the magazine flipping open on the image of a young woman lying in repose with one small pale hand lying against her toned stomach. Her dark chestnut hair was tumbling over her shoulders in waves, her plump pink lips pulled up in a sultry smile. She was wearing a pale blue bra and panty set, the sheer cups of the bra doing nothing to hide her dusky pink nipples. Luckily the panties were a bit more opaque.
But it wasn't the woman's impossibly long legs for such a tiny person, or her beautiful hair or even the very revealing manner of her dress that made Gold's breath catch in his chest. It was the fact that he was staring down into the bewitching blue eyes of Belle French. The very same Belle French who had recently taken up the post of librarian at the Storybrooke Free Public Library. The very same Belle French to whom he had sublet an apartment just last week and whose blue eyes, wide smile and rather biting sense of humor had haunted his every waking moment since.
He slammed the magazine shut, throwing it across the room as if it had just burned him. Realizing what a stupid reaction that was, Gold crossed the room, picking the magazine up from where it had landed on a pile of folded laundry Mrs. Potts had braved leaving in Neal's den of iniquity. He rolled the magazine up, putting in his jacket pocket and retreating from Neal's room. He told himself it was to save Miss French the embarrassment of Neal possibly showing his friends the new librarian's apparent former career. But if he pulled it out that night and studied it, finding three more photos of Miss French in the photo spread, no one else would be any the wiser.