Chapter Two
Adam hopped off the bus, glad that the walk to the library would give him a chance to stretch his legs after the long bus ride from his and Lumière's house. Belle had texted him earlier that morning, to confirm that they were meeting outside the front steps, and had signed off with an ironic kissing-face emoji. Adam had laughed, but declined to explain what was going on to Lumière. He regarded himself as a master matchmaker – the only problem being that he was, objectively, terrible at matchmaking. He had been the one who set Adam and Agatha up in the first place, and that had turned out poorly for all involved.
Adam let out a long breath, watching as the steam trailed away from his face in the cold October air. He hadn't been to Central Library since his last semester at university, although it was easily one of his favourite places in the city. It was in the complete opposite direction to his work and house, and now that he didn't need to study there it was hard to justify the distance – or find the time to travel there. He was glad Belle had chosen Central as their first 'date' – she loved the place just as much as he did, and it was nice of her to choose somewhere they both had a keen interest in.
He turned the corner, and the small stone building came into view. It was smaller than both the university library and the western branch – both of which had been more accessible and useful to his degree – but Central's cosy rooms and excellent selection were well worth the noise of the children who also frequented it. He could see Belle waiting outside, her navy jacket and mustard-yellow hat identifiable even from this distance.
"Hi," he said, coming to a stop beside her.
"Hi," she grinned back. "Good to see you."
"And you," Adam said. "Well, shall we?" he asked, offering her the crook of his elbow. Belle tucked her small hand in, squeezing his arm, and they walked up the steps to the open doors of the library.
Stepping inside, Adam drunk in the scent of paper and ink that dominated the library. It was slightly busier than usual, given the ongoing sale, but there was still a dampened hush to the cries of children playing in the small section devoted to them. Most of the people there were, like Belle and Adam, browsing the stacks of books for sale. Belle lifted her hand away from his arm, and started walking over to the nearest shelf.
"Are you looking for anything class-wise?" Adam asked quietly.
"No, just browsing," Belle smiled. She glanced over at him almost shyly, which was unusual for her. Adam looked back at her, trying to figure out what was wrong, but gave up when it became clear that she was giving him nothing. He turned to the stacks as well, sticking beside her, and began systematically looking at each of the spines, from top shelf to bottom shelf. It had been his preferred way of browsing ever since he was a child, although his height made looking at the bottom shelves slightly awkward these days.
As such, it came as a small shock when, in the midst of his concentration, Belle slipped her cold fingers into his palm. He automatically curled his hand around hers, although the act threw him for a loop. If he was honest with himself, he'd almost forgotten that they had come to the library as a practice fake-date. It was just such a normal thing to do with Belle that he hadn't even thought about what they were supposed to be doing.
He glanced over at her again. Her cheeks were still flushed from the cold air outside, but otherwise Belle looked completely normal. Adam squeezed her hand lightly, and she broke into a small smile. They stayed linked companionably together as they looked at the books, occasionally pulling one down to look at the blurb. Adam had seen a few which looked interesting, but none which sparked a burning need in him. Belle, by contrast, already had a small pile on the crook of her other elbow. She reached up for another book, causing the ones she'd already collected to wobble violently.
"Here," Adam huffed, taking the books out her arms and holding them himself. "If you're going to keep picking books up, I might as well make sure you don't cause an accident."
Belle rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling. She squeezed his shoulder, and they continued along the shelves. After a few minutes, Adam began to regret his offer to carry her books – Belle kept adding to the pile, and before long his arms were aching. He said nothing, however, although if he saw a book that he liked he had to ask Belle to add it to the pile for him. After about half an hour, they had worked their way around almost all of the fiction and biography sections. The layout of the library meant that they were in a small corner of the stacks, hidden from view of the main floor.
"I used to sneak off here and read in this corner when I was a kid," Adam said quietly. "It was hard to find, and the radiator there" – he gently tapped the old heater with his foot – "gave enough heat that I didn't mind getting my fingers cold."
Belle chuckled, a low sound. "I can picture you like that," she said. "How old would you have been?"
"Maybe seven? My dad and I moved away when I was eight, so it was definitely before then."
Belle hummed in agreement. She knew the bare bones of his relationship with his dad – that they had lived in the area until his mother died, moved away after that, and that Adam had moved back to live with his uncle when he was seventeen – but nothing really in-depth. Only Uncle Vincent knew everything that had happened. As far as Belle, Lumière, Plumette, and Cogsworth were aware, he just didn't get along with his dad – and while that was true, it was nowhere near the whole truth.
"Ah," Belle continued, "still young and innocent, then." Her eyes sparkled.
"Young," Adam conceded with a grin. "But I was an . . . excitable child."
Belle ducked her head to the ground, as if she was trying to hide a smile, and took a step closer to him. "And here I thought your 'holy terror' phase didn't start until you were a teenager."
Adam laughed again, quietly, and shifted the books in his arms a little. "This was nice," he said lamely. "I have time for a coffee before I need to go home, if you want?"
"Sure," Belle smiled. "That sounds nice." She reached up to adjust her hat slightly, and her face seemed to close off as she did so. "This was a good practice, I guess. You said, uh, hand-holding and maybe a cheek kiss?"
"Yeah," Adam said. His stomach felt like it was sinking slightly, at the reminder that this was just a practice fake-date for the wedding, which – well, it was weird, since it was why he'd come out to the library in the first place. "Is that still ok with you?"
Instead of answering with words, Belle took another step towards him so that she was well within his personal space, rose up on her toes, and pressed a quick, casual kiss to his cheek. "Fine by me, loverboy," she smirked.
For a moment, Adam was frozen. Only for a moment.
"'Loverboy'? That's really the best you could come up with?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"You said hand-holding and cheek kisses, not cutesy nicknames," Belle pointed out as she (poorly, in Adam's opinion) tried to hide her laughter.
"Let's just go and buy these," Adam sighed, rolling his eyes. Belle tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow again as they walked to the checkout, where the librarian's eyes grew wide as she took in the amount of books they were buying.
A few short minutes later, both of them were carrying bags of books in one hand down the road to the small independent cafe in town. They weren't holding hands, even though they technically could – then again, as Adam rationalised, the fake-date portion of the afternoon had finished, and they were back to just hanging out as friends. They chatted casually about Belle's coursework as they walked – she'd managed to finish the report she had been working on in Costa, although the practical work was still giving her a headache. They reached the cafe soon enough, and both ordered coffee. With a sigh of relief, Belle and Adam abandoned their bags to the floor and sipped at their hot drinks.
"You wouldn't think it's only November, from how freezing it is outside," Belle said after she had defrosted a little.
"Yeah," Adam agreed. "I'm beginning to regret not wearing a hat or scarf today."
Belle made a sympathetic sound as she sipped her coffee. "Maybe you could ask Plumette to knit you a hat."
"Does she have the time?" he asked. "I thought the shop was beginning to get really busy now – between Halloween and Christmas, isn't it really busy for beauticians?"
"She's a friend, of course she'll find the time," Belle said. "At least, she manages to find the time for her other friends – I swear, Adam, I can't walk two steps into her room without tripping over some yarn or stabbing my feet on a spare needle." She took another sip, before suddenly choking on the drink and barely managing to swallow it.
"Belle?!" Adam's hands hovered awkwardly over her back, but a swift wave told him she was fine.
"Don't turn around," Belle said, her face bright red, "but Gaston just walked in."
Immediately, Adam's grip on his coffee cup grew stronger, and he began gritting his teeth without realising it. He didn't turn around, as Belle had asked, but he could tell from her face that Gaston was still in the shop.
Gaston was an ex-colleague of Belle's from two years ago. He'd begun regularly asking her on dates and harassing her in the workplace – nothing obvious, of course, but still distressing and inappropriate on Belle's part. Her supervisor had been rather condescending about the whole matter – Belle's fury when she retold this part of the story later on had been the first time Adam was genuinely afraid of her – but, as she said, she needed the money. It would have been – not fine, but bearable at least, if Gaston hadn't taken her repeated rejections as a sign that he needed to step up his game. When he turned up on her flat doorstep (and nobody was certain how exactly he'd managed to snag Belle's home address), she resigned from her job on the spot – but not before dumping a bucket of cold water on him from the upstairs window. None of their friend group had seen Gaston in close quarters since that incident, and none of them particularly wanted to, either.
"What do you want to do?" Adam asked quietly. "Leave? Or try not to attract his attention?"
"He's standing in the line," Belle breathed. "Between us and the door. I don't think he's –" She broke off, turning to face Adam. "Nope, he's definitely noticed us," she whispered. She was was quiet that even though they were next to each other, Adam could barely hear her. "I think he's coming over."
"Do you want to talk to him?"
"Hell, no," Belle scoffed. "But I don't know what else to do."
"If you don't want to talk to him, I'd be happy to extend our fake-dating endeavours towards rejecting stalker assholes," Adam said. He could now see Gaston out the corner of his eye, and the man was definitely walking towards them. "You said he's a meathead, right? Kind of guy who only sees boyfriends as a reason he shouldn't pursue a girl?"
Belle let out a sharp breath through her nose, and nodded sharply. "I don't like it, but it's the easiest way to get rid of him." Without turning her head, she glanced to the side, and Adam suddenly got the distinct impression of a deer trapped in the headlights. "Well?" she hissed. "Quick! Do something . . . boyfriend-y!"
With a fake smile for Gaston's benefit, he slung his arms around Belle's shoulders, rubbing gentle, soothing circles into the place where her shoulder met her neck. She smiled back at him sheepishly, shuffling up the booth so that they were pressed together up one side. The angle was slightly awkward to keep looking at each other, but Adam was in no mood to look at Gaston and somehow telepathically project that this was an act.
"Is he still coming?" he asked, leaning forwards and whispering in her ear. Her hair and the wool of her hat tickled his nose a little, and this close he could smell her perfume.
"He's paused," Belle said. "Still looks like he might walk up."
Adam leaned back slightly, smiled at Belle in a way that he hoped was convincing – or convincing enough for Gaston – and pressed his lips to her cheek. It was as chaste as Belle's kiss in the library had been, a two-second meeting of lips and face, and was performed with the same casualness as hers had been. So, Adam reasoned, the only reason that Belle's breath could have caught as he kissed her was in either relief or fear at Gaston's next action.
"He's gone," Belle said with a shaky exhale of breath.
Relief, then, Adam thought. "Sorry it had to come to that," he said, taking away his arm from her shoulders. "That guy should really learn to take no for an answer."
"Yeah," Belle said, taking a sip of her drink. "Tell me about it." She laid her cup down, and covered his hand with hers. "Seriously, though," she said, "thanks for doing that. If it wasn't the guy who found out where I lived I would have at least tried to have shut him down, but . . ."
"It's okay," he said, covering her hand with his other one. "I mean – the situation's not okay – the situation's awful, that you had to use a fake boyfriend – but I didn't mind doing it for you. What else are friends for?"
"Yeah," she repeated quietly.
He squeezed her hand between his own before picking his drink back up again. But even though Gaston had been long gone by the time Adam eventually had to head back, a strange atmosphere lingered in the air between them.
Belle: Sorry about the other day – it just freaked me out that he was so close to where we usually hang out.
Adam: Not a problem, B.
Belle: No, I do feel kind of bad – can we go somewhere nice instead of Costa next week? Movies? I want to make it up to you.
Adam: I've told you already, it's fine. But if you want to go see a film, I'm not complaining. I'm working Friday and on Sunday night, so Saturday or during the day on Sunday would work best.
Belle: How about Saturday? My treat?
Adam: What did I ever do to deserve a fake girlfriend like you?
Belle: ;)
AN: And, in the tradition of fake-dating, participant A decides that they must become method actors, fully inhabiting their roles. Which, of course, means kisses and casual touching. Hurrah!
The library is inspired by no library in particular – the one from Matilda springs to mind, as does my home town library. Gaston, to be honest, is inspired more by 1991 than 2017, but since he is basically sir-not-appearing-in-this-fic, I figured it didn't make too much of a difference. Harassment is not good, and you should NEVER ask ANYBODY out when they cannot say no to you safely (e.g. one party is in customer service, and a 'no' would negatively impact their career). Stalking is also awful and terrifying.
This has somehow developed into a 'five (or maybe four who knows) times Belle and Adam said it was platonic, and one time it wasn't' fic. Next time: the cinema, a close encounter, and the next level of physicality.
TheTeaIsAddictive
