Belle was certain that she had never been more drunk in her entire life than she had been the night before. She had also never been drunk on a work night.
It was 24 hours of the worst firsts possible.
After two rounds of shots, she'd almost fallen asleep on Gaston, so Billy had taken all of the women home because he was sober. Ruby had told Belle to throw up before going to sleep, or she would regret it, but Belle hadn't wanted to throw up. Now, she was regretting it.
She was already awake when her alarm rang at nine. She'd only slept for a few hours before she'd woken up, restless and sick, and then turned on her TV to watch infomercials until it was time to drag herself out of bed. It was important to stay hydrated and replace nutrients, but the only things that didn't make her want to cry were water and toast, so she put some bread in the toaster and took a water bottle into the shower with her.
Since dressing herself wasn't her top priority when she felt like any moment could inspire projectile vomit, she put on some black sweatpants and a blouse. This, she reasoned, was logical. No one would notice that they were sweats if she wore a blouse and some cute shoes.
Makeup was also not happening, and the best she could do was comb her hair and put it in a clip. People were used to seeing her looking poised and professional, but it was Friday, so she hoped this was okay. If anyone asked, she would just tell them that she had food poisoning—yes, that was also logical and reasonable.
Even though most people in Storybrooke were taking advantage of the mid-fifties weather by only wearing light sweaters and shoes without socks, Belle wrapped her blue trench around herself, wishing that socks would look okay with her matching ballet flats.
She drove to campus, because walking that far sounded like sadness in activity form, and driving only sounded inconvenient. She tried to nibble her toast, but mostly, it just made her want to die, so she just brought two bottles of water and sipped from them. By the time she got to her office, she allowed that she was feeling fairly hydrated.
Her cubicle was not the chamber of solitude she wanted it to be. Within two minutes of being there, Jefferson appeared, which always meant loudness.
"Bluebell! Looking good this—" He stopped, his usual greeting dying in his throat as he looked at her. He moved his lips a great deal, looking like he was trying not to burst into unmanly giggles. "You look like shit."
"Good morning, Jefferson," she said to her desk. "I have grading to do."
"Right. Grading." He winked, then rapped on her desk twice. "Later."
A mere thirty seconds after that, and he was playing electronica so loudly, Belle thought her brain would explode.
She slapped her pen onto her desk, which was littered with hundreds of other pens and sticky notes, and then rubbed her temples. She needed to figure something out. She had office hours today. No one was going to come to them, of course, but she had them and she needed to be there. That's what she was getting her stipend for.
With her only option looming up in front of her, Belle almost wished she had just died of alcohol poisoning. Sighing, she pulled a sticky note off the pad and penned her whereabouts. She almost didn't want to do this, because then Jefferson could find her, but her guilt at being unfindable won out, and so she stuck the note to the front of her desk.
Dr. Gold was at his desk, as she'd expected, but that was about as far as her expectations corresponded with reality. Instead of looking at his computer or attacking essays with his famed red pen, he was hunched over his desk with what looked like a pair of fancy tweezers in one hand and a tiny screwdriver in the other. The surface of the desk was littered with tiny screws and metal parts, illuminated by a florescent desk lamp. Gold was squinting, and his tongue poked between his teeth as he lowered the weird tweezers and picked up a piece that, to Belle, looked like every other piece. He was so concentrated, he didn't notice her arrive.
"Dr. Gold?"
She kept her voice low, but he still jumped, dropping the tiny thing in the tweezers. He clenched his jaw, closing his eyes, and Belle was sure that he was actually counting to ten in silence. When he opened them, the smile he gave her made her feel like he was hiding a gun under the table, with which he was planning to shoot her.
"What can I do for you, dearie?"
Was that a term of endearment? Belle was never quite sure, but she knew didn't like it. Faced with the brunt of his annoyance, Belle was starting to feel like death by electronica was a better fate than standing here. The excuses she had been preparing sounded lame, but she couldn't just interrupt him and leave. Then he would hate her more. Besides, she didn't want to give the impression that she backed down just because he looked at her angrily. She wasn't a child.
"It's loud in my cubicle."
"It's loud in your cubicle." He set his tools down, turned off the desk light, and folded his fingers, looking her up and down. When he had finished his appraisal, his grin looked more amused, more impish and evil—his 'I just gave you an F and I enjoyed it' smile. Belle thought she ought to start talking.
"Yes, Jefferson has been playing his music on full volume and I—I have food poisoning. So I haven't been feeling well." Belle was not a good liar, and as much as she had repeated this one to herself, she still felt it stick in her throat, getting trapped on her tongue as she tried to spit it out.
"Food poisoning."
It was almost more disconcerting just to have him repeat her. Still, she wouldn't let herself be cowed.
"Yes. Food poisoning."
"Right. Well, it seems as though you cannot be stopped, so have a seat, Miss Blue." He made a sweeping gesture toward the guest chair. Belle couldn't help but assume this was a trap, but since she could find no reasonable excuse for not doing as he said, she was forced to cooperate.
After sitting, she looked up to find Gold watching her, holding his trashcan out to her.
"Wastebasket, dearie?"
Belle eyed him, not moving forward. "No, thank you. Why would I want a wastebasket?"
"In case your 'food poisoning' takes you by surprise."
"It is food poisoning," she insisted, moving around in her chair like a ruffled chicken. "And I am very ill, so I appreciate it."
He nodded, setting the basket down, and then leaned back in his chair to watch her get settled. Despite her excuse to Jefferson, she had no grading to do, and planned on sitting and staring blankly—perhaps watch Dr. Gold use his tweezers on the metal bits scattered about his desk. When she'd first walked in, she almost found the intensity and enjoyment with which he was working to be attractive.
"Now, then," Gold said, reaching around to the other side of his desk.
"What?"
He slapped a manila folder in front of her. It was stuffed with so much paper that the spine was more a suggestion than an actual binding fold.
"Since you're here, you can grade for me." Next came the red pen, and then Gold leaned back in his chair and gave her an impish grin. How could she ever have thought he was attractive?
"But—what?"
"Well, you're in my office, you've clearly brought nothing to do, and it is your job, dearie. Prompt's inside. It's for my graduate class on Marxism. I trust you know enough about Marx."
Belle's stomach lurched at the thought. She had tried to read her texts this morning, and it made her want to vomit. Reading over all of Gold's papers might kill her.
"Could I take them home and give them to you Monday?" She tried to keep herself from sounding like a whiny child—she was merely making a proposition. Gold liked to work in deals.
"Why do tomorrow what you can do today? You're here, aren't you? With nothing to do? I mean, clearly, you worked very hard on preparing yourself for the day, so you should seize it."
Why did she think that a blouse would fix the sweatpants? She was such an idiot.
"It's just—the print is small, and you know how tedious Marxism can be even in the largest print." She didn't even know what she was saying anymore. She needed to stop talking.
"Small print? Miss Blue, you've got food poisoning, not a hangover. I think you can handle small print."
He knew. She knew that he knew. The way he was grinning at her, more evil than amused, told her that. Now, she could never tell him the truth.
"Right. Not a hangover." She ran a hand through her hair, stopping when her fingers met the clip, and tried to gain an air of nonchalance. "But food poisoning can still be tricky on the eyes, you know. Especially if it comes from carrots."
He pressed his lips together. Belle wished she had no vocal chords. Carrots? Really?
"I'll tell you what." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on either side of his organized mess, and tilted his head enough to look jaunty. "You admit that you are hung-over, and I will grade the papers."
He regarded her with cool interest, one eyebrow quirked. Belle might have confessed to it when she walked in the door, but now, he would have to pry the truth out of her cold, dead fingers. Setting her mouth in a flat line, she reached for the red pen, and then slapped the folder open.
"Suit yourself," Gold said, shrugging. He reached to turn his light back on, and then picked up the tweezers to go back to work.
After awhile, it seemed that he was again too engrossed in his mechanical work to notice her, which was good, because she had to pause every minute or so and swallow her nausea. The reading was giving her a headache, and the violence of the red pen was doing nothing to help. She wanted to get her own purple grading pen out, but she knew that Gold would have a fit.
They notice red, he had explained when she'd tried to talk him into a softer color after the first week of classes. It makes them think, and then they improve. Belle shook her head at the thought, slashing through an unattached quote.
She was writing a detailed comment on the fifth paper, trying to ignore the nausea rising in her throat, when she heard footsteps, and then a knock. She and Dr. Gold looked up to find an undergrad girl standing there, clutching a binder to her chest. She didn't look at Dr. Gold—probably because there was always the chance of being turned to stone from direct eye contact.
"Oh, Belle, you're in here."
Belle smiled and nodded, and this seemed to make the girl feel better. She recognized her face from the times she'd sat in on Dr. Gold's Chaucer lecture, but she did not know her name.
"I came to talk to Dr. Gold, but—are you all right?"
The girl looked concerned. Belle glanced at Dr. Gold, whose lips were moving as though he were trying to hide his amusement, and not doing a good job.
"Oh, I'm fine. And Dr. Gold is right h—"
Which was when Belle was forced to whirl around in her chair, and throw up into the wastebasket.
The girl was not easy to calm. Once Belle finished heaving, and then dry heaving, and then heaving again, and then dry heaving just a bit more, Dr. Gold offered her an opened water bottle and a tissue, saying nothing. Belle rinsed and spit, wiping her mouth with the tissue, and then tried to look composed when she emerged from the bin.
Dr. Gold had to usher the girl out and insist, in the nicest voice Belle had ever heard him use, that he would see her in half an hour. When she was gone, he turned, resting against his cane and staring at her. Belle felt her cheeks burning.
"Dr. Gold, I am so sorry. I will empty your garbage and disinfect it and even get you a new one, if you want." She started to stand up, but the look he gave her had her back down in an instant.
"Miss Blue, it is a garbage can. The idea is for dirty things to go inside of it. You don't need to disinfect it or get me a new one. Now." She started to stand up, but he lowered her with another look.
"Yes?"
"Go rinse your mouth and brush your teeth or whatever to clean yourself up, and then I expect you back here." He stepped aside to give her a clear path to the door, and when she tried standing this time, he did not glare.
"To finish grading?" She pressed a hand to her head. Her stomach felt better now that there was nothing in it, but her head was starting to pound.
"Perhaps." He smiled his mysterious smile, the one he gave when he wanted to scare his students the most, and Belle found herself properly cowed by it. Instead of showing it, she skirted past him, careful not to let any part of her body touch any part of his.
Once in the bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror. She looked like she had just crawled out of quicksand. Her face was all one color—pasty—and her eyes were red and watery. Her hair had dried into a frizzy mess, so she took the clip out because it wasn't helping anything. She'd brought the water bottle with her, because she didn't trust school tap water, and rinsed her mouth a few more times before getting some gum from her purse and popping it into her mouth. There was nothing she could do about her face but add lipstick, since that was the only cosmetic she kept in her purse, but at least it gave her some color. There was nothing to be done about her blouse, so she just tried to straighten it.
When she felt she looked presentable, she made her way back to Dr. Gold's office, steeling herself for another thousand or so essays. She was shocked by the sight that greeted her instead.
Gold sat behind his desk, playing with his tools again, but she could tell that he was less focused this time because he paused at the sound of her footsteps, though he didn't look up. The chair she had been sitting in had now been joined by another chair, and they were facing each other with about a foot of space between them. On the chair facing the doorway, Gold had fashioned Belle's coat into a pillow. His own coat—a longer, warmer black trench—was draped across the two chairs like a blanket.
"Dr. Gold?" she whispered, staring at the spectacle like she was afraid it might burst into flame.
"Just lie down, Miss Blue." He looked stiff, and his knuckles were red from clutching his tiny screwdriver so tightly.
"Are you sure? I can still grade. I'll be fine." That was a lie.
He looked up, snorting in amusement. "My wastebasket begs to differ. Come now, lie down, dearie. You deserve a rest."
Belle couldn't argue with that, so she made herself as comfortable as she could on two old chairs that were pushed together, and covered herself with his coat. It was warm, and smelled like spicy cologne that was light enough not to make her nauseous. Belle had to remind herself that it would be super weird to press her face into her professor's coat.
"Now, would you care to tell me about your night, dearie?" he asked, switching the light off again and leaning back in his chair. She couldn't tell if he was just being polite—vomit changed people—or if he was genuinely interested in hearing. Nonetheless, she couldn't help but be a little excited to recount some of last night's fun.
"You sure you want to hear about it?" She burrowed deeper into the makeshift bed.
"I'd like nothing more than to have something like that to hold over your head, Miss Blue." But this time, his smile looked real, and Belle smiled back before beginning her tale.