Note: YAY! I AM HAPPY! Ahem. Thanks to some kind Youtube user, I saw the answer to the ultimate question 'did Gold and Belle kiss in S2Ep1?' with my own two little eyes and now I can resign myself to waiting until February and the UK premiere with a light heart. Oh, and thank you, guest reviewers!

Note2: I've been a bit lax about characters here, so time to remedy the situation. Hopefully everyone's identities have been fairly self-explanatory thus far but I'll put a note just in case. Gary is Gaston, Fox is Midas, and Dawn Stephens and Marina Tempest (who have roles in this chapter and the next) are the 'Storybrooke-ified' names I give to Sleeping Beauty's Aurora and Little Mermaid's Ariel respectively. (SB and LM are my favourite fairy tales after Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella, so naturally I had to try and OUAT them when they weren't in the first series…)

Carrot Cake

Chapter Eight

It was clear that August Booth was already a hit at Granny's despite only having worked there for one day. When Belle had come in at half-past two on Saturday, she'd received her first glimpse of the man for whom Ruby had such high hopes when it came to matchmaking with Emma, and she could categorically state that he was not at all what she'd been expecting. Not that she could really describe what she had been expecting, but she knew that August wasn't it, not when her first words to him, after a ludicrously over-excited Ruby had made the initial introductions, were 'I take it that's your motorbike outside'.

It was now Monday afternoon, and Ruby was still enthusing, having spent the majority of the previous day in raptures of the grand romance that she was planning between their colleagues. Belle had yet to point out that August had seemed to be more interested in Ruby herself on Saturday, and didn't really appear to be the sort who would go for a single mother with a ten-year-old son. August had agreed to take on all Astrid's old shifts as they were, no changing around required, so Emma would not meet him until Wednesday morning. It would be very interesting to see how they interacted.

For her part, Belle's feelings towards her new workmate were mixed. She found him self-assured to the point of arrogance, even if this confidence was sometimes sadly misplaced. (He'd been telling Ruby a tale of his extensive travels, including meeting lemurs in Nepal. Belle had, just within earshot, muttered something about being sure that lemurs only lived in Madagascar, and August had hastily moved on to another adventure.) On the other hand, he was capable and efficient, and had an excellent manner with the customers. And, as much as she hated to say it, he was a lot more trustworthy with a bread knife than Astrid had ever been. Of course it would take a while for them all to get used to each other after so long unchanged, but at that moment, Belle was optimistic, as long as they could keep his novelist's imagination under control. Especially when he was introduced to Emma, and especially if they wanted the two of them to hit it off on a more than professional level. Emma had always had the uncanny knack of knowing when people were telling her the truth, and lies to impress her generally wound up having the opposite effect.

Belle finished wiping the coffee machine and withdrew from her thoughts to find Ruby still expounding on the same theme as she had been when Belle had slipped into a daydream.

"In conclusion, my hopes are quite high," her friend finished, returning her attention to restocking the cake plates. Unseen by Ruby, Belle raised an eyebrow.

"I'm still thinking about the Nepalese lemurs," she said. "If we can get past that sticking point then we might be onto a winner. I must admit, though, I'm impressed by him in one respect."

"What's that?"

"It's been nearly forty-eight hours and you haven't mentioned your date with Archie."

"Haven't I? Oh my word, how very lackadaisical of me." Ruby stood up and put her hands on her hips. "Where to begin, where to begin?"

"The beginning?" Belle suggested.

It took another hour, interspersed with customers, for Ruby to tell her tale, concluding with the happy news that they were going to see a Beatles tribute band at the arts centre that evening.

"I never knew you liked the Beatles," Belle said.

"Well, I've never really had an opinion one way or the other," her friend replied. "But Archie really likes them so I'm giving it a go. You never know, I might discover a hitherto unknown love of Paul McCartney. Plus, the last time I went to the arts centre with Granny, we bumped into Mary Margaret and David and we all ended up in the Black Horse until closing time. It was a good night. I think David felt a bit outnumbered though. He's always been scared of Granny, and I don't know why."

"Didn't she threaten to shoot him once?" Belle asked. She'd heard about the incident from three separate people on three separate occasions and none of the stories seemed to correlate.

"Oh, yes, that's probably it. I'd forgotten about that."

"Can I ask why she threatened to shoot him?"

"It was just before he and Mary got married. We were doing the catering for the reception and Granny threatened to take a crossbow to his head if he dropped the cake on the way from the kitchen to the car."

"Why a crossbow?"

"Why does Granny threaten anyone with anything? She's more creative than serious. She'd never carry through." Ruby seemed remarkably confident of this fact, but from Belle's experience of running the café with Granny on Sunday mornings, she wasn't quite so convinced. Mrs Lucas could be extremely single-minded if she wanted to be.

"Enough about my love life," said Ruby suddenly. "What about yours, and Emma's? I'm thinking of shutting her and August in the fridge on Thursday and seeing what happens."

"If they don't freeze to death then they'll probably take Granny's crossbow to you."

"They could share body heat to keep warm."

"Ruby, you are despicable." Belle shook her head in disbelief.

"I know, and you love me for it. What about you? Any further developments?"

"Not since you last asked," Belle said, beginning to put away all the tea jars ready for closing time in half an hour. The café was empty apart from an old man reading the paper in one corner who had been there since lunchtime. He looked to be asleep, and Belle was wondering about going over and checking he actually had a pulse.

"Maybe I'll see Gold at the Beatles tonight. If I do, do you want me to ring you so that you can pretend to be 'just passing' as it finishes and we can all go to the Black Horse till one in the morning?"

"No, because I have to work tomorrow morning and I don't think 'I'm hungover' is quite as credible an excuse as having a sick child to look after. I'm seeing him on Thursday, so you can think of me whilst you're locking Emma and August in the fridge."

"I could lock you and Gold in the fridge instead," Ruby mused.

"I'm sure I can get on quite well without that," Belle said hastily.

"Well, if you're sure, but the offer still stands."

Belle rolled her eyes and was about to go over and check that the old man was still on the earthly plane when a voice from the doorway distracted her.

"Oh, Belle, Ruby, you've got to help me! Sid's going to kill me!"

It was Dawn, the trainee solicitor at Guildhall working under Sidney Glass. She rushed into the café and half-collapsed on the counter, leading Belle to believe, for one horrifying second, that her supervisor had indeed just pulled a knife on her.

"Ok, Dawn, calm down." Ruby flung her tea towel over her shoulder and came out from behind the counter, taking the sobbing younger woman by the upper arms and steering her in a firm but friendly manner towards the nearest table. "You sit down and tell us what happened."

It was in moments like this that Ruby proved herself truly Granny's granddaughter. As scatterbrained as she usually was and as doomed to failure as her ideas often were, Ruby could cope admirably in crises that weren't of her own making. Having been brought up in the catering business even before she'd started waitressing herself, Ruby believed in the healing power of a cup of tea above all else, except, on occasion, the healing power of David Attenborough. ("He's amazing," she'd said once. "His documentaries make me feel all intelligent. And he reminds me of my Uncle Stanley." At this point, Granny had exclaimed that Stanley looked nothing like David Attenborough, and the ensuing argument had lasted the best part of a week.) Belle made a cup of tea and brought it over to the table where Ruby was sitting next to Dawn, who was explaining why her supervisor was going to murder her.

It turned out that she and Sid were working on a big case together and Dawn had managed to mislay some important paperwork. By the time she'd realised what had happened, the paperwork in question was in the shredder in several small bits.

"So now Sid is going to murder me and I'm going to fail my training contract," Dawn moaned, taking a sip of her tea.

"Well, I think that killing you is a touch drastic," Ruby said cheerfully. "And surely one mistake won't fail you."

"It's not the first time," Dawn said.

"Not the first time you accidentally shredded your case?"

"Not the first time I've made a mistake. Sid's caught me napping on the job twice now."

"Ah…" Ruby didn't have a reply to that, because it was a well-acknowledged fact that Dawn could drop off anywhere when given five minutes of peace and quiet. "Well…"

"Miss Stephens?"

A now-familiar voice was calling from the door, and Dawn slid so low in her seat that she was almost under it. Belle glanced over her shoulder on hearing the low, Scottish tones. Gold was standing in the doorway looking around the now practically empty café – the old man had vanished so he had evidently just been asleep rather than dead. He smiled when he caught Belle's eye, a weary, tired-looking smile that gave her the impression that she was about the only good thing that his day had held thus far.

"Hi, Belle," he said, coming into the shop and making his way towards her. "I'm looking for Miss Stephens."

"Not Gold," Dawn whimpered, actually under the table now.

"Erm, I, erm…" Ruby began, jumping up and moving round the table to try and conceal Dawn from view. "She's…"

"She's under the table, isn't she?" Gold interrupted. He sat down heavily on Ruby's vacated chair and stretched his leg out, grimacing slightly. Belle guessed the cold snap that had set in on Sunday wasn't doing it any favours, and her romantic imagination soared off into flights of fancy wondering how he came by the limp.

"Miss Stephens," Gold began, "I don't know what you're trying to achieve down there, but I want to talk to you. Since my knee is killing me, there's no way I'm getting under the table with you, so will you please come up here?"

Reluctantly, Dawn got up.

"Why did you come after me?" she asked mournfully.

"It might have escaped your notice, but it's gone half-five and there's no-one else in the office," Gold replied. "I could, of course, have left you to your own devices, but when I heard a stream of profanity directed at the shredder, closely followed by an exclamation of 'Sid's going to kill me', this in turn followed by you rushing out of the building crying your eyes out, I assumed you had a problem and might require the assistance of a senior. Forgive my chivalry, I'll ignore you and leave you to muddle through your predicaments on your own in future."

His voice was betraying his irritation now, and Belle knew that she was probably well on the way to seeing the Gold that Ashley had described as a terror.

"Sorry," Dawn said. "I thought you were going to yell at me."

"I might do that yet, but I need to know what's actually happened before I judge just how idiotic you've been."

Dawn relayed her tale again, Gold's expression becoming ever graver.

"Well, yes, I'd agree that you made a complete mess of that, and it is no-one's fault but your own," he said eventually.

"What am I going to do?" Dawn cried. "Half our evidence is in little pieces in the shredder."

"Are you any good at jigsaw puzzles?" Gold asked. "I can lend you some superglue." He sighed. "It's simple. You've got three choices. You can attempt to break into Sid's office, see if he's got any copies of your evidence, make another photocopy for yourself and pretend it never happened, although that's probably more trouble than it's worth considering today's mishaps. You can pretend it never happened until Sid wants to see the evidence and spin some kind of excuse as to why you don't have it. Or you can call your supervisor and confess your mistake."

Dawn rested her head in her hands.

"I don't know what to do."

Gold flexed his knee and winced. Belle noticed the action and slipped back behind the counter, leaving Ruby hovering beside Dawn like a faithful guard dog.

"Dawn, if you were my trainee, I'd far rather that you just owned up," she heard Gold say as she rummaged in the first aid box for some paracetamol. "I had a trainee lose a client's decree absolute once. The poor woman ended up married for three months longer than she should have been."

"What did you do?"

"I roasted him alive and ate him, what do you think I did?" Gold said sourly. The muted squeak told Belle that Dawn had evidently half-believed her superior. "Oh for crying out loud, am I honestly that scary? I advised him how to sort it out and he qualified the next year with no trouble."

Belle brought the paracetamol round and put it on the table in front of Gold, who looked at her like she'd just handed him the crown jewels. He popped one of the capsules out of the blister pack and swallowed it with a swig of Dawn's tea, much to the trainee's consternation.

"Can you advise me?" she asked.

"No, but Sid can."

"Yes, but Sid is… What are you doing?" she yelped.

"I'm phoning Sid," Gold replied, his voice perfectly matter-of-fact.

"But!"

"But he's in court tomorrow and Wednesday and these things shouldn't be put off. Hello, Sid, it's Gold, I've got your trainee attempting to hide from the world under a café table here because she thinks you're going to kill her. I'll let her tell you why."

He passed the phone over to Dawn, who gave him nothing short of a death glare. Gold merely shrugged and eased himself up out of his seat to allow her to talk to her supervisor more privately. Ruby tapped her watch and Belle nodded; it was six o'clock and time to start putting the café to bed. Gold leaned on the counter as Belle began tidying up behind it.

"Thank you for the paracetamol," he said presently.

"Not a problem," Belle replied, covering the cakes in the display case with clingfilm. "Thank you for sorting Dawn out."

"Best to get these things done sooner rather than later. I've only known her for three months but if there's one thing I've learned about Miss Stephens, it is her tendency towards blind panic."

Belle finished wiping up and leaned on the counter opposite Gold.

Tell him, her brain supplied helpfully. It's got to be said sooner or later. Belle grimaced inwardly at the thought. The weekend had passed with no word from Gary, and a little part of her was hoping that if she ignored it, it would all go away, or at the very least she could get it sorted out quietly.

"So, Belle…" Gold began. "Have you decided where we're going on Thursday?"

"Yes. I'm still not going to tell you, though."

Gold smiled, but it quickly broke off into an ill-disguised yawn.

"Don't fall asleep on the counter; you're as bad as Dawn," Ruby said as she breezed past with the mop and bucket. "Do you think you ought to go home to bed, Mr Gold?"

He snorted.

"I wish. Half my paperwork is still out in my office and Miss Stephens has my phone." He turned back to Belle. "I was thinking earlier, and I realised that I don't have any way of contacting you except via the medium of tea and cake."

"Indeed. Likewise, I have no way of contacting you aside from making an appointment with your secretary."

Gold took out a pen and pulled the order pad towards him, scrawling two numbers on it. Belle peered at them.

"Home, mobile," he pointed out.

"I can tell which is which. What I can't tell is whether your sixes are sixes or noughts."

"My handwriting can't be that bad." He elongated the strokes on the sixes. "Better?"

"Very much so." Belle wrote her own numbers on the bottom of the pad, ensuring that all her digits were perfectly legible, and she tore the sheet in half. Gold pocketed his piece and resumed his position leaning on the counter. He gave a little half-smile, and in that moment, Belle found his mouth incredibly inviting. She leaned in closer over the counter, hoping that Ruby was distracted with floor-mopping and not watching her.

No! Don't kiss him, you idiot! Her brain was screaming at her. Tell him!

There were about two inches between them, Gold evidently having been leaning in as well, when Dawn skidded up to them holding out Gold's phone.

"Crisis averted," she said happily. "Turns out that I had the photocopies and Sid has the originals in his office. Sorry, was I interrupting something?" she asked, no doubt having noticed the way that Belle had sprung back from the counter as if she'd been stung.

"No, no," said Gold, running a hand through his hair and failing miserably to hide his discomfiture at their moment being cut short. "Not at all."

"Well, I'd best get back to the office and tidy up," Dawn said brightly. "I'll see you around, Belle. Bye, Ruby!"

"Bye, Dawn."

Gold groaned.

"I'll have to go after her. I locked the building when I left and her keys are on her desk."

He straightened up and made to leave, but on impulse Belle leaned all the way over the counter and caught his lapel.

"Wait."

Belle went for broke. Gary could come back into her life at any moment, and who knew what might end up happening then? She pressed her lips against Gold's as she'd so nearly done before. He tensed slightly, caught unawares, but soon relaxed into the kiss, his free hand coming up to cup her face and hold her steady.

"Mr Gold, I need your keys… I knew I was interrupting something!"

Dawn's voice took Belle by surprise and before she could stop herself, her teeth had clamped down on Gold's lip. She sprang back on his exclamation of pain and cursed.

"I'm so sorry," she began, wringing her hands.

"It's all right." Gold ran his tongue over the place she'd nipped. "No harm done." For a moment, his smile was positively Mephistophelean and it made Belle want to grab him again and kiss it all better. "Till Thursday, Miss French."

"Till Thursday, Mr Gold."

He moved off towards the door, pushing the grinning Dawn through it with a gruff and slightly embarrassed-sounding 'all right, get a move on, nothing to see here'.

As he moved out of her line of sight, Belle saw Ruby standing in one corner of the café, her arms folded around her mop and an eyebrow raised, having witnessed the entire thing.

"Oh, shut up," Belle muttered.

"Never said a word," Ruby protested. "But I may as well say it now: About bloody time!"

To be continued