Summary: The Guildhall office Christmas party.

In keeping with the festive season, a Christmassy cake. 'Including the alcove where the cooker is' – included as homage to my dear friend Miran… Stop grinning, young lady…

Killian/Hook fans… This cupcake is not particularly kind to him. You've been warned…

Stollen

It had been a long Friday and Gold could safely say that he was looking forward to going to bed with Belle and not letting her get out of it until at least one o'clock in the afternoon. On Sunday. He knew there was an open bottle of wine in the fridge, and he had got it out, poured the remainder into a glass and was about to take a, as he thought, well-deserved sip, when Belle's voice stopped him.

"What are you doing?"

At first thinking that she was merely irritated with him for not asking her if she wanted any wine, Gold did not respond, and he only realised something was slightly amiss when she crossed the kitchen and put her hand over the top of the glass. In doing so, he was forced to take a good look at her, to find that instead of her jeans and fluffy cardigan, as he would expect to find her wearing at that point in time on a Friday evening, Belle was dressed in a scarlet cocktail dress and stilettos that left her almost taller than he was.

It was then that he remembered the occasion. It was the Office Christmas Party, an event so momentous that it was most definitely worthy of capitalisation. The only date on which the entire office ever met in one place that was not their workplace. Like Christmas itself, it happened infrequently enough that everyone had enough time to blot the last one from memory before they embarked upon the next festive extravaganza, during which they would be conveniently reminded of the last one and vow never to go again – just as they had done the previous year.

Gold had not yet experienced a Christmas party with Guildhall, having accidentally-on-purpose forgotten about the last one during his first year of tenure there, and he was perfectly happy to forgo the occasion once more in a repeat of the activities that kept him from the previous. He frowned when Belle took the wine glass away from him and put it down on the kitchen table.

"Do we have to go?" he asked.

"Yes," Belle said plainly. "I think it'll do you good to socialise with your colleagues outside of your office."

"I do socialise with my colleagues outside of the office!" Gold protested. "We had Jefferson and Alice over for dinner the other day!"

"Jefferson doesn't count."

"We went to Marina's engagement party!"

"For a grand total of fifteen minutes."

"I politely ignore Dawn when I run into her in the supermarket lest she jump into a freezer cabinet to get away from me!"

Belle folded her arms and gave him a pointed look, one that told him quite clearly that he wasn't getting off that easily.

"You came to my work Christmas party at the library," she said. "I don't see why we can't go to yours. Especially since we've already said we're going and we've paid."

"That was different." Gold huffed. "Yours was at the library, there was free cake, and the strongest drink there was mulled cider. Besides, all your colleagues are perfectly decent and tolerable people. I don't like my own."

"Darling, I know how charmingly misanthropy suits you. In fact it suits you almost as well as your suit does." Belle plucked a stray hair off the shoulder of the suit. "But it is really not in keeping with the festive spirit. I already said, when the idea was first mooted, that I wanted to meet all your colleagues properly."

Gold racked his brains trying to think of the occasion on which he and Belle had first discussed the party, but he kept coming up with precisely nothing, and he admitted defeat.

"When was that?"

"Beginning of November. We were having breakfast in bed if I recall correctly."

Well, at least that explained why he was drawing a blank. Breakfast in bed usually meant that his mind was rather more occupied with the there and then rather than the hypothetical events of the future.

"Do we have to?" he repeated, only slightly ashamed of the unapologetic whine in his voice. "I already know what will happen. Everyone will be plastered, Jones will attempt to fondle a waitress, Dawn will beat a hasty retreat under the nearest table – not necessarily our own – and Jefferson will end the evening despairing that his adult colleagues are able to cause more trouble than his eleven-year-old daughter."

Belle was not budging She leaned in close.

"Gold, I'll make you a deal. We go to your Christmas party. You do not get horrifically drunk and you behave in a civilised manner towards your colleagues. And afterwards, we come back here, and we can have sex on any and every available surface in the house."

Gold looked at her, considering this proposition.

"Including the alcove where the cooker is?"

"Provided you switch it off at the mains beforehand, yes, including the alcove where the cooker is."

It was tempting. Too tempting.

"All right, all right. You win. We'll go." He reached round her for the glass. "Now give me the damn wine."

"Gold…" Belle raised one eyebrow at him and he matched the expression.

"I'll call a cab. Believe me, there's no way in hell I'm driving. I'm going to need more than lime and soda to get through this…"

X

When they arrived at the restaurant, before they had even made it four steps towards the bar or the long table at the back that had been set aside for them, they were met by Alice, who was wearing what had become her default expression of 'exasperated'; completely at odds with her tinsel hair ties.

"Thank God you're here," she said, coming over to them from the bar with a vodka and tonic in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other. "Sidney's on his fourth mojito and Dawn's already looking like she wants to dive under the table of the couple next door."

"So which is yours?" Belle asked Alice, eyeing the two glasses and their wildly varied contents.

"What? Oh no, these are both for me." She raised the vodka tumbler in a toast. "Happy Christmas. I'm glad you didn't miss dinner. You've got five minutes to get yourself a drink before they bring it out."

Gold buried his face in one palm.

"Whiskey," he mumbled to the leather glove. "I need scotch and I need it now."

"Darling, we've only just got here," Belle said, leading him over to the bar. "At least wait until after the first course. Besides, you know you have much nicer, more expensive whiskey at home. Think of it as the light at the end of the tunnel."

Having procured two large glasses of wine, Belle led Gold over to their table. Arriving late as they were, they had no choice of seats and squeezed on one end next to Sean and Ashley, the former looking ever so slightly scared and the latter looking worryingly calm, as if she had seen this all before. Gold snorted; knowing his colleagues she probably had. He looked back along the table, trying to gauge just how drunk everyone already was. It was a sorry state of affairs when the only way to survive dinner with the entire complement of one's colleagues was to turn up to the encounter completely rat-arsed. Why did they even have this ridiculous tradition? With a sigh, he realised that Fox and Fothergill had probably instigated it and no-one had had the heart nor the motivation to change.

A little further down the table, Regina and Sidney were ostensibly engaged in some in depth discussion about a case they were working on, but from the way Sidney kept playing with – and subsequently dropping – his cutlery, Gold suspected that a rather high-stakes game of footsie was going on under the table, a game that Regina was winning hands down. Beside them, Marina and her fiancé Eric were explaining their planned loft conversion to Kathryn and Jim, complete with remarkably detailed technical drawings on the back of the napkins. And at the other end of the table, Killian was knocking back…

"Ashley, what in the name of all that is holy is Jones drinking?" Gold asked.

"Eggnog," Ashley replied conversationally. "We got a complimentary eggnog when we arrived but none of us like it apart from Dawn, Marina and Killian so he's commandeered about twelve servings."

"I like eggnog!" Belle protested.

"Ah yes, but you weren't here to claim it," Ashley said knowingly.

Killian raised his glass towards Gold in a toast – God only knew to what – and took a swig. Gold hoped it that the man was only swaying in his imagination. It was no secret that Guildhall social outings were rare occasions, doubtless owing to the fact that they had been banned from several local establishments thanks to Christmas holiday hijinks. Gold was infinitely glad that all these infamous incidents had occurred before he had joined.

Luckily, at that juncture, the first course arrived, and Gold distracted himself from whatever was going on at the other end of the table by engaging in Ashley, Sean and Belle's discussion, which was predominantly on the topics of either Alexandra, Ruby's impending new arrival, or their other mutual friends in the precinct – apparently David was getting Mary Margaret a puppy for Christmas but was having some trouble working out where to keep it until the big day. All the while though, he couldn't help but wonder about the state of his colleagues. Dawn and Philip he could trust to be sensible, even if they were scared off before their main course arrived. Jefferson, long since established as the office mother hen, would at least stay sober long enough to make sure that he had poured everyone into a taxi. Jones, on the other hand…

Jones was Irish, and Gold was Scottish, and despite their personal and professional opinions of each other, each respected the other man as one who could hold his hard liquor and do his country's whiskey proud. Needless to say, Gold found it both unexpected and incredibly hilarious that the one drink to floor his usually extremely tolerant colleague was the humble and innocuous eggnog. Gold glanced back down to the younger man's end to the table. He was definitely swaying now, there was no trick of the light or slip of the imagination about it. Gold would not be at all surprised if Killian ended up snoring into his dessert.

At least he couldn't fault the food. The restaurant, Darlings, had only recently opened, and that was probably why they hadn't had any trouble booking. It was about the only place in the town where their reputation did not precede them. As the evening wore on, he was just beginning to think that maybe this was one office party he might just be able to survive and not live to rue. Good food, not bad wine, and Belle's hand on his knee under the table – although whether that was to reassure him or prevent him from running away was debatable. But then he saw it: the moment it happened and the entire evening went to hell in a fast car, just as he had known it would. He had been waiting patiently for the moment for the past five minutes, watching as Killian's eyes tracked their waitress (Wendy, according to her name badge) slightly hazily round the table, and he could almost play out word for word what would happen when she got to him.

"What did you order for dessert, sir?" she asked.

"Can't remember, darling. Can I have you instead?"

In the middle of the table, Jefferson groaned and covered his face with both hands.

"Get your paws off my sister!"

Dawn gave a squeal and shot out of her seat as the waiter at the next table made a swing at Killian, who reciprocated, passing by Dawn's ear rather too closely. Philip grabbed her and together they backed off from the table.

"My dear," Gold murmured, leaning into Belle's side, "I think this would be an excellent time to absent ourselves from the party."

Belle looked at him and nodded her agreement.

"Don't say 'I told you so'," she muttered.

Gold gave a gasp of mock offence. "I wouldn't dream of it!"

"I can't say I blame you," Ashley said, continuing to eat her dessert, quite happily ignoring the fracas at the other end of the table. Jefferson was now standing between the two men trying to act as a mediator – Gold had half a mind to tell him it wasn't worth it, both looked particularly murderous even if Killian seemed about to plant his face into the floor at any moment and Marina, ever the patient problem-solver, was smoothing things over with Wendy and the restaurant manager, who had rushed out when the shouting had begun. "Well, enjoy your weekend. See you Monday. Don't worry, we already told Her Majesty that if anyone ended up in jail tonight she'd be bailing them out." She paused. "It's a good job everyone already paid…"

Gold shook his head in despair and let Belle slip her arm through his before walking her out of the restaurant. Outside, Philip and Dawn were talking in muted tones. Gold couldn't make out what they were saying, but from the way Philip was cupping Dawn's face and stroking her cheeks, he guessed that his trainee was trying to calm down his girlfriend. Dawn, naturally nervous around her colleagues as it was, had also forgone the party last year and had only attended this one at Philip's request. This was not a good first experience of an office party for the poor girl, and Gold felt a swell of sympathy for her, as did Belle, who left him to go over and offer her words of reassurance. Gold decided not to overcrowd her and instead made himself useful ordering a taxi for them all. He knew that Dawn lived on the way to their own house, and it made sense to save the couple one worry for the night.

At least they now had a very good excuse not to go to the next Guildhall social gathering…

X

When they finally got home, Gold made a beeline for the drinks cabinet and poured two tumblers of the scotch he'd denied himself all evening, handing one to Belle. He sipped the warm whiskey and loosened his tie, finally allowing his shoulders to relax and untense after the trials and tribulations. Belle chinked her own tumbler to his before setting it down on the mantelpiece and, after some measured consideration, turning the picture of his grandmother round so that it faced the wall. Gold raised an eyebrow.

"She's already died once, you're not likely to give her a heart attack from impropriety."

Belle responded with a non-comittal 'hmm' and hitched her dress up to mid thigh in order to begin casually rolling her hold ups down her legs.

Gold froze with the whiskey halfway to his lips as Belle toed off her shoes, finally divested herself of the stockings and sidled over, slipping one long nylon round his neck and pulling him in for a kiss.

"I believe we agreed on any and every surface in the house…" she purred.

Gold narrowed his eyes.

"Kitchen. Now."