anonymousnerdgirl said:

Adoption!verse: Gold decides to investigate the Jones's treatment of Bae. Reading the reports of their neglect prompts him to smash glass with his cane and remember his own childhood.

whiteorangeflower said:

Your adoption verse has captured me. May I prompt you something? The first time Gold teaches something to his son or the two going to see something together. thank you!

Gold had asked Belle about Bae's past because he'd wanted to know, and she'd given him their CPS reports because he'd asked her to. He just wasn't sure he wanted to have them. The problem, though, was that honestly he didn't want to know what they'd done to Bae – Milah had been irresponsible, and Jones had been even worse. He needed to know, but the idea of his son suffering at their hands set his teeth on edge.

Still, if Bae had been able to live through it then he could read it. And so, after one of his near-daily meals at their house and the night before the promised Spider-man trip, he returned to his lonely house, poured himself a scotch, and pulled out the file he'd been keeping on his desk.

It was mostly social worker reports, but Belle had apparently documented every single interaction she'd had with them as well and those had been included. It was a case study in two people who were not ready for parenthood but decided they wanted a child anyway.

Milah had first decided she wanted Bae back at three months old. She was granted unsupervised weekend access to the boy. After just a few visits, though, Belle began reporting nasty cases of diaper rash that appeared every time he returned from his mother's house. She was able to find a doctor to agree with her assessment that his diapers weren't being changed frequently enough, and a surprise visit from CPS had found the baby left crying in his crib for long periods of time. Gold thought he might be sick.

He would never hold his son. Bae was too large now to be picked up with one arm and Gold wouldn't be able to support both their weights on his bad leg anyway. The idea that Milah and Jones had the opportunity to hold him as a baby but had instead left him alone and suffering enraged Gold.

That had been the end of Milah's unsupervised visits for awhile, at least. She eventually grew tired of spending Saturdays with a social worker watching her with her son and stopped showing up to the supervised ones. He'd have thought that would be it, but apparently not. The pattern repeated over and over again between the ages of eighteen months and four years old. At least once or twice a year, Milah would try to regain custody only to balk at the supervised visitation and eventually stop showing up.

Frankly, by the time he got to the portion dealing with Bae's final unsupervised visit with his mother he was just about ready to burn the whole damn system down and start over. Who the hell had decided that a woman who couldn't even show up for her supervised visits deserved another chance at having unsupervised access to a child? If she hadn't been convicted for drug use after he broke his arm, how many more chances would she have been given with the boy? Would they even have let Belle keep him or just sent him back to Milah once he was old enough to fend for himself? The thought of Milah raising the boy instead of Belle was enough to make him physically ill.

Gold finally set the file aside, rising to his feet and pacing angrily through the room. He needed to burn off some of his nervous energy, and the way his leg ached from the activity was a welcome reprieve from the direction of his thoughts. He'd not been able to save his son. Bae had been abandoned and neglected and hehadn't been there.

He had always wanted to do better than his father. Malcolm Gold had been in and out of his son's life with all the regularity of a tornado, leaving a similar amount of destruction in his wake. Arthur had been left with his aunts until Malcolm's urge to parent suddenly became overwhelming, and then he would skip out again as soon as the boy became onerous. Bailey had been subjected to the same fate by his mother. It just wasn't fair. Bae didn't deserve that. All Gold had ever wanted was to be a father, and yet where had he been while Bae had been suffering at Milah's hands? Running his shop, licking his wounds, and stagnating in luxury.

Belle had been there, at least. Belle, who'd had no claim on the child beyond being a young woman who was awake late at night and had a house had been the one to cherish his son and teach him he was loved and to give him everything. It just wasn't fair!

He grabbed his glass off the end table and threw it against a wall. The glass fell to the floor with a tinkling sound and the wanton destruction soothed him in its chaos. A decorative glass paperweight and a figurine of a shepherd soon followed the glass.

He was breathing heavily more from the adrenaline than from the activity by the time he had finished. He collapsed to the floor and broke down into tears, shaking with the need to go back in time and hold this child who had long since ceased to need to be rescued, and who he had never been able to save.

He was still a little shaken up by the next evening, and the nap he'd taken after work only helped a little bit. By the time he arrived to pick Bae up (wearing khakis and a blue shirt at Belle's suggestion) he really just wanted to hold the boy until the uncontrollable urge to destroy the world passed. He thought that might frighten Bae, though. That this would be the first time he would ever be alone with his son for more than a few minutes did not really help his nerves.

Belle greeted him warmly before calling for Bae that his father was here and he'd better hurry up if he wanted to see the movie.

"So what's the plan for the night?" she asked as they stood in the entryway waiting for Bae to come down.

"Well, I thought we'd get a snack before the movie and then go get in line."

He already had the tickets purchased, but he'd been informed that queuing up to get into the theater was the fun part, and anyway it would provide him a little bit of extra time with his son.

"That sounds good," she nodded. "You can feed him whatever you want short of coffee. Soda, popcorn, candy...whatever. I figure it's more important that you guys bond than it is to maintain his diet for awhile. I'd just prefer he not develop a taste for coffee while bedtime is still an issue."

He nodded. She really was trying to make things easier for him, which he couldn't help but appreciate. This entire situation had the potential to be unbelievably difficult but she was going out of her way to make it easier for him. It occurred to him not for the first time that Bae had gotten very lucky in winding up with Belle.

"I uh," he began. "I read the file."

"Oh," she breathed. "Did you have any questions?"

He shook his head.

"Still taking it all in."

"Well, the offer stands," she replied just as Bailey bounced down the stairs to stand next to her.

"Hey, Bailey!" Gold said, unable to suppress the smile that spontaneously bloomed whenever his son was in the room.

"You ready to go?" she chirped, ruffling Bae's hair affectionately.

"Yeah," Bae exclaimed. "This is going to be so much fun!"

Bae was in a Spider-man t-shirt and jeans and looked almost as excited as his father felt, albeit for a slightly different reason.

"Alright," Belle said cheerfully, grabbing a coat off the rack and handing it to their son. "Looks like you two are ready to go. Bae, be nice to your dad, okay?"

"Yes, mom," he said with a put-upon sigh before looking up at his father.

"I think we'll be okay," Gold added. "What are you going to do tonight?"

"Oh I have a thrilling night planned," she said with a smirk. "I am going to watch literally whatever I want on TV and go to sleep without worrying about Bailey trying to stay up to play video games. I may even have some wine."

"Living the high life, I see."

Bae gave a guilty grin at his inclusion in their joke, but seemed to enjoy the banter as they walked towards the car.

"Well," she said cheerfully. "I'll try not to party too hard. You boys have fun!"

And just like that, Gold was left alone with his son.

"This is going to be the latest I've ever been awake," Bae supplied as he climbed into the car.

"Well, I'm glad to take you to the movie."

"I think it'll be fun," Bae said cheerfully. "It'll be good to get to know you."

Gold chuckled at Bae's earnest proclamation.

"I couldn't agree more," he replied.

He drove his son to a diner, ordering chocolate milkshakes and an order of fries.

"So your mom tells me you like school," Gold probed, deciding to try Belle's advice for conversation topics.

"Yeah," Bae said. "It's not bad..."

He started swirling his milkshake around with a straw and avoiding eye contact.

"When I was your age," Gold confided, "I had a really hard time with school."

Bae perked up a little, eying Gold cautiously.

"Really?"

"Yes," he tried to keep a straight face. "I had a really hard time with math, for one thing. I could write well and I liked to read, but I also had a really hard time remembering things sometimes."

"Mom was so good at school," Bae said in a rush. "Like, everything. She loved it and I don't hate school or anything it's just not as easy for me as it was for her and I have to work at it all the time and next year is my last year before middle school and that's supposed to be even harder and I just don't know if I can keep up..."

Now that he'd gotten it all out, Bae seemed to deflate a little bit against the booth. Gold was shocked that he'd been chosen to hear this exclamation and wondered how long Bae had been holding this in. This was really his first opportunity to parent his child, which was a little bit more intimidating than he'd anticipated.

"Your mom told me you're having trouble with your dyslexia," he said sympathetically, looking at Bae who was still focused entirely on the plate of french fries in front of him.

Bae just nodded, picking at his food.

"Why don't you let me talk to your mom about seeing if there's anyone in the area who might be able to give you a little extra help?"

Bae glanced up hopefully, but a little wary.

"I already have an extra class at school."

"Well, there are lots of different people we can talk to," Gold continued. "Some of them are kind of expensive, which is why your mom never took you to see any of them. But I can pay for it."

"And you think that would help?"

"It can't hurt, and if you don't like it you don't have to keep going."

"You'd really do that for me?"

Gold felt his heart shatter into a million little pieces at the innocent question. He would do anything for Bae. He would die for Bae, he'd cut off his right arm for his son no questions asked. Paying for a specialist didn't even count as a hardship.

"I'm your dad, Bae," he finally said. "Anything you need I'll get for you. You don't need to worry about that."

Bae considered this for a little while before looking back at Gold.

"I'm glad you found me," he said at last.

Bae had passed out in the car on the way home from the movie. It was the first time Gold had ever seen his son asleep, he realized. The movie had been surprisingly good, and Gold was pretty sure he was going to buy Bae every single Spider-man toy at the store for his birthday just to hold onto the memory as long as he could.

He called Belle from the drive way to wake her up so she could let them in, but neither had really planned for Bae to be asleep. He hated to force her to come outside in her nightclothes, but he also hated to wake up his son when he looked so peaceful (and, frankly, was out like a light).

Gold considered the little boy in the backseat for a minute before arriving at a decision. When he saw the look on Belle's face when he stood at her door a little while later with his son slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes he had to give her credit for not laughing too hard.

"Are you alright?" she said through an amused smirk.

"Yeah, fine," he got out. "I just need to get him up the stairs."

"Sure, of course," she let him in and took his arm, letting him lean on her as they made their way up the stairs and to Bae's room incredibly slowly.

It wasn't the most comfortable arrangement, and he knew his leg would be killing him the next day, but Gold couldn't regret this one chance to carry Bailey while it was still possible. He would probably never do this again.

By the time they got the boy into bed and Belle took his shoes off and tucked him in with his clothes on, Bae had stirred just a bit.

"Mom?"

"Go back to sleep," she whispered, kissing him on the head.

"I had a really good time with Dad," he mumbled, rolling over and pulling the sheets up to his chin.

"That's great, sweetie," she said. "You can tell me all about it tomorrow."

"Goodnight, Mom," he said through a yawn. "Goodnight, Dad."

Belle smiled as she pulled Gold through the door to the hallway.

"I don't think I'm going to see him again before noon," Belle said with a relaxed smile. "And I already had my assistant manager scheduled to work the shop tomorrow. It will be the most sleep I've had in ten years."

"I'm happy I could help," Gold replied, still a little dumbstruck by Bae's casual acceptance of him in his room and in his family.

"What about you? Are you opening tomorrow?"

"No, I think not. I can take a long weekend."

"Well, you're welcome to swing by for lunch," she offered. "You know, if you want."

"Why don't you two come over to my house instead?" he replied. "You cook all the time. You should take the day off."

"Yeah," she replied. "That sounds good. I'll see you tomorrow for lunch at your place. I'll text you when he wakes up"

By the time he was at home and safely ensconced in his bed, Gold found sleep to be beyond him in his excitement. He'd gotten to hold his son.

He should offer Bailey a bedroom at his house, he decided. There was no sense in waking Belle up every time they went to a movie (and he really hoped this wouldn't be the last time). He could decorate it however he liked. He'd ask Belle tomorrow, and if she thought it was a good idea...his son would have a room at his house.

He was finally getting a chance to be a dad.