Anonymous said:

Adoption!verse: Bae wants to see one of the huge fireworks displays out of to town on the Fourth. Somewhere like Washington DC or Philadelphia.

Accio-firewhiskey said:

Also, here's an idea, have you considered Belle trying to meet up with an old friend in NYC while Bae and Gold do their own thing for an afternoon?

Bae had never been to New York, apparently. It hadn't occurred to Gold that his son had never been into the city, but now that he thought about it he wasn't sure why he would have assumed the boy had been. Belle was solidly middle class, but with just the two of them money was always an issue. Of course she'd not seen a point in taking Bae to the city just for the sake of going.

Gold made a mental note to see about surprising them with a second trip sometime. Maybe this Christmas they could catch something on Broadway – Beauty & The Beast or The Lion King seemed like safe choices with a kid. He'd have to ask Belle about it later. Thankfully, this time Bae seemed perfectly content to marvel at the tall buildings and the crush of people.

Belle had made plans to meet up with an old friend for lunch, leaving Gold with a blissful two hours of unsupervised parental time. He had big plans to buy his son pizza and maybe ice cream.

"Alright," Belle said. "Bae, be good for your dad. I'll meet back up with you guys after lunch."

And with that and a quick wave, Belle disappeared into a posh cafe leaving father and son alone on the street.

"So," Gold said, keeping his hand safely on the back of Bae's collar to prevent him wandering off. "Pizza?"

Bae nodded enthusiastically, trying to dart ahead of his father only to come up short when his shirt stretched out.

"You're going to have to stay with me," Gold reminded his son.

Bae nodded, but Gold kept a hand on him all the same as they found a pizza place and took a seat.

"Was there anything special you wanted to see today?" Gold asked.

Bae thought for a moment, searching for an answer.

"I don't know," he finally said. "I don't know what's here."

"Everything," Gold said with a chuckle. "Everything is in the city."

"What do you think we should do?"

"Hmmm..." Gold thought for a minute.

They'd be seeing the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island later on with Belle (followed by the fireworks), and didn't have time before they met back up with Belle to do that anyway. There were museums, but again he felt like that would be something Belle wouldn't want to skip. There had to be something he could do with a ten-year-old in Manhattan for a couple hours. And then, inspiration struck.

"What would you say if I told you that the best toy store in the world was a few blocks away?"

Bae's face lit up with excitement at the prospect, and Gold suddenly had a really good feeling about the rest of the afternoon.

It was nice having lunch like this, just two adults and no child. Ariel was one of Belle's best friends from college. She'd moved to NYC not long after graduation, and was one of the few people in Belle's life who had never known her as a mom. The two had kept in touch on Facebook, but it had been ages since either one had been able to visit. When Belle had let Ariel know she'd be in town with her son and his father, the bubbly redhead had jumped at the chance to spend an hour or so catching up with her old friend.

"So how are things going with you and the baby daddy, anyway?" Ariel asked between bites of her salad. "Still awkward as hell?"

"No, actually we've sort of reached a nice agreement," Belle replied. "He comes over for dinner most nights and Bae spends all day Saturday over there, then I pick him up after brunch on Sunday. If either one of us has something special on an off day, he's always been willing to switch things around. Bae loves him, and he's so good with Bae, too. He's actually paying for this whole trip for both of us." She was gushing and she knew it, but she couldn't quite stop herself. "It's kind of nice having him around. He's as interested in Bae things as I am – we talk every single night about him. We just get along really, really well, you know? We just kind of clicked."

"Okay..." Ariel was giving Belle a strange look as she wound down her monologue about the virtues of Bae's father. "And how long have you been sleeping with him?"

"What?!" Belle exclaimed, coming damn close to choking on her sandwich. "I'm not sleeping with him!"

"Well, you're going to be soon, apparently," Ariel was staring at her in disbelief and Belle could feel her cheeks turning pink. "I've known you since college. I'm the one who introduced you to George! You have never spoken about a man the way you were just talking about Arthur. Face it, you're completely into him."

"I...no I'm...you're...no!" Belle couldn't come up with anything much more eloquent than that, unfortunately. "You're reading too much into this. We're just friends."

"Friends who want to sleep together, maybe."

"It's just complicated, okay?"

"Complicated how?"

"We share a son, and we have to get along for at least another 8 years. The rest of our lives would be preferable."

"Okay, I get that whole co-parenting thing you've got going on, but answer me this: are you attracted to him?"

Belle didn't respond right away, her dream from the other night was still fresh enough in her head to give her pause.

"Oh my God, you are!" Ariel shrieked. "What happened?"

"I had a dream about him the other night – a sex dream," Belle buried her face in her hands at the admission as her friend stared at her.

"That's not that bad, Belle," Ariel tried to comfort her. "You can't control your dreams, after all."

"I know," Belle groaned miserably. "I just don't know what to do with this."

"You're probably just having a dry spell," Ariel replied. "When was the last time you had sex, anyway?"

"Uh, ten years or so ago."

Ariel blinked rapidly at the admission.

"Ten years?!" she screeched. "You haven't had sex in ten years?"

"Yes, and if you'd keep your voice down I'd prefer the entire restaurant didn't know."

"I'm sorry, but still! Have you dated at all since you ended things with George?"

"I've been on dates," she had been on exactly six first dates and one second date. "I just didn't click with any of them."

"Jeeze, Belle, no wonder you're having impure thoughts. Your libido must be freaking out."

Actually, it wasn't. That was something Belle had a hard time explaining to people. She didn't seem to need sex the same way other people did, even in college. She still wanted it, and she found other men attractive and was no stranger to sex dreams (Bae's obsession with Marvel movies did mean that Steve Rogers was a disturbingly frequent imaginary sex partner), but she didn't want to have sex with someone just because it had been awhile. She hated dating, and found the expectation of sex sometime around the third date to be completely mood killing. She liked to know a man before she involved herself with him that way. How well could you really know someone after three dates with the intention of impressing each other?

Still, though, maybe Ariel was right. Maybe she just needed a distraction and things could go back to the way they were before the vacation. What was it Ruby had always said in college? The best way to get over a man is to get under a new one. The most disturbing thing about this was the implication that in order to get over Arthur she at one time had to have been on him.

"It's a lot harder meeting guys as an adult," Belle explained. "Even worse when you have a kid. Everyone you meet is either because of your child or terrified of him. It's awkward."

Ariel looked sympathetic, but didn't reply right away.

"I did go on a date with his basketball coach," Belle continued. "It didn't go well, though. No chemistry."

"That doesn't mean you just stop dating anyone. Some guys you won't have anything in common with and you just move on from those."

"You're right," Belle sighed. Sometimes she wished she had a little more experience dating. The older she got, the more she was expected to have and the more awkward it was that she had so little. What was she going to do when Bae started asking questions about girls? Well, she supposed now she could refer him to his father but something about that rubbed her the wrong way. She didn't like thinking about Arthur having experience with other women. She wasn't sure when the idea had bothered her – they had literally met because he had fathered her child with another woman, for goodness sake – but at some point it had.

The rest of the meal went smoother. They discussed Ariel's new job and Belle caught Ariel up on people they'd gone to school with. By the time they were done with lunch, Arthur and Bae were waiting outside for her and holding bags reading FAO Schwarz. She couldn't quite ignore Ariel's knowing grin on seeing the pair of them, but she did her best.

"Wow, so somebody did some shopping," Belle said to Bae. "Did your dad get you games for the cabin?"

"Yeah!" Bae exclaimed excitedly. "We got board games, and bongos, and a telescope..."

Belle's eyes went wide with horror and she turned on Arthur.

"You bought our son bongos?!"

"...and a telescope," he said sheepishly. He seemed to be aware of the critical error he'd made, and she should probably go easier on him because she knew that he was damn near incapable of saying no to the kid, but holy crap he bought her son bongos.

"Well," Belle said as calmly as she could manage with the knowledge that her ten-year-old now possessed a set of bongos. "Congratulations, Bae, you now have your first toy that exclusively lives at your dad's house."

"I probably deserve that," Arthur admitted as Bae rooted around in his bag to show his mother the much discussed bongos.

"Yes," Belle replied. "You do."

Ariel clearing her throat brought Belle back to the task at hand.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Belle exclaimed. "Ariel, this is my son Bailey and his father, Arthur Gold. Bae, Arthur, this is my friend Ariel Finn from college."

Hands were shook all around and Belle couldn't help but be a little proud of Bae's manners as he politely greeted Ariel. They made small talk for a few minutes before Ariel made her excuses of having been away from work too long already and left the small family to their own devices.

"We can at least drop these at the hotel before we do anymore sight-seeing," Arthur said. He still sounded apologetic over the poor toy selection and Belle couldn't help but feel a little bad for making him think she was upset with him.

Belle nodded in agreement, her mind still caught on her earlier discussion with Ariel. She liked Arthur, that much was obvious. Maybe she was just confusing her affection for him for a crush because she'd been alone so long. Or maybe she wasn't confused and Ariel was right. He was the only man she ever spent any significant amount of time with outside of work, feelings were bound to come up at some point.

Still, though, he was outside of her reach even if she did want him just by virtue of their existing relationship, never mind the fact that he was older and wealthier and more experienced than she was. Arthur had lived a far more interesting life than hers, and they inhabited different worlds. His was a world of nice hotels and cultural activities, and hers was soccer practice and romance novels in the bathtub. She sometimes thought he might have feelings for her as well, but she'd never been good at picking up on that sort of thing in the past and couldn't trust herself now. She felt like she might be going crazy.

"Something wrong?" Arthur whispered to her as they approached the hotel where their suitcases had been delivered earlier.

She shook her head, half to reassure him she was fine and half to clear her thoughts.

"No, I'm fine," she replied. "I just still can't believe you bought him bongos."

"He asked for them," Arthur explained weakly. "I think he's figured out I'm a pushover."

"If it makes you feel better," Belle said taking his arm and giving it a comforting squeeze. "The Christmas he was five, his Uncle Tiny gave him a toy fire engine that had a real siren and lights and you could put water in it and then it would spray out the hose if you pumped this little handle."

He winced sympathetically.

"That sounds awful," he replied. "What did you do?"

"It mysteriously ran out of batteries within a week. Did you know fire engines take special batteries you can't get at the grocery store?"

Arthur laughed at that, shooting her a wry look.

"You're a devious woman, Miss French."

"I did what I had to do to survive," she said smugly. "Still, though, rookie mistake, Gold."

"If it's really going to live at my house I'm sure I'll live to regret it."

"Oh I am sure you will," she replied with a wink. "Be sure to let me know how well he's progressing with them."

He laughed at himself, and for a moment Belle forgot her confusion. This was what she loved about having him around, after all. These little shared moments of intimacy and mirth. He was the best friend she'd had in years, and she hated that everything else was getting in the way of that.