Chapter Text
Anyone might have said that the young woman clutching an important looking binder to her chest and frowning to herself was standing in front of a pawn shop, but if you were to come up to the woman in question and ask her herself, she would tell you that this was no mere pawn shop - it was her last resort and her only remaining chance. And you would be right to think that those were some dramatic words, but she would smile at you and tell you that dramatic words were kind of her thing, and her love of them had served her well during her literature studies so far.
But they weren’t of much help to her on this particular occasion. You see, she had dropped off her resume in nearly every other shop in town, and while no-one spoke unkindly to her or sent her off without a sincere apology and well wishes, rejection was all she reaped. Too costly with her Bachelor’s degree, far too likely to run off and get a ‘real job’ when she finally earned her Master’s degree, and more variations on those two concerns than she cared to remember. She would protest and insist that she was in no hurry to leave town and trade in its peculiar charms for a world of adventure – been there, done that. That’s why at the age of 26, Belle French was still a student. A student with plenty of postcards and pictures of cathedrals, castles and palaces, and a few memories of drunken kisses with charming local boys - and the occasional girl - in candle lit tavernas and flowering gardens, but also a student in debt. She was close to graduating, now, but she wasn’t quite there just yet. But for all her lovely words and impassioned pleas, none of the town’s shop owners seemed to have a use for her.
The pawn shop wasn’t last on her list for any particular reason; she had just assumed that someone would have hired her on the spot before noon. The sun was setting, now, and even though the sign in the shop door said ‘closed’, Belle knew the man inside hadn’t yet left. The sign was swinging softly when she had walked up, so she knew it must have been flipped recently. What was she waiting for, then, one might ask. Well, the answer to that question, if you had once more approached the young woman and asked her, would have been that she wasn’t waiting at all – she was gathering her courage. Because a long day of repeated rejection will inevitably take its toll on even the most optimistic of people. And she was tired, to boot.
But she straightened her back, lifted her chin just enough to look confident but not ridiculous and arrogant, and knocked on the glass pane of the door. Nothing, absolutely nothing for a moment or two, but then the slightly hollow sound of shoes on an old wood floor startled her into lifting her chin that little bit higher, making her look not unlike a petulant child for those few seconds before she caught her own reflection in a mirror and fixed her posture. Just in time.
The door creaked open, a bell chimed, and Belle stared at the man who had opened it. Opened it without unlocking it, it occurred to her with a pang of guilt. Should she have ignored the sign and just walked in? The man was leaning on a cane – was it painful for him to walk up to the door and open it for her? Brown eyes stared right back at her with an inquisitive, if slightly suspicious look.
“The shop is closed, I’m afraid,” said the man, shifting his weight from one foot to the other with the faintest trace of a pained grimace.
“Oh. Oh, I know, I’m sorry. I’m not looking to buy anything, and I just thought there might still be someone in the shop, so I knocked. I’m sorry – Mr. Gold, is it? I don’t want to inconvenience you, but could I perhaps come in for a moment?”
Belle forced herself into a patient silence and put on her bravest smile. From the looks of the man standing in front of her, this could go either way. He wasn’t smiling back at her, a fact which unbalanced her a bit; she had always managed to crack the toughest of masks and break through the most practiced of poker faces if she tried. But she found it easy to ascribe his unreadable expression to the apparent pain he may have been in and not to any sort of hostility towards her, a chirpy stranger inconveniencing a man at the end of his work day with a request to enter his shop after opening hours with no accompanying explanation.
But this silence was carrying on a little too long for Belle’s smile not to waver at least a little bit in the face of such scrutiny, so hastily, perhaps a little too loudly, she added: “I won’t take up too much of your time, I promise!”
The promise of brevity seemed to have done the trick, and the man’s hard look softened somewhat in surrender as he stepped back and held open the door for this stranger on his door step, motioning with his cane for her to enter in a surprisingly elegant gesture. Belle’s smile shifted into a victorious grin, and she walked in muttering words of thanks.
Once inside, Belle looked around, eyes widening as she took in the riches displayed on dusty shelves and in old display cases. When Belle French thought of a pawn shop, she imagined old television sets, broken transistor radios, cheap jewelry, abandoned electric guitars and sketchy looking switch blades. But in the golden light of the setting sun and with the dust dancing around, every object in the room seemed priceless to her. These looked like antiques. There were globes, maps, compasses, porcelain artwork, paintings in gilded frames, pocket watches – clocks everywhere, in fact. Beautiful things that must have been difficult to part with, or valuable old things otherwise gathering dust in attics of deceased elderly family members, hastily gathered up in cardboard boxes and dropped off here by mourning sons, daughters, nephews and nieces.
With wide and eager eyes, Belle took in as much of the beauty she could before she remembered her promise to be brief. The door creaked shut again, the bell chimed, and Belle turned towards the sound. But Mr. Gold was no longer there where she had left him. She whipped her head around, looked around the corner of a book shelf (she’d come back and take her time to browse if the rejection wasn’t too brutal) but he was nowhere to be found. Almost panicked, now, she turned around and almost gasped when she finally found him, standing behind his counter. That’s a perfectly normal place for a shop keeper to stand, Belle thought to herself, so perhaps look there first, next time.
“So, what brings you to my shop after opening hours, Ms. French?”
“How did you know my name?” Belle asked, her smile wiped away in an instant and replaced with a concerned, startled look.
“Just a guess. I’m good with names.” There was a hint of amusement in Mr. Gold’s voice that Belle found oddly comforting. Better than stoic silence. “And also, you’ve written it on your binder,” he added, the corners of his mouth curling up a bit, nodding towards the weathered brown binder Belle was still clutching to her chest.
Belle followed the man’s gaze, brow furrowed in confusion. Had she written her name on that old thing? Oh, that’s right; she had. Years ago, before her travels, before college, when she was a bookish teenager with few friends and far too many interests to commit to a binder that pictured only one of them, she had bought herself this plain brown binder and rejected all others. Every once in a while, when she felt confident enough in her love for a certain band or movie, she would add a sticker to it, very carefully positioned in a way to make it look haphazardly placed. Several weeks later, she’d change her mind about revealing herself in this way to the outside world, peel it back off and hide it in a box of keepsakes that to this day has a place underneath her bed. She’d write on the inside – observations, little poems, something funny a teacher might have said – with pencil so that she might erase it if she changed her mind. One day, a teacher mistook her binder for his own and took it, and after panicking for a full period (she had written something in there that made her blush as she wrote it) until the flustered teacher stopped her in the hallway and apologized profusely for the mix-up, thrusting the thing in her arms and walking off briskly, Belle decided that at the very least, she ought to write her name on it. In big, bold letters with a permanent marker, not a pencil.
“Unless you stole poor Belle French’s binder, of course, in which case I’m afraid you’ll have to introduce yourself after all. I’m good, but I’m not that good.”
Finally, the man had spoken in a long enough sentence for Belle to successfully place his Scottish accent; another little victory that made her quite pleased with herself, boosting her confidence just enough to shoot Mr. Gold another dazzling smile. This one he did return, with something that might better be described as a smirk. Bad time to start thinking of this man in terms of smirks and gazes, but the poetic part of her mind had gone there before the rational part of her had noticed that it was heading there, and now all that rational part could do was stand back and shake its head as Belle French slowly came to the conclusion that she thought Mr. Gold to be rather handsome.
“No, you were right the first time. My name is Belle French, and I was hoping you might have some use for an assistant in the shop. I’ve got my resume, here,” she started, moving towards Mr. Gold’s counter, placing the binder on it and opening it with slightly shaky hands. She was brave, but she wasn’t immune to pressure, and oh my, she was feeling it now.
If Mr. Gold wouldn’t hire her, she could still go back to tutoring, and if all else failed, she could ask her father to let her work for the business, but she had a good feeling about this pawn shop. She could envision herself dusting the shelves, rearranging the books, sweeping the floors, and perhaps spending some time asking Mr. Gold about some of the more interesting looking pieces. But for that to happen, she had to get herself together and sell herself confidently. Bulldoze over any potential objections before he had the chance to end the conversation and send her off.
“Here, please take this. You’d make me so happy if you would just take the time to consider me,” she pleaded, sliding a copy of her resume out from a plastic folder in her binder and presenting it to Mr. Gold with eyebrows raised in hopeful expectation, drawing her lower lip in between her teeth in a way she was completely unaware did certain things to people.
“Ms. French, I’m not looking for help at the moment,” Mr. Gold said.
“But everything in here is so dusty! And there really isn’t anything even close to a system going on in your book shelf over there,” Belle implored.
Mr. Gold raised a single eyebrow and inclined his head just enough to let the woman know he was most definitely taking these comments about his shop personally indeed. Belle gratefully took the opportunity to change tactics.
“What I mean is, I think you’ve got a gorgeous place, here, and it’s filled with beautiful things. I could at least help keep those things dust-free, right?”
Mr. Gold sighed and looked at the paper Belle had handed him. Belle hardly dared to breathe lest it should somehow annoy the man and get her kicked out of the shop. She followed his brown eyes as they moved over carefully chosen words and well-crafted sentences, breathed in sharp when he laughed at a particular passage (she would have to ask him some other time why he had laughed) and again when he raised his eyebrows and shot her a serious look over the edge of the paper before returning his gaze to it. Finally, when he put the resume on his counter and flattened it with the palm of his hand in a completely unnecessary gesture but one that bode infinitely better than crumpling it and tossing it over his shoulder, Belle exhaled in relief.
Mr. Gold leant on the counter, shifting his weight forward. Belle noticed another minute grimace of pain, and she suddenly wished it wouldn’t seem patronizing of her to ask him if he wanted to sit down for this conversation. But she knew better than that.
“Well?” she asked. Mr. Gold wettened his lips with a quick appearance of his tongue. Belle noticed. She quickly snapped her gaze back up to his eyes, which was a marginally more safe feature to look at. Marginally.
“It appears you’re overqualified. Not only for a job in this shop. I’d go so far as to say you’re overqualified for this entire comatose town.” Mr. Gold remarked.
Belle snapped her chin up and grabbed hold of her side of the counter, as if she were convinced Mr. Gold was about to physically remove her from his shop. It was a gesture that didn’t go unnoticed by the man standing opposite her, who unbeknownst to Belle was trying hard to hide his amusement at her attempts at being ferocious.
“I don’t want to be paid a fortune, Mr. Gold. And I happen to like this ‘comatose’ town.”
Mr. Gold pushed himself up from the counter and straightened his posture, gliding his hands through the air in a surprisingly graceful gesture of acknowledged defeat - on the matter of the town’s likeability, at least.
“I do apologize, Ms. French. It’s not without its charms, I’ll concede. But the fact remains that I have no need for an assistant.”
Here, Belle sighed, letting her shoulders slump and her head drop. She loosened her grip on the counter and lightly rested her fingers on the edge of it instead. Looking down, she opened her mouth to speak, but she stopped herself. Mr. Gold watched her hands close into fists, a sign of determination if he’d ever seen one. Or obstinacy. He wasn’t sure yet.
“Okay, look,” she started, snapping her head back up and walking around the counter with quick, confident steps, to stand on his side. She stood close, but not too close. Mr. Gold took hold of his gold cane reflexively and shifted some of his weight on it as he turned to face her.
“Let’s make a deal.”
The word ‘deal’ seemed to have lit a spark in his eyes, and he flashed a brief, small smile.
“You’ve got my attention,” he replied, “if indeed you manage to come up with an interesting offer – which I doubt you will.”
“You could try me out for a week,” Belle said, earning another raised eyebrow from the shop keeper. It was a look that threatened to send a blush to her cheeks, so Belle tightened her fists and decided to power through. “I mean you could just let me help for a few days, maybe a week. If by the end of it I’ve managed to convince you of my usefulness – which I definitely will, thank you very much - you give me a contract to sign.”
“And what, pray tell, would compel me to accept this deal?”
“If you’re not satisfied with my work by the end of that week, you won’t have to pay me for it, and also, hell will have frozen over and the change in climate will mean we will have more pressing things to tend to than this deal of ours, I should imagine,” Belle said, her eyes full of fire as she stepped a little closer, noting with some satisfaction that she had made the man laugh.
Silently, but she noticed his chest move as he tried to contain it, and so a laugh it was, nonetheless.
“And, most importantly; I’ll get out of your hair.”
Your lovely hair, she thought, fighting down a mischievous smirk as a sudden strange thought of tying it back invaded her consciousness.
“I won’t have to pay you for work I’m not at all satisfied with? What a novel idea, Ms. French,” Mr. Gold replied.
There was a biting quality to his voice now, one that Belle decided to take as encouragement and not as the deterrent it was intended. The man was about to crack, she could sense it. Be bold, Belle, she thought to herself. Be bold.
“Do you want to know what I think?”
She stepped a little closer still. Mr. Gold moved his cane between them in a defensive gesture, his fingers grasping the gold a little tighter.
“I’m sure you’re about to enlighten me either way,” he said, determined not to admit defeat to this plucky young woman with the strange blue eyes, but sharply aware of her cunning way with persuasive words, and therefor wary.
“I think you know I’d be good for the shop, and you just don’t want to admit it for some strange reason. But you could spend more time with your family, if you have one. Get a hobby, maybe. Sleep in every single day. So why not take my offer and consider it free labor?”
Mr. Gold huffed, but his eyes, even though he rolled them at her, betrayed a certain admiration, no matter how much he tried to contain it. Belle smiled wider. Mr. Gold knew he had made a mistake. It was as if the woman had smelled blood.
“Take my offer and send me on my way afterwards, with no pay. I dare you.”
“You dare me, dearie?”
Belle’s smile faltered and fell away. That voice was lower, now, almost a growl. Had she gone too far? It didn’t matter. It was too late to turn back, now, anyway, so Belle bravely put her winning smile on again, taking a small step back nevertheless.
“Well, I mean... how could you possibly lose, Mr. Gold?”
This time, it was Mr. Gold who stepped closer, tapping the wood floor with the end of his cane once, to see if Ms. Belle French would flinch. There was no flinching to speak of, but her eyes grew just a little bit wider, and that chin of hers tilted up again instinctively, defiantly, but with the inverse effect of being completely endearing. Mr. Gold had noticed the chin thing. It was difficult not to; she had done it several times in the short time they had known each other, and once when she for some reason didn’t think he could see her through a glass door.
“This would be a difficult deal to put in writing, Ms. French,” Mr. Gold finally spoke, breaking eye contact for a moment to walk past her, back around the counter, effectively ending the impromptu stand-off they had somehow gotten themselves into. “But if you’re okay with an oral agreement, I will accept your offer.”
Belle knew she had won, and as she followed Mr. Gold towards the door, she allowed herself the biggest, most deliriously happy grin for all of two seconds before he turned around to face her. She tried to hide her utter glee by biting her lip again. It didn’t work.
“No need to gloat, Ms. French,” said Mr. Gold, opening the door and making that little bell chime again. Belle loved the sound already. “I’d say I got the better end of the bargain, here.”
Mr. Gold held the door open for her a second time that day, but Belle didn’t go through right away. Halting in the middle of the door way, Belle leaned back against the frame and smirked, eyebrows raised.
“So, I’m right. You do think it’d be good to have me around.”
“Goodbye, Ms. French,” Mr. Gold replied, gently nudging her out of his door way with the gold end of his cane against her shoulder, “I expect you here at nine am, Monday. Don’t be early. I’m not letting you in a second before nine.”
“Got it! Thank you, Mr. Gold! You won’t be sorry!”
“I already am.”
And with that, the door fell shut behind her. With a brilliant smile on her face and a bounce in her step, Belle French took the long way home to her apartment. It was a beautiful evening, after all, and she was no longer unemployed. Well, in a sense.