#at least i aced the submission deadlines for everything else last time?

[xdarkabyssx]

Fffff i keep fumbling the page assignments to the dgm zines. I'm usually ontop of things like this but I somehow managed to miss it by a day. I probably seem like an absolute mess to the people running it 😅

[mariequitecontrarie]

Love Links

Summary: Belle can’t wait to celebrate Valentine’s Day with Gold, but when she realizes he’s acting strange, she thinks their relationship might be in trouble.  A/N: Sequel to Cufflinks  Written for @a-monthly-rumbelling  February: Poetry, Rowboat, Handmade gifts, Rain, Cuddle. Thanks @galactic-pirates and @maplesyrupao3, you guys are aces. Rating: G Word Count: 4100

On AO3

It was no ordinary Thursday morning.

Belle flew up the seven flights of stairs to the office, excited to see Gold and give him the first of many kisses on one of her favorite days of the year—Valentine’s Day. For the dozenth time since she’d left her apartment, she patted her pocket to make sure his present was still there. Wrapped in red paper and tied with a glossy white ribbon, the little box was snug and secure inside her coat, right where she put it this morning. This time there would be no losing it.

A little over a year ago, she’d given Gold a set of antique book cufflinks in the office Secret Santa gift exchange. Since then, he’d insisted on wearing them every single day. After today he would have choice. The double hearts fashioned from rose gold were understated, elegant, and charming. Two hearts entwined—like Belle and Gold had been since last year’s New Year’s Eve Party. She hoped wearing them would make him think of the two of them together and imagine a happy future.

“Someone’s all dressed up today.” Ruby gave an admiring whistle when Belle passed her work station on the way to Gold’s office. “Love the stockings, girl.”

Belle looked down at her thighs with a grin. There were little pink hearts embroidered all over her black fishnet stockings. Paired with her black leather pencil skirt and lacy red top, she felt flirty and a little daring. She admired Ruby’s red silk button-down tucked into hip-hugging black pants. “Thanks! Looking pretty hot yourself, love.”

Gold’s office door was closed, so she stopped at the coffee station adjacent to Ruby’s desk for a morning pick-me-up. The countertop had been turned into a buffet of baked goods and sweet treats to celebrate Love Day. Pink donuts, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and bowls of candy covered every square inch of granite. Here at the Regal Marketing Company, they knew how to do holidays properly.

“Anything to eat around here?” she joked, selecting a miniature heart-shaped cheese Danish and a handful of peanut butter M&Ms. “I could smell all this coming up the stairs.”

“Right? I’ve been waiting for you to get here so we can split a piece of that. ” Ruby tipped her crimson beret toward a towering chocolate cake. “Thank God somebody around here knows how to turn on an oven. I think Mary Margaret and Regina were up all night baking.”

Belle gave her a knowing look. “What you lack in the kitchen you make up for by taking on grizzly reporters and shiny television personalities,” Belle split a generous wedge of cake with a knife.

Ruby relied on takeout and frozen dinners on all the days ending in ‘y,’ but her media pitching abilities were legendary. They called her the Ball Machine because she never wore out on the phone and would badger reporters nonstop until they covered her clients’ stories.

Ruby grinned at the praise. “How did you get to be so amazing?”

“Years of practice,” she teased, handing Ruby her share of the cake. “Plans today?”

“A movie with Archie. Then who knows? What about you?” Ruby took her first bite of cake and moaned. “I wouldn’t call it better than sex, but it’s good. Damn good.”

Belle sucked a finger full of frosting into her mouth and murmured in agreement. Rich, dark, and delicious. Chocolate cake was a lot like love, she thought, licking the fork. Rich, sweet, addictive, and at times, strangely complicated. At least when your boyfriend was Darach Gold.

“Today I have lunch with Gold. Tonight I have dinner with Gold.”

She poured hot water into her mug and dropped in a bag of PG Tips tea, dunking it up and down while the tea swirled. Gold had been quieter than usual for the past few days, leaving Belle feeling vaguely unsettled. Valentine's Day would help set a happy, romantic mood. A day of spoiling each other was exactly what they needed to regain their equilibrium.

“Don't forget! Tomorrow night, you have plans with your work wife.” Ruby stabbed another forkful of cake. "Drinks at that new martini bar and chocolate is half off at Dark Star Pharmacy. We can ransack the store.”

“I’ll clear out the trunk of my car,” Belle teased.

She glanced at Gold’s office door again. It was still closed, which was unusual. Gold often joked that glaring the team into submission was far more satisfying when the door was open. When she squinted, she could make out the outline of him through the tempered glass, head bent over his desk in concentration. His Mont Blanc was moving at lightning speed. Maybe she could offer some inspiration?

Balancing her plate of treats and steaming mug, she started toward his office.

“I wouldn’t right now, sweetie,” Ruby warned.

“Why not?” That tiny frisson of worry flared to life again. She always stopped to see Gold when she came into work.

“He’s not in the greatest mood this morning.” Ruby lowered her voice. “Some secret project he’s working on, I guess. I brought him the de Vil pitch first thing this morning just like he asked for last night?”

“Yeah?” Belle nibbled her Danish and frowned again at Gold’s closed door.

“When I knocked and opened the door her growled at me and threw a balled-up piece of pink paper at my head. He told me to look at everything from a fresh angle right before he slammed the door in my face.”

Gold had been acting a little strange for the past few days, but Belle had been trying to ignore his pensive moods, deciding it was work stress. He was probably on deadline. Then again, it was a marketing company: they were always on deadline.

“Sorry, Rubes.” Belle forced a shrug, trying not to show her growing concern. “I’ll take him out for lunch today and try to cheer him up.”

“Please. Do it for the team.” Ruby stuck out her lower lip in a pout. “He hasn’t been this pissy at work since before you guys started dating. Last week when he heard me pitching Sydney Glass about the student video contest Storybrooke Bank is hosting, he actually paid me a compliment. I want that Gold back.”

An unpleasant chill chased up Belle’s spine. Gold had said goodbye quickly last night when he took her home after dinner, but they were both in a hurry to get out of the ice-cold February rain.

Her hunger waning, she pushed aside her plate of sweets and took a bracing gulp of her strong, black tea. “You don’t think he’s planning to break up with me, do you?”

The words sounded stupid as soon as they were out. There were a dozen reasons Gold could be stressed. Was he thinking of taking a new job out of state? Headhunters called him daily, begging him to come and restructure their firms. Stop it, Belle. He’s not going anywhere. She had a terrible habit of letting her imagination run away with her and jumping to all sorts of outlandish conclusions.

“What?” Ruby looked up from her cake. “What would make you think...? Oh! No, babe, no, wherever your mind’s gone bring it back. I didn’t mean Gold had gone all pre-Belle on us. I guess maybe I was exaggerating a little. In general, he’s happier than I’ve ever seen him.”

Ruby was right. She needed to rein it in. Belle wrapped her hands around her mug, welcoming the warmth into her chilled fingers. “You mean it?”

“Absolutely.” She polished off her cake and moved on to a chocolate chip muffin. “If nothing else, you’ve taken fifteen years’ worth of wrinkles off his face and added them to the end of his life.”

“Wrinkles?” Belle scowled. “They’re laugh lines and they make him look distinguished.”

Ruby shook her head and flicked a chocolate chip off her finger. “You two are nauseating. Honestly, Belle, don’t worry. It’s nothing more than a rough day.”

During Belle and Gold’s walk back to the office after lunch, she tried to put the idea of him calling it quits on their thirteen-month relationship out of her mind.

She tried not to think about the vague excuse Gold made last night about having to rush home in the rain for an emergency conference call when she suggested cuddling on the couch with a movie. She tried not to think about the daggers he’d glared at David Nolan yesterday when he suggested they change their plans in favor of a double-date for Valentine’s Day. And she tried not to think about the absent-minded way he’d picked at his lunch today, dissecting fries with his fork and rotating his hamburger to all four corners of the plate.

He’d spilled his glass of iced tea down the front of her blouse and smeared ketchup on his tie. Their conversation was stilted and awkward and when she asked him what was wrong, he blamed work and lack of sleep. But she’d been at his house four nights out of the last seven and he seemed to be sleeping— and not sleeping—with mind-blowingly orgasmic results.

When the waitress cleared their half-eaten plates, she tried to lift his mood by giving him the cufflinks. While she pinned them onto his shirtsleeves, he thanked her sweetly then fell silent for the rest of the hour. He remained preoccupied for the entire two-block walk back to the office building, his hair falling over his cheeks while he focused on avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk.

“I’m sorry about lunch, especially the iced tea,” he said when they approached their building. He opened the door for her, his wan smile not quite reaching his eyes.

“It’s okay.” Belle patted his shoulder. “I can wear my sweater over my blouse for the rest of the day.”

Another stiff smile and a frozen nod were her only answers. This morning she’d been obliviously happy and in love. Now it seemed signs and warnings that something was wrong were popping up everywhere.

She didn’t know what was bothering him and after Ruby’s comments this morning, she was afraid to find out. Could he have gone to the doctor and gotten bad news? Was last night’s conference call an interview with another firm? Hiding solved nothing, her mother often chided, but all she wanted was to go back to her desk and dive into the box of chocolate-covered cherries hidden in the bottom drawer. Chocolate was her favorite way of obliterating her problems. That’s why God had created it.

“Would you mind if we took the Dinosaur instead of the stairs?” He gestured toward the building’s ancient elevator, which they always avoided unless they had time to kill. “My ankle is sore today.”

She nodded, huddling into the back corner of the elevator for the interminable ride to the seventh floor.

“Belle,” Gold began when the doors creaked closed, “there’s been something on my mind. Something I must do, but I’ve been worried about doing it properly.”

She sank her teeth into her lower lip, trying to hold back a cry of distress. It was ironic. All day long she’d been trying to figure out what was bothering him and now, when faced with the possibility that she was the problem, she didn’t want to know.

As they climbed floors, she watched the arrow at the top of the elevator slowly start to move like the rising—or perhaps, in this case, the setting—of the sun. Stupid Dinosaur, taking its sweet time as usual. “Are you sure you don’t want to call me later?” she choked out. “Send a text?”

Coward.

“No, I’m sorry.” A muscle in his jaw ticked, a row of furrows lining his brow. “This needs to be said in person.”

“Now?” she squeaked, leaning back against the wood paneling for support. “In the Dinosaur?”

“Yes.” The elevator doors opened with a whine. “Hold the doors open and wait here, please.”

Spotting David and Mary Margaret standing nearby, she searched for an excuse. She didn’t want to be humiliated in public. “Is there some way... maybe we should speak about this privately? We could go to your office-”

“No.” He shook his head, his lips twisting into that stubborn little line she’d grown to know and love so well. “It has to be here. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Dejected, she nodded, a strange wave of déjà vu crashing over her as he walked away. A crowd of their coworkers was gathering around the elevator, their curious murmurs making the office hum with noise. It was like last New Year’s Eve all over again. Sure, the embarrassing scene where she announced her crush on Gold to the entire office had turned out well, but his bizarre behavior today was making her crazy!

She held down the button to keep the doors open, trying not to pay attention to the mix of inquisitive and sympathetic faces collecting around the elevator. Ashley left her post and slid onto one of the empty temporary work desks, eyeing her with interest, while Mulan and Merida came out of the conference room and hovered. Belle craned her neck around the corner to look for Ruby, but she was nowhere in sight.

Her fingers were starting to ache from holding down the Open Door button. Objecting to being held in place for so long, the Dinosaur fussed like a toddler who had been denied a cookie.

Cursing under his breath, Gold rushed to his office, his cane eating up the carpet.

Holidays—once a jumble of numbers and letters on the calendar he studiously ignored—had become a matter of utmost importance.

It wasn’t only Christmastime Belle loved, he discovered shortly after they started dating. She made a special point of throwing herself into all the holidays. Over the past year, they’d sung bawdy songs at McClain’s Bar over pints of Guinness on Saint Patty’s Day, helped dye eggs for a children’s Easter egg hunt, and set off fireworks on her parents’ backyard deck after consuming a giant bowl of dilled potato salad, something called a poke cake, and his first hamburger in five years, seared to a perfect medium and crowned with extra pickles. In November, after they’d eaten her dad’s “world famous” smoked turkey and all the trimmings at Thanksgiving dinner, Belle sweet-talked him into stringing up lights and decorating a fat little blue spruce at her apartment. The next day they bought a tree for his house and he hung a wreath on the door for the first time in countless Christmases.

He was taking time, smelling roses, living life to the fullest—experiencing every wonderful cliché in the universe. At some point, he had allowed the Americans’ punishing Puritan work ethic to control his life to the point where he was putting in more time than any American on the company’s staff. Thanks to Belle, these days he could be found in his office much less frequently. With her at the center of his days instead of work, life was colorful and fun.

Or it had been. Until today.

Valentine’s Day lunch with Belle had been a fiasco. After he dropped his menu under the table, spilled ketchup on himself, and burped loud enough to turn the heads of the patrons in the booth behind them, Belle had surprised him with a new pair of cufflinks. The twin hearts were a sweet echo of her first present to him—the antique book cufflinks that had become his instant favorites last New Year’s Eve—but he’d barely managed to utter a thank you.

What had he been thinking, taking her around the corner to the local diner for Valentine’s Day? Belle deserved a quiet, private, romantic date where he could shower her with all the affection and attention she deserved.

Somewhere between placing their orders and the blessed arrival of the check, she’d gone quiet and started gnawing her lip, a sure sign she was disappointed. The unnerving silence stretched between them for the rest of the lunch hour, multiplying his terror. After his awkwardness today, she might not want to spend any holidays with him anymore, let alone the rest of Valentine’s Day.  

And after a full year of special days spent together, he knew the only holiday Belle loved almost as much as Christmas was Valentine’s Day. Yesterday, she’d burst into his office carrying armfuls of streamers strung together from paper hearts and taped them all over his walls and windows. Love links she pronounced them, and looking at the cheerful red, pink, and white construction paper chains, he couldn’t have agreed more.

“What can I say, I’m in love with love,” she’d teased, rocking up on the balls of her feet to kiss him.

It suddenly occurred to him that of all the wonderful holiday traditions they had established as a couple, every one of them had been Belle’s idea. The barbecues, the fireworks, the decorations—all came from the heart and mind of Belle French.

He wanted to do something impulsively wonderful for her in return—give her something he couldn’t find in any store. Seeing her homemade streamers hanging in his office this morning inspired him, and he’d spent every minute from his first 6 a.m. cup of coffee until lunchtime making his surprise.

Now that it was time to take action, he was a bundle of nerves. What if she hated it? Rejected it? Told him she couldn’t accept a bumbling idiot who couldn’t get through lunch without embarrassing himself and her in the process?

“Then I’ll just move to another continent,” he muttered. He straightened his tie, took a deep breath, and picked up the jar.

Gold reappeared, looking more serious than ever, and reentered the whining elevator. He hadn’t been gone more than two minutes, but for Belle, it may as well have been two years.

He was holding one hand behind his back and her heart thudded in quick, nervous beats. Rational thought had been drowned out by the rabbit hole of paranoia she had fallen down. Like a pinball machine, her mind ricocheted from scenario to scenario. She couldn’t stop going to bed with Gold one day and wake up and work with him the next.

Quitting would be her only option, and the non-compete she signed back when she joined the firm would make finding another job heinous.

There was also the tiny problem that she was head-over-heels in love with him.

With the butt of his cane, Gold smacked the emergency button, shutting up the whining Dinosaur and keeping the doors open. “Little trick I learned,” he said with a wink.

She tried to smile but it felt more like a grimace and her lips stung from biting down on them.

From behind his back, he produced a glass jar stuffed full of pink slips of paper covered in black ink. Belle frowned in confusion.

He thrust the jar toward her, a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. “Open this, please.”

Curiosity flared to life, and Belle wrapped her hands around the cool glass. “What is it?”

“Open it and find out.” His voice shook as he spoke.

Trembling, she unscrewed the lid and pulled out one of the little rectangles, her heart hammering and her mouth dry. “‘I love the way you drink tea,’” she read out loud. She took out another slip of paper and unfolded it. “‘I love your curiosity and enthusiasm for life.’”

There were dozens of them, each covered in his distinctive, spidery scrawl. Belle was awestruck. It was the sweetest, most beautiful gift she could have imagined. And when she looked up to tell him so, he was kneeling in the middle of the elevator, his cane on the floor next to him.

“Darach,” she whispered, drawing the precious jar back against her chest, “what are you doing?”

“I couldn’t decide what to say, so I started writing down all the reasons why I love you.” He offered her a lopsided smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “There are so many wonderful things about you, Belle. So I decided to keep going. By the time I was finished, I’d written one for every single day of the year from now until next Valentine’s Day.”

He took a small, leather box from his jacket pocket.

“Are you...is this?” She clutched the jar, tears of relief and joy springing to her eyes. “I thought you might be sick or leaving the firm or even…” She swallowed, embarrassed by her lack of faith in him in light of such a beautiful present. “I thought maybe you were breaking up with me.”

“Sweetheart, no. Never.” He gazed up at her from his place on the floor, his heart in his eyes. “I’m so sorry I worried you. I would never do anything like decide to move away without discussing it with you first. And if I were sick, you would be the first to know. I was trying to be spontaneous and I suppose, well, I suppose I was a bit frazzled.”

“Only a little,” she acknowledged, beaming. Already her fears and misgivings were melting away, like icicles in the sunshine. He’d been preoccupied with surprising her, the sweet, darling man. “I’m sorry, too. I guess I went kinda crazy there for a while.”

“This is what Gold is like when he gets nervous,” Regina called out, reminding them that the entire team was watching Gold’s proposal and hanging on every word of their conversation. “Welcome to my life, people.”

“Thank you, Regina.” Gold’s mocking tone echoed through the office. “Subtlety never has been your strong suit, dearie.”

Everyone laughed, shattering what was left of the tension.

He held up the little box in his palm. “Belle, I’ve been carrying this around for weeks, waiting for the perfect moment. But there’s no such thing, so today is the day.”

“I called your parents last night,” he added in a rush. “To let them know. Your dad laughed and said I was asking the wrong person’s permission. Your mother cried into the phone the entire time, so I think she was pleased?”

Belle laughed while fat tears rolled down her cheeks. “Was that the ‘emergency conference call’ that had you running away from me in the rain?”

“It was.” He nodded sheepishly. “Would you put down the jar for a minute, sweetheart? I want to ask you a question.”

Legs wobbling, she did as he asked and he took her hands, his thumbs massaging her wrists in gentle circles. She couldn’t believe he was proposing and she was giddy with excitement.

“Belle, my life has been nothing but wonderful since you came into it. My one and only regret is that it took me so long to see what was right in front of me. I know this is our second Valentine’s Day as a couple, but I hope it will be our first Valentine’s Day as an engaged couple. Nothing would make me happier than spending the rest of my life loving you and celebrating all the holidays with you as my wife.” He paused to press his thumbs against her pulse, which was thudding like mad. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” She helped him to his feet, laughing and crying while he slid the ring on her finger, a rose-cut center diamond set in rose gold and surrounded by a double halo of diamonds. She flung herself into his arms, sending him careening back against the wall of the elevator, the Dinosaur thumping in protest at being abused. “Yes!” she shouted again, “I would love to marry you.”

The office broke out in cheers and applause. Regina was grinning from ear-to-ear, Ruby was whistling and waving, and David cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone to shout, “It’s about time!”

Gold tucked her against his side and leaned down to whisper in her ear, trying to be heard over the shouts of the team. “We’ve certainly made a spectacle of ourselves today, haven’t we, Miss French?”

“Thanks to you, Mr. Gold.” Belle tightened her arms around his waist, clinging to him with all her might. She wasn’t going to let him go anytime soon.

“Well, I figured if you were going to make the grand gesture of falling out of the elevator and into my arms on New Year’s Eve, I owed you a very spectacular, very public marriage proposal on Valentine’s Day.” His dancing dimples told her he was quite pleased with himself.   

“You don’t owe me anything of the sort.” She slid her hand up his arm and into his hair, rubbing the back of his neck the way she knew he loved. “And you don’t have to be spontaneous to make me happy. I love you exactly the way you are, Darach. Plans, glares, ties covered in ketchup and all.”

“Even when I douse you in iced tea?”

She leaned in for another kiss. “Especially then.”

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