#rumbelle is hope

Summary:  David talks Gold into attending Storybrooke’s annual spring fair, and Belle has to sit in Gold’s lap in the car on the way there. Notes: For @rumbelleishope, an excuse for awkward Rumbelle mutual pining and Charming Gold friendship moments. Part of Cufflinks, but you don’t have to read the series. Rating: T

On AO3

Gold peered at his laptop screen with a frown.

The error-riddled marketing proposal for Seven Dwarves Landscaping wasn’t going to correct itself, but the juicy crunching sound coming from his doorway wasn’t going away, either. Someone was eating right outside his office.

With a disgusted sigh, he pushed up the glasses that had slid down the bridge of his nose. This would be the last time he tried to work with the door open. Open door policy indeed. Regina and he were overdue for another conversation about office dynamics. It would be short, simple, and to-the-point: he would make the rules and everyone else could follow them.

He clenched his jaw and tapped the keyboard with renewed vengeance, hoping to drown out the annoying noise.

Finally, the crunching abated. Blessed silence. And then, “Hey, Mr. Gold.”

“Nolan, you chew like a Missouri fox trotter,” he said, without taking his attention from the screen.

Summary: Following on from ‘An Appreciation of Chocolate Cake’, Weaver and Belle are now dating, and he helps her in the bakery one evening.

Written for the @a-monthly-rumbelling prompt: cooking/baking together, and my contribution to @rumbelleishope.

Rated: T

An Appreciation of Brownie Batter

There were some distinct advantages to dating a baker, although Weaver’s waistline did not necessarily agree with him. He was certainly much more popular at the station now that he was keeping them all in baked goods on the regular, but Rogers’ suggestion that he get more exercise to counteract all the muffins was starting to make sense.

He wondered how Belle managed to stay so petite with all the temptations that she made every day. Perhaps being surrounded by sugar and chocolate all day decreased her appetite for them. After all, it wouldn’t be good business sense to be eating all her stock before it could be sold. 

The main advantage to dating Belle, however, was not the fact that he could have chocolate cake pretty much whenever he wanted, but that Belle was Belle, and she was easily the most wonderful woman that Weaver had ever met.

My long-promised homage to @worryinglyinnocent‘s Playtime ‘verse, because she managed to write fifty installments without doing hippies, and I had to rectify that. Also my contribution to @rumbelleishope. Rated E. 

***

The large cardboard box bearing items from the estate sale was like a time capsule from the late 1960s. Gold sorts through the items, fond memories of his early childhood stirred by such things as the beaded curtain and concert posters and the heavy stack of albums, their cardboard covers worn along the edges but still bright with the distinctive graphics of the era. The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Iron Butterfly. Donovan, too, Glasgow-born like himself. He can hear them in his head, like a soundtrack to the Summer of Love, and he wonders if Belle will like any of them. He’s fairly certain that she’ll like the clothes, and holds up a loose, flowing smock with wide sleeves and delicate flowers embroidered around the neckline and hem.  It’s a pretty thing, and he can easily see Belle wearing it, hopes that she’ll want to.

Methodically he sorts through the contents of the box, dividing everything into three piles. One to be priced and sold – the two posters were what had drawn him to bid on this lot in the first place, and he knows that he can sell them for a pretty penny – one of things he thinks Belle might be interested in, and one of a few items of clothing that he looks at doubtfully, unsure if he wants them to fit or not. But he thinks of Belle in the short dress, thinks of surprising her with a scenario they haven’t played out yet, knows he won’t regret any temporary feelings of silliness at wearing what are, after all, fairly normal clothes compared to some of the things he’s put on for her. Making up his mind, he goes into the shop’s small bathroom and locks the door.

For Rumbelle is Hope

Summary: After a delightful conversation with Mr. Gold at a Ball given by her cousins and protectors, Lord and Lady Blanchard, Lady Belle in a moment of impulse invited him to call. Now she must deal with opinions of the household as to the propriety of having a lowborn tradesman calling upon her, and her own growing fascination with the man.

This is a followup to Getting Above Himself

…

Belle had some trepidation about telling Regina she had extended an invitation for Mr. Gold to call on them.

Regina had complained at length when Cousin Leo insisted Mr. Gold be invited to dinner and later to the Ball. Calling the man, “… a vulgar, lowborn, Scottish barbarian”.

Mary Margaret, who by this time should really have learned to interpret her stepmother’s invectives more realistically, had expected the man to come to dinner bare chested in a kilt and eat with his dirk. The young woman was a touch disappointed when he arrived clothed in immaculate and clearly expensive evening wear. So was Mrs. Green. For, Belle suspected, far less innocent reasons.

Oh, lord, your mod has lost one of her two braincells (probably in grocery store panic, tbh). I forgot that the event is due!

BUT YES! Your beautiful creations are due this weekend!

When you post, please tag “Rumbelle is Hope” first so that we can find it in the tags! We’ll be reblogging your fic and art to the @rumbelleishope blog, so this is important!

We’re living through some… let’s call it “interesting” times right now, and hope is the one thing we need in spades. How does a Rumbelle is Hope event sound? It’s been a while. And we Rumbellers have historically been pretty good at bolstering hope.

Let’s talk about possible due dates.

April 11-12 weekend April 18-19 weekend April 25-26 weekend

For the 2019 Rumbelle is Hope event

Summary: Her father wanted her to make an ‘appropriate’ connection and give him grandchildren. Her chaperon would be a happy if she would just find a suitable hobby like watercolors. Belle though wants to find a way to indulge her talent for detection. Pity the one Scotland Yard Detective who will let her is on medical leave.

The morning post had brought the usual collection of invitations to dinners, luncheons and balls from matchmaking society grand dames hopeful of securing the Marchlands fortune for their sons, grandsons or nephews. Belle set aside an invitation from the Frost girls to accompany them to a lecture by Mrs. Besant on Theosophy presented by the Fabian Society and sorted the rest on a scale of indescribably dull to possibly interesting enough to attend to satisfy her father’s insistence that she spend some time in society.

Papa still had hopes of her making an ‘appropriate’ connection and settling into staid matronhood. Presenting him with a batch of grandchildren to brag about at his club. Belle had no intention of turning her fortune and her life over to any of the mindless young men her father regarded as appropriate. But she had found that one society function a week kept her father happy and left her free to indulge in more interesting past times the rest of the time.

Not that she had much opportunity to indulge of late. That idiot Inspector Jones had been in charge of the only mystery she had come across. When he had not been mocking her as a bluestocking, he had been trying to take liberties.