Conspiracy Afloat (RSS)

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still-searching47:

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Synopsis: When Mr. Gold buys Storybrooke marina, one of the marina’s few permanent residents, Belle French, swears he won’t get away with it. She sets sail and anchors in a remote cove and that night Belle witnesses a murder. At first light she returns to the marina to report it … but nobody believes her. Gold’s purchase of the marina now takes on even more sinister implications, and her growing attraction towards him only complicates matters. Vowing to investigate herself, if the sheriffs won’t, Belle soon starts to unravel a town-wide conspiracy.

Prompt: Conspiracy
Theory/Secret Society AU

Note: Banner by the lovely @rowofstars – thank you so much, you are awesome! 🙂

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@little-inkstone it was me, I was your Santa! Did you guess? 🙂

Anyway, I tried to include, or at least reference, all the things you said you liked e.g. Drova, Red Cricket, Granny, your smut preferences etc. I’m not so good at the pining, but there’s bed sharing and a tiny bit of fake relationship going on. I also got a small amount of inspiration from this prompt aesthetic as well.

Your gift comes in several parts and it’s all on AO3 because it came to just over a combined 31k words. I called the verse ‘Love at the Marina’ and the verse contains:
Conspiracy Afloat (Seven Chapters, Main fic)
Trouble Sleeping (Oneshot, nsfw)
Unending Conspiracy (Oneshot, prompt and ficlet collection)

I really hope you like it! It’s been fantastic chatting with you these past weeks, thank you for being so friendly and nice. This fic was a bit of a departure from my normal style because the main fic was told entirely from Belle’s POV. Usually I swap between characters like mad, but I realized once I hit chapter three that I hadn’t switched, so figured I should leave it that way. Due to the single POV, there is a couple of extra oneshots, from Gold’s POV. I would have done more but I ran out of time.

Thank you again for being the best giftee ever!

“We could just share; we are both adults after all.”

Heh, heh, yeah, we know how that’s gonna turn out. Even putting a rolled up blanket down the middle of the bed didn’t stop Belle from draping herself half over Gold while she slept and having a very interesting awakening. Awkward boners ftw!

The story started off pretty slow, as most long fics do, and I was about to decide it wasn’t for me until I reached the last couple of sentences of the first chapter. Then I couldn’t have stopped for the world. I needed to know what had happened, and why! This was a very tense thriller, and I never had any idea who to trust. I gave Belle credit for not jumping to the conclusion that Killian was involved just because she saw his boat, but then I wondered if maybe that was a red herring and he was involved after all. And then Graham, Graham is usually a good guy in fics, but he wasn’t trying to do anything to investigate her claims.  I suspected Gold at first. And at that one point where Belle went to look for Leroy and didn’t see him immediately, I was prepared for her to find him murdered as well! Since I had no idea why Billy had been killed, who knew who was in danger?  I was thankful when Gold stopped being a scary potential killer, and turned rapidly into an ally.  One of the hottest things I’ve ever read was when Belle realised that he’d stripped off his own undershirt so that she could have a t-shirt to wear. I LOVED THAT. As I did the happy fluffy ending with Neal and Emma and Henry visiting. (And yes, Belle needs to buy him a t-shirt or two. Since she’s the captain of her boat, she should get him one that reads “First Mate”. *snickers*)

Nice smutty interlude – I wondered if Gold had really been asleep or not – and I liked the explanation for his short hair! So sweet.

Heh the bedsharing trope never gets old 🙂 Thank you so much for this amazing review! Your reaction was exactly what I was hoping people would feel. To be honest I don’t think Graham is so much a bad guy, but like in canon he’s been compromised so he doesn’t have much of a choice. It’s one of those slippery slopes things. Oh yeah Gold taking off his own shirt and Belle sniffing it and it was still warm 🙂 I am so happy that you liked it, thank you so very much!

You know, I realised that you never said exactly what Cora’s criminal activities were or why Billy got killed. *Looks stern* Fill in this hole, please. (Money laundering? Nice and vague. Was Billy involved in whatever was going on and idk, try to steal something extra for himself? Or did he stumble on something and threaten to tell David?)

Yeah I know I didn’t have time to go into the detail I would have liked. This story could easily have been 50k+ as I had subplot ideas which I started to hint at and then had to drop because of the deadline. I have a lot of backstory which didn’t get used.

I’m afraid the answer to Cora’s criminal activities isn’t very exciting. With Cora it’s mostly corruption. She runs a construction company, so she uses the Queen of Hearts to compromise people in power, such as council men, who can then award her contracts or get land approved for development. That is something that there has long been rumors about. The corruption goes further though, cheaper substandard materials and billing for higher price ones, lots of regulations ignored.

Basically anywhere she can cut corners and make more money she does it. In addition there is money laundering going on, tax evasion and ‘creative accounting’ and basically a lot of white collar fraud. Billy wasn’t involved, but he overheard something he shouldn’t have. He drove somebody when Killian should have done it, which is why Killian ‘took care’ of him because it was his mistake. Billy had no intention of going to the cops, he’d seen Sheriff Graham in the club enough to know he couldn’t trust him. He was attempting to flee town when Killian found him.