#poured all of my neuroses in this one yep

[mediumgayitalian]

“Can I come over tomorrow?”

Nico’s hands still on the stubborn pillowcase. “To…my cabin?”

“Yes.”

“Um.” He resumes, sliding slowly away from Will’s wide round eyes, stuffing the puffy square of feathers into its fabric prison. The ghost of geese past are not happy with him. He is their prince. They will submit. “Yeah? You could all those other times, too.”

“Yeah, but I want to come over.”

“Yes,” Nico agrees, wondering if this is perhaps one of those moments Kayla warned him about. Has it reached day five of Will not sleeping? He doesn’t think so. He was napping when Nico came into the infirmary this morning to help with the tidying he promised to do. At least he was drooling enough that Nico hopes he was sleeping. “You mentioned.”

“So I can?”

“Yes, Will.”

Maybe it’s just an American thing. Nico has been noticing some Moments lately. He’s not sure if all teenagers have unanimously decided on some code they’d like to speak in during the few months he was busy defeating his great grandmother, or if maybe he’s finally stuck around long enough to notice, but nobody says what they mean, nowadays.

(He has gathered, thus far, that ‘on fleek’ is a synonym for ‘aflame’, although ‘yeet’ continues to evade him. Perhaps because Cecil and Lou appear to have indulged in the sick delight of replacing their every word with the term with the sole purpose to Confuse. Or perhaps, as Will has so indicated, they have each endured one concussion to many and are beyond any hope.)

“Sick!” That one Nico knows, at least. “I’ll come by after my morning shift? Connor got cursed by the Hypnos, Hecate, and Aphrodite cabins this morning so I have to do brain surgery before he forgets how to feel genuine human connection again, but I’ll be done by noon. Probably. I mean, Connor has a thick skull, genuinely I mean, which is why his lobotomy has been delayed so many times, but so long as I —”

It has been under Nico’s notice lately that Will eyes, genuinely, sparkle. He has read the cliche time and time again and rolled his eyes almost every time: diamonds sparkle. Water sparkles. Snow sparkles. Eyes reflect, and sometimes glow with reflection. They do not sparkle. To claim a set of eyes are sparkling is to profess to the world and all capable of registering your words that you are a brainless idiot who cannot dredge up from the depths of your mind, the most barren and bereft back corners, a single unique or clever comparison; a minutely original way to describe excitement or animation.

And yet.

Will is indeed very animated, and very excited about very many things, and it shows on his face; in the wideness of his grins, the springing mass of his curls, the stilted and flailing gilt of his languid limbs. It also shows, perhaps most obviously, in his genuinely magnificent eyes — Nico has seen the Logan Sapphire. He has touched the precious thing with reverent hands, stared in awe as it thrust out the light shine upon it like the golden ichor of Ouranous swirling with the sweet saltwater to birth Love Incarnate. He knows glittering, he knows gleaming, shimmering and shining and twinkling.

Will’s eyes sparkle, like the very tip of a mountaintop, like the crackling ends of a flame, like dewdrops on spider silk. It is transfixing. It is alluring.

“—ico. Nico! Hello-o?”

It is also a trap.

“Sounds great,” Nico says loudly, voice like cold soda over vanilla ice cream. He clears his throat, twice, to no avail. His vision begins to blur as the heat pouring off of his face warps the air. “Um. See you then?”

Will nods, or at least Nico hopes he does. His curls bounce, anyway. They are hard to miss. They remind Nico tangentially of how laughter sounds, unimpeded by shame; how the shimmering satin of a ribbon would curl and bend under the smooth slide of the scissor’s blade.

(His father’s circuit of jesters often included poets playwrights. They also doubled as Nico’s babysitters. Surely no lasting consequences, that.)

“Yes!” He flashes a smile, then, and it becomes imperative to note that his eyes squint at the force of it, and his slightly-too-big teeth brush his bottom lip, and he has, in fact, on each cheek, a dimple.

Now, Will is often and even frequently called Apollo Junior by just about every living soul in camp, up to and including Immortal Camp Director And Horse, Chiron; and uproariously once even Mr D, God of Wine. Allegedly, as taunted by Kayla, even by Will’s own mother. The golden hair and unfortunate habit of winking and legs for days do most definitely create an image.

Nico, however, contrarian he be, must deny: he has seen Apollo. Apollo is beautiful and golden and charming, but Will is not quite his spitting image. Will, more aptly, is the son of the Sun. He glows; the glare of his smile leaves impressions behind in the cells one’s eyes, the glide of his limbs is almost dragging, languid. To look at him is to commit yourself to blinding. To seek so desperately the solace of the light as to ignore the unsettling sting of the burn.

“I can’t wait!”

As a blissful cloud moving in front of the solar system’s brightest star saves your eyes the eternal fate of darkness, Will’s duty so saves Nico from an eternity of shadow. He returns, humming softly and horribly, to his work, sifting through folders and updating patient files, and Nico exhales the breath setting foundations in his lungs, slumping forward in fervent relief. A melancholic reprieve from the summer rays, if only for a moment.

He waves goodbye, or at least he hopes that he does, rushing out the infirmary doors and tripping down the rickety porch steps.

“Hurrying somewhere, Nicholas Claus?” drawls Mr. D, throwing darts a perilously balanced apple atop the horns of a satyr bleating in morse code.

“That was not even an attempt,” responds Nico, and hurries away before he can be dolphinized. Dolphinified? Made into a bottle-nosed beast. (Why bottle? Of all comparisons to make, who decided bottles were the utmost separate object to which the snout of the slippery beasts should be named? Oh, wait, drunk people. Bottles. Okay. Mystery solved.)

He manages, in his heroic retreat across the common, not to destroy entire swathes of grass and plants, a feat for which the Muses could perhaps write epics about. Truly he is capable of the utmost restraint and self-control. He does raise several full sized wolf skeletons, but they seem primarily preoccupied with hunting down the the Stolls, so a win-win as far as Nico is concerned. Probably not for Connor, who is apparently cursed or concussed, he doesn’t remember exactly, but he has managed thus far with his startling amount of daily braincell loss so by statistic and happenstance he is bound to survive another incident.

“There has to be away to shut myself off,” Nico says, out loud to himself, proceeding the slam of his cabin door and the heavy breathing upon it. He turns to his altar. “You mentioned an off button, Father. I don’t suppose it has been successfully implemented.”

No answer comes forth. He indulges in a brief moment of self pity, wherein the Nico who lives in his brain clears his throat, digs around the messy confines of his mind to find an imaginary black hoodie, slips it on, digs around again for a dagger, and stabs himself, choking and twitching pitifully. Real Nico then walks with great purpose to the exact geological centre of the stone cabin.

“Okay,” he says again. He nods, once, narrowing his eyes in determination. The Nico in his brain opens one curious eyelid. (Does Will do psychiatric assessments?) “Okay, this is. Hm.”

It is not the first time they have been alone together, after all.

In the weeks following Gaea’s defeat and Will Solace’s nonstop, irritating persistence, Nico has been thrust in his proximity an incredible number of times. From his three day stay, during which he was simply so unconscious for so long his father was concerned enough to manifest onto the mortal plane and poke at his soul until he responded, to his unofficial indoctrination (ha) as a nurse, to camp clean-up efforts, to cabin renovation, to general life — they have become friends. Coworkers, at least. Together they make the camp a little more bearable for everyone in it, including Nico. It is rewarding work. It is illuminating work; Will is a good teacher, and he is funny, and he is good company (and he happens to have very long legs that he does not bother to cover up very often and Nico has eyes that do what they please). They have been in Nico’s cabin together several times over the last few weeks.

Never before has Will come over without some kind of stated purpose.

At least, not and absence he has made so obvious. True, the renovations took longer than expected, and the paint on the east wall is smudged from where Nico shoved Will, shrieking, off the stepstool, and they have perhaps, on occasion, used Nico’s illegal Wii when they were meant to be helping Annabeth make plans for Capture the Flag, but —

But.

Intent.

Is important.

It has been made abundantly clear to Nico over the summer that he has friends upon which he can rely. Reyna has made a point to Iris Message him at whatever Roman tryhard time she believes he should be awake, prompting an attempted murderous shadow travel that left him unconcious in Missouri and at the unfortunate end of many people’s shouting. And Will’s friends, who can perhaps at this point be called his friends also, have created a game entitled “How Many Grapes Can We Flick At Nico During Lunch Before He Goes Ballistic And Sends Us To Purgatory For A Little While” (four), which they are inclined and inspired to play every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Piper enjoys dragging him around to do Things. Jason is just around constantly. (Does he sleep? Nico should check on that properly.)

He had a point, somewhere. He’s sure he did.

It was maybe the impending anxiety attack, helpfully informs Brain Nico.

“Ah,” regular Nico replies, then grapples around for his least favourite pillow, slams it into his face, and screams at the top of his lungs for several minutes.

Brain Nico decides once again that commentary is the way.

I think we are an all powerful demigod of something, he muses. Dirt, maybe? Bad vibes? I can’t quite remember.

“The dead?” inquires regular Nico.

Do you think those years isolated in the Labyrinth perhaps situated us firmly on the shores of mentally unwell? responds he, blissfully unhelpful.

“I think that was Tartarus, actually,” says regular Nico, and promptly banishes his brain self to the deepest recesses of his mind, among memories of the taste of liquid fire and Calculus.

With the remaining, functioning (well.) part of his brain, he places both palms on the cool floor and attempts to focus.

Juicy Fruit It gets right to ya Juicy salt Hmmm Juicy Fruit, The taste the taste that’s —

For the love of all holy things, Nico begs his brain. It doesn’t work, but what ever really goes right in his life, so he pushes past the increasingly louder replays of eighties commercial jingles and maps out the ground below the cabin floor, pushes through the layers of underground.

Ah. Perfect.

He pulls up the very aptly placed skeleton of a cat, letting it scratch and sniff about his cabin before cautiously approaching him.

“You will be sure to tell it to me straight,” Nico says solemnly, holding out his hand. The cat bobs its nasal cavities in and out of Nico’s fingers and, apparently deciding him to be worthy of its attention, rams its skull against his knuckles. Nico snorts, running a fingernail along its cranial sutures and grinning as its purring echoes in his mind. “You seem very wise.”

The cat’s caudal vertebrae rattle in indignation, miffed at the mere idea that it could be anything other than wise. Nico is honestly quite impressed by its ability to glare without actual eyeballs, eyelids, or thought power.

“I am going to name you after my sister and pray that’s not weird,” Nico says. “I mean, I don’t think she would mind. You’re pretty cool, actually, and Hazel’s cool, kind of, so. Win win.”

Hazel the Cat seems unbothered by her christening, curling up in Nico’s lap. He runs his hand from cranial base to coccyx, finger dipping and bumping along the ridges of her spines, and settles against the cool floor, attempting to breathe evenly.

“It’s just.” He swallows. It takes a try or two, to work around the massive stone borrowed in his throat, and Hazel the Cat nips playfully at his fingers until his lungs settle again. “Before we had something to do, you know? We’d be cutting bandages, and he’d be all, hey, did you know bandages are mentioned in one of the first ever medical manuscripts and definitely predate it by many hundreds of years, and I would say I did, actually, I talked to the guy who made that clay tablet, and his eyes would get all wide and he’d be like no way, tell me everything, and then I would just talk forever.” Nico huffs. “We had something to talk about, you understand. Something to do.”

Nico tries to imagine what Hazel his Sister would say. Probably something along the lines of you are an impossible person, which is code for I have about as much luck as you do in this century, pal, the best I’ve got is hope for the best and remember adults no longer smack you for standing wrong. Which. Fair.

Hazel the Cat just purrs in his head again. It’s as encouraging as anything, he supposes.

“Am I supposed to have…conversation starters? He likes twizzlers and intentionally bad poetry. Maybe I could do something with that?”

Hazel the Cat shrugs at him.

“It’s not even — okay, it’s not just that, though. What is — how close is close enough in a casual setting? Or too close? How am I meant to greet him? Am I supposed to offer something? Make something? What do I do if there’s a lull in conversation? Or if it’s all lulls? Oh, gods, how much silence is socially appropriate —”

Hazel the Cat twists in his hold, meeting his eyes as if to say well I don’t think you’ll be struggling with that last one.

“Shush,” he tells her, but his mouth is twitching. “I’m just — I don’t want him to finally realize I’m weird. Or boring, gods. He’s such a hyper person, you know? He never stops. And I am supposed to entertain him! I think!”

This time he can actually hear his sister’s voice, in the back of his mind — you’re such a dummy. Ringed with fondness from the many times she’s said it to him, shoulders nudged carefully together, head knocked gently against his. You are weird and boring. Most people are.

“Ugh,” he sighs, tipping his head back until it rests against the mattress. “Friendship is hard work.”

Hazel the Cat swishes her tail, rattling the discs of bone like a rattlesnake. It’s a surprisingly soothing sound, like rain pinging softly against his window, or the flutter of the poplar trees outside of his father’s palace. Unconsciously he matches his breathing to it, slowing until it’s even, gentle, deep. His eyes, without any direction from his brain, drift until they blanket his hazy eyes, heavy as stone..

“S’not that serious,” he murmurs to himself, soothed under the weight of his feline friend. “S’just Will, I guess.” A beat. He smiles, slightly, a small, curling thing, mimicking the coiled heat in his belly. “It’s just Will.”

———

part two

[unfolded73]

This Graceful Path (1/19)

Summary: Emma has just moved in with Mary Margaret and started working as a deputy in the Storybrooke sheriff's department when she meets Killian Jones, the town's introverted harbormaster. When a prominent Storybrooke resident is found murdered, Emma tries to juggle solving the case with new friendships, parenthood, and romance. A Season 1 Cursed!Killian AU.

Rating: Explicit per CSBB guidelines (violence, sex). If you are someone who uses my usual distinction between M and E to decide whether to read something I wrote, this is more of an M on unfolded73's scale. The sex, when we get there, is not extremely graphic in nature. Same with the violence.

Content Warning: This fic contains two major character deaths, one of which is S1 canon and one of which is not but happens early in the story.

Total word count: ~ 75,000

Acknowledgements: Thank you to @j-philly-b for betaing this monstrosity. Thank you to @caprelloidea for all of the read-throughs and cheerleading; not sure I could have written it without your excitement early on. Thank you to @teruel-a-witch for the original prompt on tumblr which sparked this fic. Thank you to @pompeiiablaze for the wonderful art which will accompany later chapters. Thanks to the CSBB mods ( @sambethe in particular, who had to look at my check-ins) for your support and for enduring my neuroses.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 -- AO3 Link

Chapter 1

Emma Swan awoke, and for a moment was disoriented, confused as to where she was sleeping. She blinked up at the whitewashed ceiling, the boards rising in a slant above her head, and remembered: she was someone’s roommate now. Mary Margaret Blanchard’s roommate, to be precise, the kind school teacher who had offered her the spare room in her loft apartment.

The sound of a pan clanging on the stove top below reaching her ears, Emma sat up, her sleep-tangled blonde hair falling in her face. Spare “room” was a bit of a misnomer, actually; spare upstairs landing was more like it. While her bed was far enough against the outside wall to not be visible to anyone downstairs, she really only had to stand up and shuffle forward a few steps in order to survey the whole of the apartment from over the railing that divided her sleeping area from the wide open space of the loft.

She’d been here for three days now, and Mary Margaret was the definition of a kind and accommodating roommate. It was a little bit creepy how kind and accommodating she was, to be honest. Glancing at the clock, Emma groaned at the fact that it was only 6:45, and she flopped back down on the bed, squeezing her eyes shut.

First day at your new job, she remembered, grimacing. She’d said yes to the deputy sheriff job on a whim, figuring why the hell not, but her thoughts and dreams during a restless night of sleep had done a fantastic job demonstrating to her exactly why the hell not. Being a bail bondsperson was not the same thing as being a law enforcement professional. Sure, Storybrooke was a small town, where the most she would probably have to deal with was teenagers loitering or that Leroy guy getting into trouble down at the local bar, but on the other hand, Storybrooke was weird. And sure, Sheriff Graham Humbert was a nice guy and easy on the eyes, but working for the sheriff’s department meant working for Regina Mills. That was bound to be trouble.

Realizing there was little chance of falling back to sleep, Emma threw the covers back and made her way downstairs.

The metal steps that led down to the main part of the loft were icy under her bare feet, and Emma shivered as she descended, the air cooler down here than it had been up in her bedroom. She rubbed her arms, glancing down at her tank top and her one threadbare pair of yoga pants that doubled as pajamas. Once she got a paycheck, she’d have to see about getting some more pajamas. And some more of everything else, probably.

“Good morning!” Mary Margaret called from the kitchen, her face bright and shining. “Do you want some eggs?”

“Don’t go to any trouble,” Emma said.

“It’s no trouble.”

“I’m actually not usually hungry when I first wake up,” Emma explained, sitting in one of the two mismatched barstools that faced the kitchen. Much of the apartment’s furnishings seemed to have been cobbled together from yard sales and secondhand shops, which was an aesthetic Emma could respect.

She watched Mary Margaret’s hands work as she cracked an egg into a bowl and whisked it. Everything about Mary Margaret was perfectly put together, even at this hour of the morning, from her adorable pixie haircut to her neatly pressed dress to the ballet flats on her feet. Mary Margaret was, she had to admit, the kind of person that Emma would have taken an instant dislike to in another context. The fact that she didn’t find her ray of sunshine roommate to be annoying was… actually quite puzzling, now that she thought about it.

“Did you get all two of your boxes unpacked?” Mary Margaret asked with a smirk. Emma’s boxes of meager possessions had arrived from Boston yesterday, thanks to the superintendent of her building there and the crush he had on her. It had been a pre-furnished apartment, rented on a whim fairly recently, and most of her paycheck had gone to the rent without much left over for buying stuff to fill it. So other than a few clothes and a box of mementos, there was little Emma owned.

“I did,” Emma confirmed. “And hey, thanks again for—”

“You can stop thanking me, Emma, it’s nice having you here. It was a bit lonely, living here by myself.” Mary Margaret turned and poured her egg into the waiting pan. “I'm not sure I'm suited for it… living alone. It’s always felt wrong.”

“Not for me. After all the group homes I lived in, living alone was a dream come true. Not that I don't like it here, I do,” Emma added hastily.

Mary Margaret put her scrambled eggs on a plate as the toaster popped with two perfectly toasted pieces of bread. When she offered Emma one of them, despite her earlier refusal, she took it. Looking at Mary Margaret’s breakfast was making her a little bit hungry after all. “Is what Henry said true?” Mary Margaret asked. “That you were left by the side of the road as a baby?”

“Yep, and I’ve seen the newspaper clippings to prove it,” Emma replied, trying her best to sound fine with it. “A kid found me and took me to a nearby diner before I froze to death or, you know, starved or whatever. They couldn’t identify who my parents were, and I ended up in the foster system.”

“And you weren’t ever adopted?”

��Nope.” Emma took a bite of her toast. “It was foster family to group home to foster family. I bounced around a lot.”

“Well, you turned out fine.”

Emma snorted. “I guess, if you consider getting pregnant at seventeen ‘fine’. And… other stuff. Look, let’s just say my teen years were complicated and leave it at that.”

“Fair enough.” Mary Margaret gave Emma an encouraging smile. “I’m glad you’re here. I think it will be wonderful for Henry to get to know you. And I’m looking forward to getting to know you too. I don’t really have many friends.”

Recoiling internally, Emma stood up. “You know what, I’d better get ready for my first day at work.” If Mary Margaret was looking for a friend who knew how to do typical girl stuff, like talk about hair and clothes and boys, then she was going to be sorely disappointed. Emma didn’t really know how to be anyone’s friend.

“Sheriff’s deputy, it’s so exciting!” Mary Margaret enthused. “I’m sure you’re gonna do great.”

Emma wasn’t so sure, but she made some kind of noncommittal noise of agreement. She excused herself to the bathroom to take a shower, steeling herself for her morning fight with the finicky hot water. The loft’s lone bathroom contained an old-fashioned claw foot tub which had been retrofitted with a shower head and a flimsy frame for a shower curtain. Emma had learned on her first morning in the apartment that the difference between icy cold water and water hot enough to burn the skin off her bones was a scant millimeter adjustment of the knob. “You’ll get used to it,” Mary Margaret had assured her.

Although the sheriff’s station was a reasonable walk from their apartment, when Emma left, she got behind the wheel of her yellow VW Bug, deciding to drive so as not to be late. She passed a total of three cars between her apartment and her work. Say what you will about Storybrooke, she thought, the lack of traffic was definitely a selling point. As she pulled into a parking space in front of the station, she marveled once again that she was now going to be working for the sheriff who had arrested her, not once but twice, on trumped up charges.

Graham Humbert came out of his glass-walled office to greet her as soon as she entered the empty station. As always, his brown hair was artfully tousled and his scruffy beard was neatly trimmed, and Emma wondered how long he spent each morning perfecting his intentionally neglectful look.

“Emma! Welcome to your first day,” he said. He seemed lighter, happier than usual, as evidenced by the smile he gave her. “I don’t have your uniform or badge sorted out yet, but I figured today you could familiarize yourself with the station and we can start to talk about what your responsibilities will be.” He hooked his thumb into one of belt loops, drawing Emma’s attention down to where his shirt peeked out underneath the hem of his vest.

“After being arrested twice, I’m familiar with the place,” she muttered.

“Ah yes, but to do you know exactly where to kick the copy machine to get it to work, or how to get the coffee machine to brew a pot of coffee without electrocuting you?”

“Are you sure you can afford to pay me a salary?”

Graham chuckled. “Yes, you’ll get your paycheck, don’t worry.”

He spent the next half hour showing her around, teaching her the phone system and explaining generally what a typical day in Storybrooke was like. Which, honestly, sounded so boring that she was a little confused why he even needed a deputy. It sounded like she was going to be spending her days mediating disputes about dogs pooping in neighbors’ yards and stolen recycling bins, with maybe a drunk and disorderly thrown in for flavor once in awhile. Still, a job was a job, especially if she wanted to stay in town and be a part of Henry’s life.

The sheriff’s station itself was a mystery. Everything she could see from her desk — the phones, the computers, the little television with a VHS player up against the far wall — everything looked like it was from another time. Was it Regina’s iron grip on the budget that meant nothing had been replaced in twenty years? Or was Graham indifferent?

“So…” she said as she swiveled back and forth in her desk chair, “you aren’t exactly what I imagine when I think of a small town sheriff.”

“Oh no?” Graham raised his eyebrows. “What do you imagine?”

“You know, older guy, big doughnut belly, not quite so stylishly dressed?” She continued to pivot back and forth, slumping down and giving Graham a once-over. “How did you end up getting this gig, anyway?”

“Mayor Mills just saw something in me, I guess,” he answered, breaking eye contact with her and looking into the middle distance.

Emma paused, waiting for him to say more. When he didn’t, she decided to change the subject. “Speaking of Regina, have you told her you hired me yet?”

Graham glanced down, clearly chastened. “I’ve got a meeting with her tomorrow; I’ll let her know then.”

“Oh boy. Have fun with that.”

“I’ll take care of it, Emma; don’t worry.”

“If you say so.” She leaned forward, taking one of the pencils out of the cup on her desk and tapping it absently against the blotter. “So has anything really bad ever happened here?”

“Like what?”

Emma shrugged. “I don’t know, like a bank robbery or a murder.”

“A murder?” Graham laughed. “No, Emma, there has never been a murder in Storybrooke,” he said with a slightly patronizing tone.

“Hey, weird stuff can go down in small towns like this. Haven’t you ever read a Stephen King book?”

“Can’t say as I have.”

“Well, you should; they’re pretty good if you like horror.” Graham looked at her blankly. While he was clearly capable of carrying on a conversation with her like a normal person, sometimes he behaved so oddly that she didn’t know what to think of him. “Any other characters like Leroy I need to be aware of? People who get in trouble with the law often?”

“Other than yourself?”

“Very funny,” Emma said, returning his smirk with one of her own.

“I think the best thing you can do, Emma, is spend some time out and about in Storybrooke. Walk the streets, go in the shops and introduce yourself, eat at Granny’s. The sooner you make yourself a part of the town, the sooner the town will come to trust you.”

~*~

Graham’s instructions in mind, when it was time for her afternoon break Emma decided to wander over toward Granny’s diner in search of caffeine, shuffling through the autumn leaves that had fallen and collected on the sidewalks and in the gutters. School appeared to be letting out at the same time, and Emma spotted Henry, a little brown-haired boy in a cluster of children in identical school uniforms, at the same time that he saw her. With a big grin breaking out over his face, he ran over to her.

“Cool, are we getting cocoa? Can I have some?” he asked without preamble as she pushed open the door of the diner. Henry followed her in. The collar of his polo shirt was askew and his sweater was dirty, and Emma resisted the urge to reach out and comb the tangles out of his hair with her fingers.

Granny’s was another example of the time-warpy nature of Storybrooke. The waitresses wore costumes that wouldn’t have looked out of place coupled with a pair of roller skates, and even the prices were out of another era. Sure, the cost of living in small-town Maine was lower than in Boston, but this was ridiculous (not that Emma was complaining). The decor was exactly what you would picture if asked to imagine a diner, with the possible exception of the forest-covered wallpaper. The strange wallpaper looked more like an illustration from Henry’s storybook than the kind of thing you’d typically see on the walls of an eating establishment.

“Aren’t you supposed to go straight home after school?” she asked, although she was happy for any opportunity to see Henry. “Regina won’t be happy.”

He shrugged. “Mom won’t be home for at least another hour. I can hang out.” He sat down in one of the booths and looked up at her expectantly until Emma sighed and sat down across from him.

“I’m only on a short break, then I need to get back to the sheriff’s station.”

“You being a deputy is so awesome. And you’re weakening the curse; I can tell.”

Emma suppressed a groan. “How can you tell?”

He ignored her question, because he was already on to something else, and he started ticking things off on his fingers. “So we’ve got Snow White and Prince Charming, I’ve figured out who most of the dwarves are—”

“There are dwarves in Storybrooke now?”

“Well, they don’t look like dwarves,” Henry said.

“No, of course not, that would be ridiculous.”

“They look like regular people, although I think they’re all on the short side. Anyway, Snow White, Prince Charming, dwarves, the Evil Queen, Cinderella, Jiminy Cricket, Geppetto, Red Riding Hood—”

“Who’s Red Riding Hood?”

Henry rolled his eyes and then indicated with a jerk of his head toward the lunch counter. “Ruby,” he said as if it was obvious.

“Right.” She sighed. “Look, Henry, maybe we should talk about something else, like… what did you do at school today?” That was good, she thought. That was the kind of question a parent would ask.

“Nah, nothing interesting happened at school.”

Ruby came over to their booth, and Emma ordered a cocoa for Henry and a coffee to go for herself. Taking in Ruby’s short shorts, she figured the waitress wouldn’t be caught dead in a shapeless red cloak that would cover up her body.

“So if I ask Mary Margaret tonight at home,” Emma continued when Ruby left, “she’ll agree that nothing interesting happened at school?”

Henry released a heavy, put-upon sigh. “I mean we learned stuff, but none of it is as important as Operation Cobra.”

“How about this,” Emma said. “Tell me three things that you did at school today.”

“Okay.” Henry thought about it. “We had a spelling test.”

“How did you do?”

“I aced it,” he said. “Second thing: we worked on fractions in math.”

Emma restrained herself from making a face at the idea of working on fractions. “And a third thing?”

“There was pizza for lunch in the cafeteria, but my mom packs my lunch, so I couldn’t eat it.”

She had to admit, that did all sound pretty dismal compared to the excitement of Operation Cobra. No wonder Henry was retreating into his fairy tale imaginings. School was boring, he seemed to have no friends, and he didn’t get to eat pizza. It wasn’t a surprise the kid had problems.

Ruby dropped off their drinks, giving Henry a kind smile before she left them.

“Look, Henry, maybe there’s something the two of us could do together this weekend if Regina would allow it. Not Operation Cobra,” she said when she saw him starting to suggest it. “Some kind of normal kid thing, like… tossing a football in the park, or, I don’t know. A bike ride.”

“I don’t do either of those things,” Henry said, regarding her with suspicion before taking a drink of his cocoa, getting whipped cream on his nose in the process. Emma pulled a napkin from the dispenser and reached over to wipe it off.

“Okay, well, I don’t know. You suggest something.”

His face lit up. “I was thinking maybe we could do some surveillance on my mom. You work for the sheriff’s department now, you must have access to—”

“We are absolutely not doing that, Henry.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Fine, I’m no fun. But let’s try to figure something out that we can do that does not involve spying or fairy tale characters,” she said helplessly.

“Everything in Storybrooke involves fairy tale characters,” he said with an eye roll.

“What about TV?” Emma asked. “Tell me what you like to watch on TV.”

“Mom doesn’t let me watch it on school nights,” he said glumly.

“That’s probably a good policy,” she said, trying to give Regina the benefit of the doubt, at least in this one area.

“I do like Star Wars,” Henry volunteered after a big gulp of cocoa.

“Me too.” Emma grinned at him. “I used to pretend I was Princess Leia, except my version of Princess Leia swung a light saber.”

“Well yeah, she’s got the Force too, why shouldn’t she?” He jumped up suddenly. “What time is it? I should probably get home.”

“I bet you’ve got homework to do, right?”

Henry groaned, picking up his backpack from the seat. “I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe?”

“Maybe.” Star Wars, she thought. Something for them to bond over that didn’t center around his curse nonsense. It was a small thing, but it was something.

Ruby approached the table as Emma was still watching Henry through the window. “Can I get you anything else, Emma?”

She shook her head. “Just the check.” Remembering Graham’s directive to get to know people in the town, Emma gave Ruby what she hoped was a disarming smile. “You look tired, do you want to sit for a minute and take a load off?”

The diner was mostly empty, it being too late for lunch and too early for dinner. Ruby looked around for Granny before gratefully flopping down in the seat Henry had vacated. “Thanks, my feet are killing me.”

Emma resisted the urge to point out that she might be in less pain if she wore more sensible shoes. She took in Ruby’s striking face, envious of the other woman’s perfect winged eyeliner. “I was a waitress once. It’s hard work. Have you worked here a long time?”

“As long as I can remember,” Ruby said. “I don’t really know how to do anything else.”

The door to the diner opened and Emma glanced up. A man with dark brown hair and a short beard similar to Graham’s approached the register. Ruby looked over too and when she saw the man, got to her feet. “Hang on, I’ve gotta go get his to-go order.”

Emma watched as Ruby grabbed a paper bag from the kitchen pass-through and brought it over, batting her eyelashes and giving the newcomer her best smile as she rung up his food. Emma could appreciate why Ruby was flirting — this guy was a fine specimen of the male half of the species. He wore a tight long-sleeved black t-shirt, and Emma couldn’t help but admire the way it stretched across his shoulders and decently-muscled upper arms. He pulled a wallet out of the back pocket of his worn jeans, handing over cash and taking the bag with little more than a word or two for Ruby. As quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.

Ruby rejoined Emma at the booth. “Who was that?” Emma asked.

“Oh, you noticed Killian? Yeah, even in a town with a decent number of hotties, he’s noticeable.”

She had a point. Not that Emma was shopping for a man, but Storybrooke did seem to have more than its fair share of attractive people. Even Mr. Former Coma Patient, David Nolan, was handsome if you liked the Captain America type. Which Emma didn’t particularly, but she could see why Mary Margaret was mooning over him.

“Killian Jones,” Ruby continued. “He runs things down at the docks. Used to be a sailor himself, I think, but now he mainly inspects the boats and… I don’t know, whatever a harbormaster does.” She shrugged. “He mainly keeps to himself. Believe me, I’ve tried to hit that on multiple occasions, and he was not interested.” She cracked her gum. “His loss.”

Emma immediately formed a picture of Killian Jones in her head, based on Ruby’s limited information. The loner type, probably with some kind of dark secret that drove him to keep to himself. He probably drank too much — just the kind of guy she needed to stay far, far away from if her history was any guide.

Emma thought about the people she had met in Storybrooke so far, pushing Killian O’Hottie from her thoughts. “What’s the deal with Mr. Gold? How did he end up owning everything in town?” she asked.

Ruby blanched and began fiddling with the salt shaker. “I don’t know, he just does.”

“Are you afraid of him?” Emma thought of Ashley Boyd and her baby, and the way Mr. Gold had seemed willing to sell the baby like it was property.

“I think everyone’s afraid of him. He’s… I don’t know.” She lowered her voice. “There’s something about him that feels… evil, you know?”

Emma heaved a sigh. She wasn’t going to get anything concrete going down that road. “You probably know most of the people in this town, working here.”

“Sure, I guess.” Ruby narrowed her eyes. “Are you pumping me for information about Storybrooke’s seedy underbelly in your capacity as the sheriff’s deputy?”

Emma raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You already heard that I’m working for the sheriff? I literally started a few hours ago.”

“News travels fast in Storybrooke, Emma.” Ruby stood up, ready to get back to work. “You’re gonna have your work cut out for you keeping up.”

Chapter 2