Black & White | Once Upon A Time

Two

Storybrooke - Cursed

Sheriff Swan was not a happy camper.

Clearly anyone could have arrived at that conclusion, what with her pointed death glares and the tense line of her shoulders being particularly prominent as she sat in her booth at Granny's, not even her steaming mug of hot chocolate able to soothe her fraying nerves. But I felt rather sure of her mood when she stormed out the door, muttering something about strangers and jerks and several choice words she shouldn't have been uttering within a hundred mile radius of one Henry Mills. 

I wasn't very invested in the situation, admittedly. I knew Emma Swan (or more accurately, I knew of Emma Swan) only through the chatter that passed through Granny's, so my empathy for her didn't extend all that far. Still, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of sympathy as I watched her stalk away from the diner, hands shoved into her pockets, head down and obscured by her golden hair. When she'd walked in, she hadn't been any sort of exuberant, really, but she'd at least been calmer than she was now.

I had to wonder just who, or what, was capable of cracking the armor of our unflappable sheriff.
Nothing good, I mused, sipping from my own mug, only to wince. Apparently, it'd cooled in the time it had taken me to watch Emma make a rather undignified exit. Just my luck.

Your average person would have simply put in an order to Ruby to have her mug refilled, but I wasn't feeling up to human interaction today; it had taken a considerable portion of my mental strength to even place the first order, and this tragic blow (made all the worse for the fact that I'd only had a few mouthfuls of the wondrous elixir) had sapped the last of my reserves. Biting the inside of my cheek, I slid the mug to the opposite side of the counter and shifted on my stool, prepared to head into work early.

Again. But that was irrelevant.

And anyway, I never got that far, seeing as I smacked into the leather-clad shoulder of a passerby. The collision sent me careening back into the counter, and I caught my hand on the edge of my stool to avoid stumbling into another patron of the diner. A hand reached out to cup my shoulder, helping to steady me, and I murmured a nearly unintelligible thank you as I righted myself, huffing in frustration to dislodge the hair from my eyes. Home sounded so very wonderful right about now; there was no one there to knock me to the ground and no one to stare at the horror of my near-spill.

"No need to thank me," an unfamiliar voice said, the pressure on my shoulder falling away now that I was safely on my own two feet. "It's my fault for crashing into you."

"I wouldn't say we crashed." That sounded too dramatic for the situation. "And it's fine, we're fine, don't worry about it," I added, dragging my eyes from the scuffed-up toes of my sneakers to see who I'd run into.

Well. He's definitely unfamiliar. 

That revelation was strange in and of itself, seeing as strangers and Storybrooke seemed to exist on separate planes. Emma arriving had been enough of a shock; she was the first person to wind up in Storybrooke who wasn't already a resident in years. Now we had another drifter on our hands, and he didn't look any less threatening than Emma from where I was standing. Stranger danger, and all that. 

His blue eyes crinkled as his lips twitched into a charming smile. 

"No," he said, his smile widening a fraction when I blinked, "it's not fine. You deserve compensation."

"Compensation," I repeated, slowly, blankly.

Ruby passed by then, and the man signalled her over as he slid onto the seat next to the one I'd just vacated. His gaze flitted over my half-savored coffee before flicking back up to Ruby, who looked rather pleased he'd sought her out. The smile playing on her lips was one I'd seen enough to know that he was in danger of getting wrestled into a one-night stand that would have him avoiding the diner for a solid week afterwards -provided his survival instincts didn't kick in here and now to tell him that an adventure-starved huntress was on the prowl for him. But, looking at him (and the way he very much wasn't looking at Ruby, not in the same way she was staring at him), I thought maybe it wasn't something to worry about after all.