Fic: The Lesser of Two Evils - Chapter Nine
Title: The Lesser of Two Evils
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: Mr Gold/Emma Swan, Henry (and later on August and Regina)
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for everything surely XD
Summary: My new Golden Swan continuing drama. Emma and Gold's complicated relationship takes a turn for the worse when potions and magical artifacts become involved. Written from ideas presented by the lovely missbreese
X-Posted to FF.net here
Chapter One :: Chapter Two :: Chapter Three :: Chapter Four :: Chapter Five :: Chapter Six :: Chapter Seven :: Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
There’s a happier beat to the Saturday night music of the club, and countless joyful faces dancing under the coloured lights of the dancefloor. I watch them from the upstairs balcony, playing with the straw in my drink as I wait for Gold to arrive.
I’ve considered leaving, of course, about four times now, but the pull of the shady spot I’m standing in makes me halt every time I try to move. If I have any chance of coping with the bizarre concoction of magic, daggers and kisses whirling through my senses, I have to stay and hear him out.
I hear the squeak of his cane on the vinyl floor before his footsteps. He comes to stand silently beside me, watching the crowd as I do. From the corner of my eye I catch his profile, his head is hung low, his stance hunched a little.
“How are you feeling?” He asks in a shaky tone.
I look onto into the happy faces of the dancers below.
“Well, I think I’m stopped crying. That’s something right?”
“Indeed,” he replies, taking in a breath. “Where would you like me to start?”
I turn to him, see his face blank with what I could almost call an earnest gleam in his eyes.
“I think maybe with Rumpelstiltskin,” I reply. “Haven’t quite got that one figured out yet.”
I notice now that he too has a drink, a tumbler of golden liquid that looks temptingly alcoholic. He takes a strained gulp before he speaks again.
“It’s an old European superstition,” he says.
Enlightenment dawns on me. “That’s where you’re from? I couldn’t place that accent.”
“Scotland.” Gold smiles with one side of his mouth, but it soon falls away. “Those stories… those fairytales, if you like… they all come from somewhere.”
I watch him for a moment, finding his features disturbingly even. I envy how collected he can be about this magic stuff right now, when it feels like I could fall back into chaos at any moment.
“The blade is an instrument…” he begins, faltering slightly here and there, “An instrument of a curse that was put upon me… An attempt to control me.”
“Who by?” I ask, and immediately know I’ve overstepped. Gold looks back out into the dancing crowd below us, his face cast in a half-shadow.
“Enemies,” he says evenly, “Though I’m afraid I was also to blame. Most of those who enter into dealings with magic are willing to, believe it or not.”
I’d like to believe that he’s lying to me, that perhaps this is still some unbelievable game, but every word rings true as it leaves his lips.
“Emma,” he says, turning to meet my eyes again. “Wherever did you find that thing?”
I feel slightly comforted by the fact that there’s at least one question I can answer.
“Henry found it at the cemetery,” I reply. “That mean anything to you?”
Gold pouts his bottom lip as he thinks, and I find myself watching it. A disturbing urge arises that I push away by gulping at my drink.
“Can’t say it does,” he answers after consideration. “But it feels like it was left there for someone to find.”
My eyes flicker from his lips up to his gaze. His expression relaxes a little.
“It would make sense,” he continues, “I have a lot of enemies in this town.”
His casual tone makes me smile at the fact. He smiles back, and some of the tension I’d been feeling starts to slip.
“Well that’s a shocker, Gold, I must say.”
“I know,” he replies, his grin widening, “Even with all my attempts to be a good citizen.”
“Sure,” I chip in, “Like arson, robbery, assault and battery…”
Gold breathes out a laugh.
“Well that’s a few elephants out of the room,” he says.
A lightness takes me over, and I tune in again to the music of the club. The dancey numbers have turned to slower ballads, some couples are getting close down on the dancefloor. When I look back to Gold I find he has stepped closer, and he too is watching the people romancing on the ground floor.
“So, one last kink to straighten out, I think,” he states, but he does not take his eyes away from the dancefloor. His face is so close that I can see the tiny flecks of stubble growing back around his jaw.
“Yeah? What’s that then?”
“I need to know what those kisses meant, Emma. You can’t keep a fellow hanging on like this.” He closes his eyes, and when they open again he looks at me with a strange helplessness. “I don’t like not knowing things.”
The embarrassed feeling comes along right on time, even though I’d suspected that this moment might be coming. But I suck up the feelings as best I can and give him a good square look before I start to speak. After all, I’ve already admitted to Mary Margaret that there’s something between he and I, who’s to say this moment’s going to be any more awkward than that one?
“All right,” I begin, and Gold is immediately attentive, eyes shining at me. “So I have this theory, that if something feels wrong… it is wrong. And you shouldn’t do it, no matter how tempting it is.”
Gold draws in a breath, the shine falling from his eyes. “I see,” he says, looking down to the floor.
“But the really, really spectacularly weird thing about you is…” I look down too in spite of myself, because I can’t bear to see his face when he hears what comes next. “It doesn’t. It does not feel wrong. Not in any way.”
Across my gaze at the floor I see his hand moving up from his pocket until it finds my chin. He doesn’t push me to move my head, just rests his fingertips against my jaw with hardly any pressure.
“So what’s the problem?” He asks, and I can hear his disbelief.
“There isn’t one,” I admit.
A brief silence falls. I watch him shuffle his bad leg once or twice, and his fingertips travel back into my hair. All kinds of good feelings aggravate my senses.
“So,” Gold says after what feels like a torturous age, “Are you going to kiss me again, or am I going to stay here watching the top of your head?”
I raise my neck to meet his eyes, and the hand in my hair slips to my neck. His confident grin makes me feel a little angry somewhere in the back of my mind, and I resolve to put an end to it immediately.
I step forward and kiss him as fully as I can muster, and I realise immediately that half of that confidence was false, because his hand falls away in shock and I hear his stick clatter to the ground. I consider breaking off for a brief moment, but it’s then that Gold regains composure. His lips start to move in earnest against mine, and I feel those warm hands wrapping back around my neck and shoulders, and it feels so natural that it could almost make me suspicious.
When we break for air he grins at me in earnest, and I catch one of the club lights reflecting in his golden teeth.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
Chapter Ten
Reviews appreciated as always :)