Full Summary:
Lila Archer is normal. She takes great pains to achieve this. She takes her medication on a strict schedule, and avoids things that stress her out and make her head foggy. Like "parents." Or "boyfriends." Or "major life changes."
….until a man in a leather jacket shows up insisting that she has a twin sister-a delusion she's long-since buried.
Though she manages to dissuade him of the notion, he sticks around, and soon enough she trusts him enough to go with him on an impromptu road trip to a tiny town in Maine she's never heard of. There she meets a schoolteacher who loves arrows almost as much as she does, a grumpy blonde in a red leather jacket, and a little boy who insists that said blonde is her twin sister, and that the two of them are destined to break a magical curse.
(The curse is...a lot, but there's one thing she's learned, in her 28 years of coping with delusions and intrusive thoughts: if someone else is seeing it, you're probably not crazy.)
Things quickly begin to progress as friendships are formed and secrets unravel. Will Storybrooke bring Lila the family she's always wanted? Or will it destroy everything she has left?
It's a quiet night at the diner. Granted, nights are always quiet; that's why Lila prefers them. It's not that there are fewer people; it's just that at night, the diner swaps out its customer base of rowdy families and senior couples on dates for a shuffling rotation of exhausted long-haul truckers eating around their schedules, who mostly keep to themselves. Sure, there's the occasional gang of ill-monitored teenagers, but usually only one or two at a time. Generally, nights at Sal's are a quiet affair.
The graveyard shift pays less in tips, but it helps her keep her sanity. She hasn't handled loud, crowded places very well, not since…
Well. She doesn't handle thinking about that very well, either.
It's especially empty tonight. She's running numbers in her head, trying to figure out how she's going to make rent when she hears the bells on the front door jingle. She looks up reflexively, and her first thought is he's too handsome to be here.
The observation holds up beyond a kneejerk thought, she decides. No one as objectively good-looking as this new customer has any business walking into a truck stop diner at two in the morning alone. He barely has any business existing in real life at all. Shouldn't you be drinking a martini in a music video?
He seats himself (technically against the rules, but rarely enforced at night) at the breakfast bar, on the opposite end as her, which is a refreshing expression of boundaries. "I'll be right with you, sweetie," she calls out, and heads to the back to get rid of the rag she was using to wipe down her side of the bar. She washes her hands quickly and heads back out.
The man is flipping through a menu idly, but he seems to hear her approach, and he looks up and smiles, setting it down. She puts on her work smile and heads over.
"Hi, sorry. I'm Lila, I'll be your server today. Can I get you anything to drink?" She pulls out her notepad just in case.
"It's fine," he says, still smiling. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you."
She narrows her eyes, tilting her head in confusion. "Uhh...I mean, sure, but I can get the assistant manager for you? Or my manager will be here like at eight, if you want to come back…?"
He grins a little. "No, I wanted to talk to you. You're Lila Towers, right?"
She stops herself from flinching at the name. "Archer," she corrects, a little more forcefully than necessary. "It-sorry, it's Lila Archer."
He nods, and glances at her left hand-looking for a wedding ring, maybe?-before his eyes flicker back to her, his expression unreadable.
"Lila Archer," he repeats. "Sorry."
"It's-sorry, do I know you from somewhere?"
He smiles again. "Yes, but I doubt you'd remember me. Uh, I'm August." He extends a hand. "I was the kid who found you and your sister-"
Sister.
"I'm sorry," she says, rejecting his handshake. "I don't have a sister."
She starts to turn away, needing air, but he hops off the stool. "I mean, you weren't adopted together-obviously-but you were found at the same time, in the same place. You had matching-"
She shakes her head again. "No, I never had any siblings," she says firmly.
"Did-did your parents not tell you…" he trails off.
She snorts. "That I was adopted? Please. They never let me forget it."
"And yet they didn't tell you-"
Something inside her snaps.
"Look," she says, gritting her teeth. She leans across the counter, getting into his space, trying to intimidate, the way she's seen some of the older waitresses do when customers get too friendly. "I don't have a sister. I never had a sister. I wasn't found on the side of a fucking road."
He holds up his hands in surrender, and she leans back, relaxing just a little.
"Mister, you seem like a nice guy. And you are very handsome," she adds, partly because she really needs him to be a good tipper and wants to get back on his good side, and partly because it's true, and she's really trying to summon up more goodwill towards him, superficial or not. "But you have the wrong girl."
He smiles at that. "The wrong girl," he repeats. "Isn't that always how it is?"
She grins, ducking her head as she counts the cash in the register. "Tell me about it."
"You've always got the wrong girl, too?"
"Wrong girl, wrong guy, wrong time, wrong place. You name it."
He'd been joking, she knows, but he takes it in stride. "I'll drink to that," he says.
"Well, you'd need something to drink first," she points out, holding up her notepad.
He smiles. "I'll have an Old-Fashioned. And something for you."
"I'm not allowed to drink on the job."
"Oh, come on. It's 2 AM, you just said your manager's not here. Live a little." He raises a brow. "I'm buying."
She smiles, shakes her head, and walks away.
When she comes back out, she's more surprised than he is to find herself holding a lemonade for herself in one hand.
She sets the old-fashioned down in front of him, and he glances from it, to her, to the lemonade, and smiles crookedly.
"I see you changed your mind."
"Well, since you so generously offered…"
"And you got pink lemonade?" he says before taking a swig of beer.
"I don't drink," she says, a little defensively.
He holds up his free hand in surrender, swallows, and then speaks. "Okay, okay," he says. "I wasn't judging. Just...it's cute."
"That is incredibly patronizing," she says, only half-serious.
"You're right. Sorry. The pink lemonade is a very distinguished choice. Are you sure you're not Jackie O, reincarnate?"
She has the brief urge to playfully smack him upside the head, then remembers he's still technically her customer, even if he doesn't really feel like one. "Wrong girl again."
He smiles, and raises his glass. She knocks her own against it with a gentle clink! and tries to pretend, as they take drinks in unison, that it doesn't feel like the start of something.
A/N: Hey guys! If you follow me on tumblr, you know I've been wanting to write this fic for a long time. I wanna clarify that despite the long delay in updates, my other OUAT fic has NOT been abandoned. I've just got a lot going on lately and haven't been able to focus on my writing as much as I'd like, but I managed to get down the first chapter of this plot bunny and wanted to share it.
Shout-out to freakbian on tumblr for making the fic cover (and yourpalmoony for the alternate cover, which you can see on ao3), and to Dessa (chantelroyalfanfiction) and Cat (notaboutcat) for beta-reading this for me! Also, I don't plan on recommending songs for every chapter, but I do wanna say that "Enchanted" by Taylor Swift gives me major Lila/August vibes for their first meeting here.
I hope you enjoy it, and as usual, comments keep me motivated so if you're up for it, I'd love to hear what you think!