CHAPTER TWENTY: BROTHERLY LOVE

(In which August regains his in-character doucheyness, because The Author never liked him, and Emma gets nostalgic with pencils.)

Feet up on her desk, Emma threw a pencil at the ceiling and muttered a triumphant "Boo-yah!" as it hit one of the holes in the fiberboard paneling and stuck.

Not using magic was hard, but she was trying to be more sparring with it, aware that she'd been taking it for granted and distracted by it. Plus, the power thing. It was Archie's idea. Of course, just because she wasn't using magic to improve her accuracy didn't mean she was ready to go back to doing paperwork the old-fashioned way. Baby steps. Besides which, she could just foist the stacks of papers on her father, and even though he was terrible at administrative stuff, it would keep him off the streets, and if Regina ended up yelling at him for improper filing, well, that was his business spending his free-time joyriding in the squad car instead of reading the department handbook.

She threw another pencil.

"Hard at work, Sheriff?"

Startled, Emma turned and in doing so tipped her precariously reclined chair past the point of no return. Legs flailing, her stack of paperwork was sent flying along with a dozen newly sharpened #2 pencils and her "World's Best Mom!" coffee mug that Henry got for her back in New York before he remembered that he had another mom. Magic was an instinct at this point and Emma reached for it, freezing the mug and its slosh of cold coffee just before it could crash into the file cabinet even as she herself landed on the floor in a heap, the thud causing the other dozen pencils she'd successful imbedded in the ceiling to rain down like tiny wood and graphite spears.

Resigned to violating her "magic free day" rules, Emma froze the pencils, summoned her mug (with coffee) into her hand and then stepped out of the way to let the pencils fall harmlessly to the floor. That done, she leveled a glare on the man standing in the doorway looking bemused - and she really hated that look from the first moment he stepped up to her on Main Street and asked about a place to stay.

"Thanks so much for knocking, August. You could have put my eye out."

"You shouldn't throw them then," he quipped, grinning, and pulled out from behind his back a long-stemmed rose.

Emma groaned and set her mug down on the desk with a heavy thunk. "That's sweet, but you don't need to make me feel better just because I'm single on Valentine's Day. And don't even try to use it as an apology for nearly breaking my favorite coffee mug and the bruise I'm gonna have on my butt now," she stated with a harumph before bending down - with a wince - to pick up the pencils and papers.

"You could magic that stuff up," August told her, "and who said it was a pity flower, Emma?"

"I could, but that would defeat the purpose," Emma shot back, "of weaning myself off of dependence on magic so I don't end up as addicted as Regina and Gold, because I've been letting a lot of stuff in my life go to shit while using quick magic fixes. And if it's not a pity flower, then you can march your formerly wooden ass back out those doors!"

"Oh, come on," the former puppet whined. "You know we've got chemistry, Emma. And now that we're both single..."

"I told you, you're like a brother to me, August."

"Like Angelina Jolie and her brother in the nineteen-nineties," August argued.

"Oh, for the love of..." She glared and stood up. "I should have known. The brotherly affection thing was all a long con. You are such an ass!"

"Please," August argued, "there is no way you meant that 'we were only ever friends' either! I was your safety net if Killy Stu got killed, and considering people drop like flies in this town-"

"Killy Stu?"

"Well, from a literary perspective, the guy was a total Gary Stu. He had no purpose other than to be your vibrator with a pulse. There are zero events or relationships here that couldn't have happened if he dropped dead of heart failure after running off with Rumplestiltskin's wife. Pan would have captured Sinbad to do his bidding. Regina would've hired another assassin to kill her mother who'd have become Cora's minion, and Gold didn't need anyone to help him with that hat, he just got his jollies making Hook miserable. And from what I understand, other than sailing a ship through a portal - which most anyone could do given the thing's enchanted - the only thing Killian did in Neverland was hold out on everyone about the healing water until it got a kiss from you, and Tinkerbell or Baelfire could have told you about the water, and it was Baelfire, anyway, who got his old man to agree to actually make the stuff useful so your mother wouldn't have to go through with her plan to abandon you again and play Robinson Crusoe with Prince Charming."

"Wow, you're just full of literary metaphors tonight," Emma snorted. "Fine, I married an expendable guy with a pretty face, violent tendencies, and impulse control issues. You're right. So, you think I'm going to pay that bad judgment forward by dating a guy carved from a tree who destroyed my first relationship? Honestly, August, I was in a weird place when you got... re-aged, and maybe without any real friends here that stuck around for more than a few weeks, I was willing to let a lot of bygones be bygones that I actually should have stayed a bit bitter about, because you did ruin my life. You sent me to prison. You took my money. And you have never apologized for that. Sending me a car key and then eighteen years later dropping 'Phuket' in a sentence when I'm shouting at you that you're fucking insane does not qualify. So no I will not go out with you, you entitled, manipulated, jerk!"

August stood there looking shocked, having been utterly certain that he would be successful in his endeavor, while Emma just rolled her eyes and scoffed, "News flash. I'm no longer brain damaged and I'm going to therapy. Next session, I'll be sure to tell Archie that you still haven't outgrown being a douche-"

Suddenly the ground lurched, toppling the coffee mug to the floor where it shattered.

The former marionette grinned and quipped, "Ah, the price of ma-"

"SHUT UP!"

AN: Emma may have told Hook that she only ever saw August as a friend, but we all know she was laying that bullshit on thick. And considering August hasn't said a thing about Neal on the show since before his own death? Yeah, no. When Harry Met Sally is so right: (heterosexual) men and women cannot be friends without one of them eventually wanting to sleep with the other. Also, if you like August, a warning that he's going to get even more pervy before is "arch" is done.

Next up: Two boys with an inexplicable hereditary attraction to calamity walk into a mine...