Disclaimer: do not own Once Upon a Time

Written for: LJ com writerverse

Prompt: "Neither enemy nor friend," 200+ words.

She finds him behind the counter, tinkering with a gutted music box. He doesn't look up at the bell, not even to the first few steps into his shop. But when he does, it's wonderful and exactly what she loves to see, a hard won tell of uncontrollable surprise. It's not an expression; his eyes neither widen nor narrow. His body doesn't shift, but fingers spasm around antique tool. It taps delicate porcelain and metal clinks unseen. There is a ticktocktick and Emma remembers the last time she did this, moved towards him with purpose from doorway to counter. How high-heels sounded on wooden floors and the breath he had taken, sudden and fast. She is too new and strange right now, for him to be anything but coiled tension.

Emma is twelve years too early and trice too late.

From the half slouch, he recovers, setting aside his work in favor of freeing his hands. A wooden stool, unbroken and whole in a time without an aborted burglary, shifts against hardwood as he stands, as he straightens and adopts an expression of diligent clerk. She's looking for the way his eyes track her body, how they catalogue her face. It is interest, not desire. She knows the difference.

"Welcome to my shop. Is there something I can help you with, Miss…"

Bone china is set down, from her hand not his, on glass with care and when he breaks away from the dare in her eyes to identify the object he stills again. She is, perhaps, more cruel than she should be. Says: "Do I have your attention, Mr. Gold?"

There is fire and anger and violence in him. It sparks across her skin, twisting and pulling in the way of muscle memory. An echo from a time when it was shared with her, in her, of magic fuelled with revenge. She lets it gather in her hands and behind her eyes, she can taste its spiced honey as it coats her tongue and in her ears it's a lover's whisper. Familiar, sensuous. She beats it back, but doesn't lock it deep within. It is too useful, too powerful, it is far too dangerous for such -control. No. Not control- direction.

He has taken the chipped cup in hand, curled fingers around it and is almost, but not quite, baring his teeth. She knows he'll check the display case, once her back is turned, when she leaves. Knows, too, that morning's routine saw careful hands dusting the pieces of his delicate tea set. He now has two useless, identical, sentimental cups kept despite false memory. She'll wait for him to puzzle it out -and he will, but later- and plays instead into his paranoia.

"What do you want?" His words are clipped, harsh.

It made little sense to return an item so valued, when its theft had gone unnoticed. She'd known it would anger him, tempt him with curiosities and draw him to her. She had learned from him, after all. Her hand was driven by complexity, hidden motives that went deeper than B&E and only hinted at, touched upon, blackmail.

"A very simple thing, really." Only it wasn't, not at all. "I want but a moment of your time."