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thisonesatellite · 3 years

Text

everybody knows -- CH 5

SUMMARY : In Killian’s world there are neither heroes nor villains.

There are only those who give and those who take, and you better not be the former.

He’s a taker, has spent his entire life being a taker, because if you’re a taker, there is never a price to pay.

Until there is.

AKA: The paths towards love and the meaning of life are twisted and tangled and full of detours, and some of those roads aren’t paved.

| AO3 | CH1 | CH2 | CH3 | CH4 |

A/N: Oh - my dears. This chapter. i tellya. This one nearly killed me.

i wrote the first half no less than three times, trying to get the plot AND the mood AND the character development right, wrote the rest of it, polished, excised, re-worked, rewrote, edited, wrote some more, and cut thousands of words along the way. Every time i thought i had a handle on it, something would feel off, and i'd pull a tiny little thread just to watch the whole damn thing unravel, and anyway, it was A Lot. 😂

So, guys - here is where you find out some Stuff(TM) and get some answers, wrapped up in a growing connection and a lot of softness and yes, all the bedsharing i teased you with (and more), so please enjoy. (Also, at nearly 6K - it's a beast. i hope it makes up for the endless waiting i put you through.)

Because if you listen real close you can hear a faint whistling in the air, such as heralds a falling object.

Like a hammer.

But not yet. Fluff and a bit of catharsis first, my loves. 💖

All the thanks MUST go to @profdanglaisstuff - who went through this FOUR TIMES, FOUR, including a lightning round today. Babe - you're my hero. HERO.

AND THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR PATIENCE AND ENCOURAGMENT. It means everything to me, everything.

i DO NOT DESERVE YOU GUYS.

(BUT i LOVE YOU A LOT. SERIOUSLY. SO MUCH. NO, i WILL NOT STOP YELLING. 💕💕💕)

i’m using the regular tag list. Please let me know if you want to be added or removed.

@mariakov81 @stahlop @thejollyroger-writer @captainsjedi @ohmightydevviepuu @toomanyfandomstochoosefrom @snowbellewells @xarandomdreamx @tiganasummertree @sals86 @karenfrommisthaven @kmomof4 @kday426 @superchocovian @jennjenn615 @facesiousbutton82 @suwya @spartanguard @capnjay21 @shardminds @carpedzem @girl-in-a-tiny-box @ilovemesomekillianjones @lfh1226-linda @artistic-writer @teamhook @katie-dub @shireness-says @qualitycoffeethings @cluttermind @fragilebeautifulchaos @optomisticgirl @klynn-stormz @winterbaby89 @etheral-madness @scientificapricot @anxioussquirrel @killianjones-twopointoh @captain-emmajones @xsajx

CHAPTER 5

Emma can’t sleep.

She can’t sleep and she can’t stop thinking of his face. She can’t tell what’s real and what’s contrived anymore, probably no more than he can. It’s hard to tell who is the frog and who is the scorpion. But when she left him in the living room he looked sad.

Purely and only sad. That she knows.

Somehow he has carved out a place in her life, within just these few days, and it’s not just the sumptuous food and the dry wit and the dancing eyebrows. He hasn’t changed from the slick hustler he was back at the bar and yet he is different. Or at the very least, he is more. There is a human being inside the persona after all, a person with a real past, and real emotions, and a real life, even if he keeps it under lock and key. A person who can feel pain.

She keeps seeing his face.

And then she makes a decision.

With a sigh she gets up and walks out into the living room. The lights are off, but the TV is running, muted, turned to the weather channel. It throws an eerie glow onto the couch where he sits, upright, curled up in a corner, under the blanket. His shoulders are rigid as he turns towards her and promptly reaches for the remote.

“I’m sorry Emma, is the TV keeping you---”

“No,” she says and sits down on the coffee table to face him. “No, Killian, the TV didn’t bother me at all.”

His hand lowers but his posture stays tense and guarded and Emma sighs. There is only one peace offering she can make here.

She takes a deep breath and looks at him, coiled like a spring, and dives into the deep end.

“When I was twelve I was placed with a foster family right outside of Boston,” she says, her voice quiet and low. “The mother was a bipolar alcoholic, but they fudged their application because they needed the money. As you know it’s not uncommon.”

“More like the rule.” His voice is a whisper.

“Yeah.” It’s a sigh into the past. She has to be careful. But he’s still sitting there, huddled, defensive, tension rolling off of him in waves, and he deserves a piece of something real as much as she did. “They had a closed off porch at the back of the house and they would lock us in for punishment. It was sweltering in the summer, so hot you couldn’t breathe, but in the winter---” She swallows hard. “Boston winters are nothing to scoff at.”

The way he looks at her. Like he knows cold.

“She used to drag us out there by the hair.” Emma can still feel it, the pull, the dull ache at the back of her skull, the frantic stumbling and trying to keep up with her steps, keep the pain down, keep the panic at bay while literally running towards your demise. Her eyes are fixed on the wall, but she doesn’t see it, can only see the hallway stretching to a dirty white back door. “It was her favorite method of punishment. Not her husband’s though. He preferred a belt.”

Killian gasps and Emma’s gaze snaps to his. His eyes are wide and shiny.

“One day though, the husband caught me sneaking a jar of peanut butter--- i used to keep peanut butter under my bed. I loved that shit.” She shakes her head, tries to keep the memory loose, impersonal. “Anyway, he caught me and started to drag me to the porch - by the hair, just like the wife - but he wasn’t used to it and I just--- I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t even scared, I was angry. Just--- furious, you know?” Her eyes are once again glued to the wall behind Killian’s left shoulder, but in her peripheral vision she can see him nod.

“Anyway, I punched him, and he went down, and the wife saw it and pulled me out to the porch and they left me there all night. In November.” I thought I was going to die out there, she doesn’t say. Fall asleep and wake up frozen solid. She takes a deep breath. “So that’s what I dreamt about. You know, earlier.” She shakes her head, straightens her spine, pulls back her shoulders. “It’s fine, by the way. This is all ancient history and I have dealt with it and put it to rest and it can’t hurt me anymore. I don’t dream of it often.”

He looks shellshocked. Shellshocked and yet entirely unsurprised.

“Scars?” he whispers. “Did they leave any scars?”

Oh god. He does know. She is sure of it now.

Scars are the measure of survival. They are the markers of endurance and perseverance. They are the signs of shame and failure and defiance, the badges of courage and the price of grit and mettle. It is important to remember them and even more important to forget. He knows.

“Some.” She nods. “Not all.”

“How do you mean?”

She takes another deep breath. “I don’t remember anything before that family. When I first got there I fell out of a top bunk and hit my head really hard on the concrete floor and they think that’s why I can’t remember.” She shrugs. “I don’t remember the fall either, so I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter anyway. And I know it’s not their fault - at least the fall isn’t. I know that. But I blame them. It’s like they took away a piece of me, the first piece of me, and I’ll never get it back and I---” she almost sobs, but swallows it down--- “I hate them so much for it.”

He’s silent for endless moments, his eyes large and immeasurably sad.

And then he sighs. “I’m so sorry, love.” His voice is low and raw. “So sorry.”

And he gets up and wraps his arms around her and she lets him.

Minutes later he pulls back and in the dim light of the television she watches him sit back down on the edge of the couch, their knees almost touching. Like he can’t bring himself to put distance between them. She is glad for it. It seems whoever they are during the day dissolves at night, like the darkness strips them down to their core, like they become versions of themselves they don’t even know. It’s enough to make her head hurt and her mind spin and she doesn’t want to think anymore.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” she whispers.

He leans forward and takes her hand. His fingers are warm. “Do with me?”

She laughs, helpless. “You just--- I know who you are. I know what you are. I should just kick you out and tell you not to come back and never think of you again.” His breath hitches and--- is that fear in his eyes? She shakes her head. “But I can’t.” It’s a whisper.

His breathing is ragged. It takes him a long time to get it under control enough to answer, and when he finally does, it sounds broken. Not like him at all.

“I know,” he says. “And I don’t understand it.” There are tears in his eyes. “You and I are---”

His voice cuts out and he squeezes her hand. She is holding her breath. The weather channel flickers light across his hopeless, defeated expression and it makes her ache.

She gets up and pulls him with her. And then she marches them towards her bedroom, their hands still entwined, and it takes him until they’re almost through the door to stop her.

“Emma, no,” he whispers. “This is not how I---”

“Shhhhhhh,” she says, turning around. “Please, Killian. Just lie down with me. I’m too tired to fight. I’m too tired to think.” She shrugs. “I just--- I just want to sleep.” I just want to lie down and not be alone for a night. She doesn’t say it, but he hears it anyway.

“OK,” he breathes. “I can do that.”

-/-

She wakes up with Killian’s arm heavy across her middle and his nose buried in the hair at her neck. He is making soft, sleepy sounds and his breathing is even and deep and she feels more peaceful and rested than she has in months. Years, possibly. He shifts his weight and his arm tightens for a moment, but he doesn’t wake up, and Emma doesn’t move.

It’s Saturday. There is no schedule on Saturdays. Nothing to do except that which you feel like. And Emma feels like lying here, in her warm, comfortable bed, with a warm, comfortable Killian at her back, not thinking about a damn thing, least of all the man in her bed.

She doesn’t have to analyse this.

She doesn’t have to pick the pieces of the previous night, of this morning, of them apart and examine them from all angles until they’re hopelessly distorted and impossible to fit back together.

She can just lie here, warm and comfortable, and enjoy it while it lasts.

She closes her eyes and puts her hand on Killian’s across her belly. His fingers tighten reflexively. She falls back asleep.

She wakes up a second time from a sudden influx of cold and the absence of weight next to her. He has gotten up. He walks around the bed as she blinks her eyes open and even half asleep she knows---

this is the moment.

This moment, the first moment they are both awake, will determine the rest of their interaction. Forever.

He looks at her, sleepy and disheveled, sees she is awake and kneels down next to her side of the bed.

“Hey,” he says. His voice is soft and there is no shame in it, no awkwardness. “Did you sleep OK?”

She smiles. She’s grateful. He sounds relaxed and at ease and she is just so grateful. A small voice at the back of her head is trying to ask how many women he has woken up next to, for him to be so at ease with the situation, and she silences it.

Because the smile he returns is languid and real.

“Better than I have in ages,” she says, and he nods.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Me too.”

Then he gets up. “Coffee?”

She nods.

“Stay put,” he says. “I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

And Emma stretches and allows herself to imagine what it would be like if this were real.

-/-

“How on earth did you manage this?” He looks up at her over the rim of his cup while she shovels a truly gigantic piece of waffle into her mouth. God, his waffles are amazing. “I don’t have a waffle iron.”

He smiles that same languid, easy smile. “I brought mine.”

“From your place?”

His brow furrows. “I went home yesterday to check on my apartment. It will definitely take another week.” He looks up. “Is that still all right with you?”

Emma cuts off another enormous piece, dripping with syrup, and says, “How could I possibly say no to these? I need you to make these every morning. Actually, I’m fine if you make nothing but waffles for the entire rest of the time you stay here.”

“I cannot condone that. You will have to ingest the occasional vitamin.”

“Fine. I can snack on celery and peanut butter at work. Will that do?”

Killian rolls his eyes. “Absolutely not and you know it. Besides, there are several countries we have not yet explored. You know-- from a culinary standpoint.”

“Do those countries have waffles?”

“You’re impossible.”

Emma grins. “Don’t tell me you don’t love a challenge.”

And just like that his face falls, and for a moment he looks like he’s in pain. Actual pain. The silence that follows is heavy and sad. He shakes his head and looks down and Emma can’t think of a single thing to say to break them out of this moment.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says. “I didn’t mean to ruin the mood.”

Emma bites her lip. “Are you all right?”

“Am I----” He barks a laugh, bitter and helpless. “Am I all right? Yes, Emma. I am perfectly fine.” It’s a lie. It’s the first outright lie he has told her. “And yes. I do love a challenge.” That is not a lie. It is the absolute truth, and as heavy and sad as the silence that still lingers.

With an effort he straightens up and smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Do you have any plans for today?”

“No,” she says. “I don’t do field work, so I usually get the weekend.”

“Perfect,” he grins and oh--- the difference between that grin and all the empty smiles before it. “In that case, Emma Nolan, I think it is high time you realized that there is a farmer’s market less than two blocks from here every Saturday.”

“How do you know what goes on in my neighborhood on weekends?”

He looks at her gravely. “There is a new thing out now, called the internet.”

She grins. “Smartass. And how do you know I don’t already know about this market?”

He laughs out loud and looks at her in mock consternation until she rolls her eyes and concedes that she had no idea farmers markets were a thing at all.

“Would you like to accompany me?” His eyebrows dance. His eyes shine. He’s nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet. She laughs again and nods. He leans forward and gives her a smacking kiss on the cheek and then disappears into the kitchen to take stock of their supplies and make a list, and Emma leans back into the couch and just lets herself believe all of this is real.

-/-

The market is loud and crowded, two things Emma does not enjoy in abundance, but half an hour in even she concedes that this is the most fun she’s had in months. Not counting the pitch meeting at the café. Killian reminds her of an overexcited puppy, checking out the stalls, looking at fruit and vegetables and cheeses and jars of herbs and spices she has never heard of, and talking to all the vendors as if they were his best friends. A thought surfaces unbidden from their first night at the diner, about the nature of his line of work and the lack of friendship it brings, and this, here, these casual interactions with vendors who don’t know him and won’t remember him -- this is so obviously where he can connect with the world, if only for a moment, it makes something inside her hurt.

“Look, Emma--- they have girolles!” He points to a tub of yellow-brown mushrooms that look like trumpets and licks his lips. “Half a pound,” Killian says to the burly man behind the stand as he pulls out his wallet, “and at least six or seven shallots.” He turns to Emma. “Just you wait.”

Emma shakes her head to hide her grin and Killian pays the man and then says, “Coffee?”

And Emma sighs. “Oh god, yes. So much yes.”

He pulls her by the wrist to a stand with ‘the best coffee on the eastern seaboard’ and they settle on a bus bench. He puts the bags down with an audible exhale.

“Heavy?” She smiles sweetly.

“Not at all,” he says, rubbing his shoulder.

“Remember how I offered to help you carry and you scoffed?”

He rubs his shoulder again. “I am a stupid, stupid man. Misguided notions of chivalry and all that.”

“Yeah, well, turns out twelfth-century code of conduct will give you scoliosis.”

He laughs out loud. “You really are impossible.”

“It’s part of my charm.”

She smiles and he looks at her, with that open expression that has not left his face for days now. “It certainly is.” He loosely wraps an arm around her shoulders and that’s when she feels it.

It’s like an instinct of danger and foreboding, a frisson of fear and a spike of fight or flight. And then a shadow falls across her face and she hears his voice, cold and sharp, “Hello, Emma.”

Every muscle in her body tenses, coils like a spring. She can feel Killian next to her sit up straight and go on high alert.

“Emma,” he says. “Who is this?”

She tries to remember how to breathe. It takes her three failed attempts to get her voice to work before she rasps, “Someone who’s not allowed within 100 feet of me.”

Killian gets up and puts himself between Emma and the man in one swift, smooth motion. Emma stares up at Killian’s back, stiff and solid before her, and listens as he says, “I think you’d best be off. Mate.”

This must be another remnant of a childhood spent on another continent. The a in Mate is soft and stretched and entirely un-American, but more than that, it is menacing.

“It’s a public place,” the man says. “There was no way I could have known she was here.”

Emma can almost hear the answering glare Killian is giving him, and the man sighs like a put-upon diva.

“Fine,” he huffs. “I’ll go.” There’s a moment of silence and then the man’s voice rings out one more time, a little further away. “Good luck with that, by the way.” Everyone in a 10 foot radius knows who he means by ‘that’. “Fucking duckling.”

Emma just feels numb.

“Hey.” Killian’s voice is soft and very calm and Emma feels him take the paper cup from her hand. “Can you get up for me, love?”

She gets up slowly, because none of this is real, and feels him heft their bags on one shoulder. He wraps his other arm around her and steers her past laughing vendors and screaming children and animated conversation until they end up at Emma’s front door, and then there is an elevator, and a hallway, and her apartment door, and he simply leads her to the couch and sits down next to her.

He doesn’t ask if she’s all right.

He doesn’t talk at all.

He just sits there, next to her, holding her hand and softly rubbing his thumb across her knuckles.

Finally Emma shakes her head and looks up at him. His eyes are large and worried and still so blue and so close, she has to look away again.

“His name is Walsh,” she says. “And we are never talking about him. Ever.”

She looks up again and his brow is furrowed.

“Ever,” she repeats. “You know how we didn’t talk about your brother?”

He nods.

“That’s how much we’re not talking about Walsh.”

He nods again and squeezes her fingers and says, “Whatever you need, love.”

And Emma starts to cry.

She doesn’t even really know why. Tears just start to roll down her face like she’s a fucking kid whose bike got stolen. Not that Emma’s ever had a bike. She just sits there, drops running down her cheeks and she can’t stop it, can’t rein herself in, and worse-- she doesn’t want to, because he’s just sitting there in silence, completely without judgment, and it feels horribly, awfully, terrifyingly right.

Then he opens his arms and pulls her in and she starts to sob in earnest and he lets her, rubs her back and lets her be, and she cries and cries and cries until she falls asleep.

-/-

She wakes up lying on the couch, her head on Killian’s shoulder, his arm around her. He’s fast asleep, his breathing slow and easy, just like it was this morning, in her bed. It does seem like they sleep well in each other’s presence. She leans back a little and feels his hand tighten on her waist as his eyes flutter open.

“Hey.” It’s a whisper.

“Hey,” she whispers back.

He smiles at her, his thumb rubbing lazy circles across her hip bone, and then on impulse she simply leans forward and presses her lips to his. It’s the most natural move in the world. His mouth is soft and he kisses her back, languid and slow as his hand runs up her side, and then his breath catches and he pulls back.

“Emma,” he says, and then stops. Looks at her. His eyes are soft, and uncertain. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

She meets his gaze. “Do you?”

He barks a helpless laugh. “Not at all. You defy every rulebook.”

He’s looking at her, joy and apprehension warring on his face, like he doesn’t understand what is happening any more than she does. And she is so tired of second-guessing everything, of fighting herself, fighting him; of constantly feeling out of her depth.

It’s time to know.

“Killian,” she whispers. “Tell me if this is a game.” She props herself up on one elbow and swallows hard. “It’s OK if it is. I won’t turn you out. I will go back to my bedroom and you can stay the rest of the week and we can simply part ways, no hard feelings. But I need you to tell me.”

He closes his eyes. The hand on her hip shakes a bit and then tightens, almost painfully.

“You get one chance.” His eyes are still squeezed shut and he’s talking to himself, his voice so low she can barely hear it. “One chance if you’re lucky.” His voice trails off and he is silent for another long, long moment. Then his eyes open, and he looks at her. With longing.

Longing.

There are tears in his eyes.

He shakes his head and then sits up and pulls her with him, into his lap, his right hand anchoring her, holding on tightly, fingers digging into her skin. He cups her cheek with his left, sighs, and brushes his lips past hers. “You are not a trick, Emma. I swear. I swear on everything I have left to----”

His breath catches. He swallows hard, but doesn’t blink, and doesn’t look away. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet. And raw.

“I swear on my brother,” he says. His thumb brushes her jawline and his expression is naked and he’s not lying at all, so Emma leans forward and presses her lips to his and he kisses her back. With abandon. His arms wrap around her and hold on tight, so tight it’s almost getting hard to breathe, and he pulls back, leans their foreheads together, and exhales a shuddering breath.

“I didn’t plan any of this when I took you up on your offer to stay here, I swear,” he says. “I swear it just happened.” He lifts her chin, forces her to look at him. “Say you believe me. Promise me.”

How can she say no? How can she not believe him when he’s looking at her with this mess of confusion and hope and fear and dread all warring on his face? This new, exposed, open face of his?

She nods and he surges forward, kisses her fiercely, thoroughly, wraps his hand into the hair at the back of her neck and pulls her close,

closer

closer----

And then Emma moves. She can feel him as she straddles his lap, so hard against her, and she rocks her hips forward. He groans as if he’s in pain, breaks the kiss, breathless, and buries his face in her hair.

“Stop,” he rasps. “Just for a second.”

She looks at him, the red lips, the ragged breathing, and when he opens his eyes they’re blown black, his pupils big as saucers, and she grins an evil grin and rocks her hips again, right there.

“Emm-mm-a,” he stutters and then pushes himself off the couch with Emma wrapped around him like a vine and he nearly loses his balance, just manages to catch them against the backrest, and then his arm wraps around her waist like a band of iron and he nearly runs to the bedroom, harsh panting in her ear while she nips at his jaw, his ear, his pulse point---

his knees buckle for a moment and his hand wraps around the door frame, as he moans her name like a promise, a promise---

and then they fall onto her bed together, breathless, laughing, and Emma feels wild with something so good, so perfect, so right it takes her breath away and gives her superpowers

and makes her vulnerable

and invincible

and complete .

-/-

For the third time in a row Emma wakes up with Killian wrapped around her, but this time he’s awake. He’s just looking at her, his eyes soft. His smile is happy and a bit unsure until she smiles back at him and it becomes blinding. He pulls her close and buries his nose in her hair and holds her until she can feel his heartbeat.

“Good morning,” he whispers after long, long minutes of just nuzzling her hair and breathing her in, and his voice sounds gravelly and hungry and he’s not actually talking about the morning at all, good or otherwise. He shifts his weight, pushes a leg between hers, and Emma lets her hand wander down, feels him shudder and gasp and when she wraps her hand around him, harder than he was even last night, he rasps out an “oh god!” that goes straight to her core.

He wraps a hand around her neck and kisses her with ferocity, but then she strokes and his movements stutter as his hips buck and he whines low in his throat and closes his eyes and finally groans, “oh god, Emma---”, and then he flips them, looks at her, eyes wide as he scrambles to pull down her pajamas, his pajamas (still with those ridiculous anchors, he has a whole set of them), and stills for a moment.

She just stares at him.

His entire body is vibrating with the tension of keeping still, his expression open, hungry, needy---- needy for her, for her, Emma, not just because she is here, and they’re naked, and she’s available, convenient, next to him, but her, just her.

“Emma?” he breathes.

And then she nods and wraps her legs around his waist and pulls him in and he enters her in one long stroke, and she nearly sobs because she is so ready, for him, him, just him, and then it’s pushing and pulling and rhythm and motion and pressure

and pressure

and then

finally

release.

-/-

“Can I ask you a question, love?”

They’re sitting curled up on the couch, wrapped up in each other under a cosy blanket, their coffee mugs within easy reach, and she pulls back to look at him. His tone has become serious again, his eyes are somber. His hand is lazily rubbing the back of her neck, and he bends down to kiss her before he takes another sip of coffee.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

She nods. “What is it?”

“I know you said you won’t talk about that man back at the farmers market---” she stiffens and he squeezes her shoulder and pulls her close--- “and I respect that, love. You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to.” He waits for a moment, kisses her hair, rubs her back, and she tells herself to relax.

“Go on,” she says, but he waits until her shoulders unclench before he says, “What did he mean by ‘duckling’?”

Emma sighs.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he repeats, and she knows it’s true. She can just shut down the conversation right here, right now, and he’ll never bring it up again.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she says. “I’ll tell you this bit, and you tell me one thing about your brother.” It’s his turn to go rigid, and she kisses the underside of his jaw, before she pulls back and says, “Fair?”

He exhales slowly, lets some of the stiffness bleed out, and nods.

“Yes,” he says. “That’s more than fair.”

“OK.” Emma takes a deep breath, and his hand comes down, twines his fingers with hers, rubs his thumb across hers. “Honestly, there’s not that much to tell. Walsh is a mistake I wanted to make.”

She takes another deep breath. He remains perfectly still.

“I was always the ugly duckling, everywhere I went. Not just because I was a horribly late bloomer and spent my teenage years being ridiculously funny-looking.” His fingers squeeze hers once more, but he doesn’t say a word. “No, it’s true,” she goes on. “I was the ugly duckling. And then I had all those gaps in my memory, all those odd bits and pieces, places I could have sworn I’d seen before, things I knew I should know, but didn’t, and it made me the odd one out, even among foster kids. Like I was even more broken than they were. And you know how kids deal with those among them who are different.”

His grip on her fingers becomes almost painful. She is grateful for it, for the way it grounds her to the here and now. This Emma she is conjuring up from the past has no place in the present, and the pressure of Killian’s hand reminds her of that.

“So I kept hoping to ‘turn into the swan’, but of course I never did, and then I decided to make my own fate even if it meant making mistakes.” She sighs. It seems so foolish now, but it’s part of her journey, part of her, no matter what. “He first hit on me at a bar.” Killian gasps and Emma pats his shoulder. “Not like you at all, don’t worry. He made it very clear exactly what he wanted from me, right from the start. So I said, ‘why would you want the ugly duckling when you could have all this’ and pointed at the dozens of gorgeous women along the bar, and he said, ‘because you’re a sure thing’. And I was. I totally was. He started calling me duckling after that, just to remind me of my place, I think. He was a bastard, and I knew he was a bastard, and I did it anyway, because I was very busy punishing myself for my own shortcomings, see, and Walsh was a very efficient punishment.” Killian next to her has stopped breathing. Emma shoves the whole mess back into its box and her voice is perfectly neutral as she says, “Long story short, he finally allowed me to learn my lesson and I no longer need to punish myself and he doesn’t get to stand within a hundred feet of me.” She shrugs. “Thanks, by the way.” Her voice is still perfectly neutral and she is very proud of it. “For yesterday. Sometimes I lose my bearings.”

She looks up. There are tears in his eyes.

Tears.

And then he pulls her close, close, closer, hugs her hard and tight, with force, with conviction, and buries his nose in her hair, nuzzling her neck, and doesn’t let go for what feels like hours.

When he finally releases her she stays burrowed into his shoulder and he leans down to brush his lips gently across her cheek.

“I know you don’t need it,” he says. “I know you don’t need my empathy and certainly not my pity, but---”

He grasps her chin, forces Emma to look at him.

“For what it’s worth, I am sorry.”

And if there ever was a measure of ultimate, absolute truth, it is how Killian says the word am. He kisses her again, and takes a deep breath, and before she can brace herself it just bursts forth in one long rush.

“My mother died when I was nine,” he says.. “My dad moved us to Wilmington. He worked the docks, and it’s a large port city, and the company he worked for in Bristol actually facilitated the move. There was nothing for him back in England after my mother was gone, so we went.” He sits up straight, tension coils, and Emma puts her hand on his arm, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s staring at a spot on the wall behind her. “Turns out there was nothing for him in Wilmington either, because he managed to drink himself to death by the time I was twelve and my brother and I went into the system.” He breathes a long, shaky exhale. “They separated us right from the start. Said it was impossible to place two kids in the same household. But Liam was already sixteen and he would come find me, wherever I was. He’d find the schools I was at and just wait outside and take me away for the day. Once we ended up in a dive bar at the docks and nobody even cared that we were kids. Well, nobody at the bar cared. The system people cared a lot.”

Killian’s voice grows wistful and far away and Emma realizes that he is no longer in the room. He is a teenager on foreign ground and she knows the feeling like the back of her hand.

“Liam would tell me stories of how we’d beat the system, how he would start to make money the moment he aged out and come and get me away from all this and I believed him. And then he turned 18 and disappeared.” He snaps back to the present in a sudden, jerky movement, and adds, “He OD’d in Boston a few years later. My parole officer told me.” He shrugs. “As you can see I was already firmly on my way to a life outside the system at the time. Any system.” He looks at her, and his eyes go soft. “I realize I may have to change that, Emma Nolan.” His voice is a whisper. “But can my line of work please be a problem for another day?”

She laughs, and it feels good.

“Fuck yes,” she says with conviction, and smiles. “Aren’t we just the poster children for good adjustment. If we were superheroes these would be some fucking origin stories.”

He laughs out loud, releases all tension, and hugs her again.

“You’re impossible,” he says, and then pulls her up off the couch. “Screw this baggage. Let’s go get a drink.”

“It’s noon.”

“That means It’s five o’clock in Britain right now, and we have earned it.”

She can’t help but laugh and agree.

They find a dive bar of their own, dark and quiet and cosy, and have two beers and two shots of whisky each, and then go to the diner and devour a truly huge portion of grilled cheese and onion rings, and they laugh often, and touch often, and Killian holds her hand and sneaks kisses whenever he can and they don’t talk about their pasts at all.

When they get home Emma sinks down on the couch and Killian pulls off her shoes and throws her the comforter and kisses her thoroughly, and then asks which movie she wants to watch and Emma smiles and says Some Like It Hot, because it’s time to show him the best comedy in the history of ever.

And they laugh and cuddle and kiss more than they watch the movie and then they fall into bed and Killian wraps himself around Emma and everything is warm and languid and perfect and she falls asleep with a smile on her face.

And at 2:27 AM Killian’s phone beeps.

There’s a message.

One line. From Neal.

Meet now.

Thank you all for reading!

#cs fic #cs fic rec #thisonesatellite #everybody knows #fun and heartbreak and angst #bedsharing and softness and connection and catharsis #this is the calm before the storm darlings

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wistfulcynic · 4 years

Note

7, 9, 12 for the soft asks :)

Thanks, Celia! 7. what color brings you peace?

Blue. Any shade of it but turquoise. (Not that I don’t like turquoise, it’s just not a soothing shade, imo.)

9. what calms you down?

Taking a bath. I don’t have a bathtub anymore and I miss it soo much. Also reading a familiar book and petting my cats.

12. how are you?

I’m okay. It’s been a bit rough lately, same as for most people I’m sure, but I’m hanging in there.

SEND ME A SOFT ASK

#ask games #asked and answered #scientificapricot #profdanglaisstuff

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ohmightydevviepuu · 4 years

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2, 4, 21, 29 for the author asks 💕

2 - When you’re writing a new story, what is the one thing you need to know before you can start?

ooh so i’ve talked about this before--usually i need to know where it ends--but what i relized recently is that i don’t necessarily mean where the plot ends (though that helps). i really need to know the emotional journey so that i know what i’m writing to, PLUS it is my favorite part and the entire reason i attempt fic at all. i want those emotional moments! i NEED them!!!

4- How do you know when a chapter is “done”?

this is hard to describe, but i almost always reach a line or a moment and i’m just like, put the period there, move on, we’re done. a chapter ends when the bit of story you’re attempting there comes to a natural resting place, whether that is a cliffhanger or a resolution, and if i’m having an issue with flow in one of my stories, it is sometimes because i let a chapter (or a moment) linger too long, past the point of its usefulness.

21 - What is your best piece of advice for writing romance scenes?

READ ROMANCE NOVELS--of all kinds, of all genres/subgenres, “clean” and erotic alike--this is about learning the tropes and the do’s and don’ts as much as anything, IMHO.

when you’re writing romance, you want to make sure you are centering the emotional journey of your characters. often in het fic, as in het romance, this can be about understanding ESPECIALLY the motivations and emotions of your female character. are they believable? are they relatable? are you just repeating whatever you’ve seen on TV or in movies without thinking about why it’s important to you that your characters do x, y, z? give yourself a check for internalization of tropes, stereotypes, cliches, misogyny. if you’re writing het romance, what are you doing to center the experience of your female protagonist? your male protagonist? if you’re writing from multiple POVs, the scene should be told from the POV of the character who is more emotionally vulnerable at that moment.

i don’t write sex scenes or erotica (though i love both of those things in a story), but i LIVE for deep, roiling emotional turmoil and feelings realization and the moments of connection and confession and always, always, characters owning their shit as best i am able to write it. IMHO the best way to learn that is to READ MORE ROMANCE.

(or if you are like me and love podcasts, i cannot recommend enough the fated mates podcast. it uses the immortals after dark series by kresley cole as its starting point and then dives deep into story, plot, craft, what works, what doesn’t, why shit that is problematic AF can work anyway when you do it right, and it’s delightful)

29 - How do you plot your stories?

extensively, and often as a coping mechanism for procrastination :-) i struggle sometimes with plot, so writing out as much as possible before i actually start writing is very important to me. this is more true with MC than with one-shots, which often come to me more or less complete in the conception stage. but an MC, i need to break it out into beats, into acts, into arcs, sometimes even into word count of a given section so that i have a goal. i also need to know how it ends.

send me writer asks!!

#about me #asked and answered #scientificapricot

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let-it-raines · 4 years

Text

Walking the Baseline (1/1)

He’s at the top of his game. She’s in the midst of a comeback. The Olympics are just around the corner, and there’s more than gold medals on the line. There’s secrets and personal lives and a lot more at risk than simply losing, but as most know, Killian Jones and Emma Swan hate to lose.

rating: mature (just to err on the safe side)

a/n: Hello, hello, my darlings! I was informed of the @captainswanolympics as I’ve missed so much in my time of only checking messages and posting YWUSS, and I just had to write a tennis AU. If you know me, you know I played tennis back in the day, worked behind the scenes for a professional tennis tournament, and am an avid fan, so the fact that I haven’t written more CS tennis is surprising. lol.

This one is short and sweet, and it’s the first CS I’ve written in months. So I genuinely hope you enjoy it. And no, you don’t have to know tennis to understand 🎾

ao3: | here |

tag list: @qualitycoffeethings @mrtinski @klynn-stormz @scarletslippers @jonirobinson64 @snowbellewells @therealstartraveller776 @thejollyroger-writer @sherifemma @galaxyzxstark @galadriel26 @idristardis @karenfrommisthaven @teamhook @spartanguard @searchingwardrobes @jamif @shireness-says @ultimiflos @nikkiemms @onepunintendid @bluewildcatfanatic @superchocovian @killianswannn @carpedzem @captainkillianswanjones @mayquita @mariakov81 @jennjenn615 @onceuponaprincessworld @a-faekindagirl @scientificapricot @xellewoods @ultraluckycatnd @stahlop @kmomof4 @tiganasummertree @singersdd @tornadoamy @cluttermind @lfh1226-linda @andiirivera @itsfabianadocarmo

-/-

“My legs feel like jelly,” Emma sighs as she sinks into an ice bath. It’s never pleasant, and it may not even help, but it makes her feel better every time. “Like, I don’t think I’m going to be able to walk when I get out of here. I don’t think I can even stand now.”

“You say that after every long match,” David tells her, clicking away at his iPad. There’s no doubt he’s studying her stats and about to pick her apart in a friendly yet incredibly harsh way that is a David trademark. “Is your shoulder okay? Your first serve percentage was up, but your speed was down.”

Yep. He’s so predictable. She knew that was coming the moment she decided to change the speed on her serves.

“I’m fine. I’m tired. I mean, shit, David. It’s like the tour is trying to ruin our bodies. My last two-week break was when? March? It’s almost August, and it’s not going to stop there.”

“You’ve made it before. You can do it again.”

“That’s not encouraging.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me that I don’t have to do this.”

David looks up from his iPad, brow raised, and she knows she’s not going to get the answer she wants. He doesn’t tell her she can quit unless they’re in a heated argument after disagreeing on her service motion or her footwork, which will always be her downfall when she’s exhausted, or any other aspect of her game. That’s what happens when your coach is not only your couch but also your older brother.

“I’m not going to say that. You’re in the quarterfinals. You play against Svitolina, who you have an excellent record against, and then in the semis, it could go either way with French or Stephens. That’s who we’re worried about. We’re not thinking about the finals until we’re in the finals.”

“I’m not thinking about just the finals. I’m thinking about the fact that I played Madrid, Rome, Roland Garros, Eastbourne, Wimbledon, Washington, here. And now I’m supposed to fly to Rio for the Olympics, then fly to Cincinnati, and then New York. And after New York, we almost immediately fly to Beijing, and it doesn’t stop. I get, what? A month and a half off, but it’s not really off time because we spend that time fixing everything for next season. The only way I get a break is if I lose or I get injured, and I don’t want either of those things.”

Emma’s chest heaves as she finishes speaking, the words flying out faster than her mind can come up with them as she runs through her tournament schedule, and David doesn’t blink. He stares at her like he always does, and sometimes she swears it’s like staring at a male version of herself. And she knows what’s coming. She always does. David never got to play past college, the professional circuit too much for his body, and he always pulls the card of how much he would give to be playing right now, to be in her position. She gets it. If she was in his position, she would do the same thing, but right now, all she really wants is to cry.

“You have worked too hard to quit, Emma,” David sighs, giving her a patented big-brother condescending stare. “You are not going to quit. I know this part of the season is rough, but you push through it every year. And imagine how good it’s going to feel when you have a gold medal around your neck or when you have that US Open trophy in your hands. You don’t get to play forever, and you’re the one who said that you weren’t quitting when everyone would have easily expected it. Do you want to prove them right?”

Emma moves in the bath, sinking a little lower, and damn, her sports bra is going to be impossible to get off. Her gaze shifts from David to the TV where ESPN commentators are sitting at a desk, her Nike-approved picture on the screen beside them. They run through the stats of her match and then her overall career stats. She’s twenty-eight, which is apparently at the end of her career according to them, world number seven, which is also abysmal to them somehow, and she is not living up to her potential when she is a former world number one, six-time grand slam champion, and a gold medalist from four years ago in London.

She groans and tries not to think about how much she hates all the people who work for ESPN. They have their favorites and the ones they hate, and since she is not a mediocre American male or one of the all-time greats, she’s somewhere in between. Usually, she doesn’t listen to the comments, to the pundits, to the assholes. She tries to stay away from that because it will drive her into a deep state of negativity, but lately, it’s like she can’t get enough of listening to what people say about her as if it is going to give her some kind of insight to her game.

She doesn’t crave their validation, but maybe, in a twisted way, she does.

“She gave birth sixteen months ago,” Mary Jo sighs. “She came back a year after giving birth. She is not going to be who she was before she had a child. The fact that she’s won enough this year to be in the top ten is amazing when she started with no ranking since there are no tour protections for maternity leave. She’s a champion, and sometimes champions struggle as they get their form back.”

“Sixteen months is a long damn time,” Patrick says, and Emma’s vagina would beg to differ. “She should be back to how she was or she shouldn’t be playing.”

“Have you given birth, Patrick? Because unless you have, I don’t think you get a say.”

“It’s my job to say what I think.”

“Still, I think – ”

The television clicks off, and Emma’s gaze finds its way back to David. “We’re not listening to them. It’ll piss you off. Mary Jo is right. You’re doing amazing, and I don’t want you to forget that.”

Emma doesn’t know if she’s doing amazing, doesn’t feel that way a lot of the time. This job is hard enough, to kill your body while also having the eyes of the world on you, but adding in a baby? It’s nearly impossible. A few other women have done it before her, not all with spectacular returns or returns at all, and she wants to keep getting better and play for long enough that Olivia will be able to see her mom play and remember it.

She’s not just doing it for herself. She’s doing it for her daughter, whose entrance into the world was unplanned, terrifying, and the best damn thing to ever happen to Emma even if she doubts herself in motherhood every day.

“I miss her,” Emma whispers to David, reaching up to play with her necklace, Olivia’s initials engraved in the gold circle. “I don’t know how I’m going to make it two more weeks without seeing her.”

“Do you want me to get Mary Margaret to FaceTime you with her? They’ve been watching your match at home.”

“No, no.” She shakes her head and releases the pendant, her resolve back as she inhales and focuses on her job. “Let’s do the rest of my recovery and talk about the match. I’ll call them when we get back to the hotel. I don’t want to get my mind too much out of the game.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

-/-

She wins her next match. And the next.

She loses in the final.

It stings more than her losses usually do, and there have been a hell of a lot of them, but she wanted to win another premiere event. She’s only been winning small events so far this year and making it to the later stages of the bigger events, but she keeps falling short when it’s time for her to push herself over the limit. Emma knows that her time will come, but she’s exhausted.

-/-

She flies to Rio with the rest of the American team who were playing in Montreal and Toronto, and she sleeps the entire ride down.

It’s the most sleep she’s gotten since she gave birth.

-/-

The 2012 Olympics felt familiar for Emma. The matches happened at Wimbledon, a place she’s known since she was sixteen years old and has watched on TV since she was even younger than that. Tennis players were isolated from the rest of the sports and events, and they all stayed in their usual rented houses and apartments instead of the Village or other hotels. Rio is different and completely unfamiliar. She’s staying in the Village, and while the amenities aren’t the best, the spirit of the Games are everywhere. She’s seeing athletes she’s only ever seen on TV before, meeting dozens of people whose names quickly slip out of her mind no matter how hard she tries to keep them there, and it’s impossible not to get excited to see all of these great athletes gathered together.

When she was a kid sitting in a foster home with David, the two of them wondering if they’d ever have a forever home, they would watch reruns of the Olympics on the TV, just waiting for the live ones to come around. It was an escape to get to watch people only a few years older than them doing these great things, and even after Ruth adopted them and paid for them to play sports, they never could have imagined being here.

Emma, sitting on a park bench outside with prestigious gymnasts walking in front of her, still can’t imagine it, and she’s literally here.

“Am I allowed to sit here or is that considered fraternizing with the enemy?”

Emma glances up and sees Killian Jones already sliding onto the bench in front of her. He’s darker than the last time she saw him in person, his hair longer, teeth possibly whiter, and he definitely hasn’t shaved in a few too many days. But the cocky, almost a little too arrogant, smile is the same, and even if she said no, he would still sit across from her. She knows him well enough to know that now.

“As far as I’m aware, you’re not playing mixed doubles, so I don’t think you count as an enemy.”

“Ah, but, love, Americans and Brits have been enemies since the beginning. That doesn’t change here.”

“Everyone else gets along. You’re just a competitive ass.”

“Indeed I am.” He wiggles his brows and leans forward, smirk stretched across his lips. “So, I was handed a bag full of Olympic-themed condoms when I checked in. Would you like to go try them out?”

“Shut up,” Emma laughs, kicking his leg. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Too many things to count.” He leans back and crosses his arms over his chest, muscles ever-so-slightly bulging underneath his Team Great Britain t-shirt. She’s wearing a similar one with USA emblazoned in the biggest font she’s ever seen. Not a lot of subtly going on at the moment. “Where’s Ruby? David? Any of the other Americans? Shouldn’t you all be eating or practicing or doing something besides sitting on a bench by the water?”

“Shouldn’t you?”

“Touché, Swan. Touché. Will and I were on the way to eat, but I saw you and got distracted. I don’t have practice until later. Rob is forcing me to give myself a break so I don’t exhaust myself after Toronto.”

“Well, you do have old bones.”

“Oi, I am thirty-two and at the top of my game. How many people can say that?”

“Anyone who is not an athlete.”

Killian shrugs and tilts his head to the side, rolling his shoulders. He’s right, though. Killian is playing better than he ever has. He’s always been good ever since he was touted to be Great Britain’s next big thing. She watched for years as the British media slagged him off for not having won Wimbledon despite having won the other majors two times around, but six years ago, he won after a five-hour, grueling match and fell onto the ground. The image was everywhere, and now, every time she’s in London or Wimbledon, that image lines the walls. It’s how she felt when she won the US Open. All of the major are special, but winning your home one, if you’re lucky enough to have one, is something else. And now Killian is world number one once more, has won two majors in a row with several premiere events in between, and with his form, she can’t imagine him losing.

But that’s why you lace up the sneakers. You never know what’s going to happen.

She’s been around the game long enough to know that.

Killian too.

Their paths have crossed for years, mostly because they have the same sponsors and do a lot of promotional events together, but the more they both started winning, the more they’d see each other at tournaments and dinners and everything in between. It’s a busy life, and while there’s time to make friends outside of tennis, sometimes it’s easier to find people in the industry.

She’s not entirely sure she would call Killian Jones a friend.

“Have you eaten, love?” he asks.

“Not yet.” On cue, her stomach growls, and he smirks, not that he really stopped.

“Why don’t you come with me? You can sit with us before we take the bus to the courts for training.”

“What happened to fraternizing with the enemy?”

He leans forward and winks. “For you, I’ll make an exception.”

Emma laughs but nods and stands with Killian as they walk to the main dining hall. It’s packed, the room echoing with conversation and laughter, and Emma and Killian are stopped several times to take pictures and sign autographs, something she will never get used to, before they sit down with Will, Rob, and several other plays from all around the world. For a minute, it’s like they’re in their usual bubble that they live in for the rest of the year with only tennis players around, but then Emma sees Usain Bolt walk by and she knows they’re not.

This is weird.

This is wonderful.

This is almost everything.

-/-

The Opening Ceremonies are long and sometimes boring, and she hates the outfit she has to wear, but she doesn’t know if she’ll get to do this again in four years so she savors it.

She savors it all, walking side by side with Ruby, Ashley, and Anna, and she takes all of it in before her mind switches to work-mode as she runs through her opponent for her first match. The nerves have been pushed down in favor of the experience, but they’re back and in full-force.

She cannot lose in the first round.

-/-

She doesn’t. -/-

She doesn’t lose her next few matches either.

-/-

Emma’s made it to the quarterfinals in both singles and doubles with Ruby after several days of long matches and struggling to see the ball – whoever thought making a fully green court with green side walls for tennis has obviously never played tennis, and she never wants to play on center court again – and she knows she’s one win away from guaranteeing that she plays in a medal-winning match.

It’s a relief and pressure all at once, something she’ll never grow used to, and as the sun sets and the village begins to get loud, Emma sits on her balcony watching the fountains in the lake light up. Ruby is off with Mulan somewhere Emma would rather not know about and will probably not be back to their room until at least tomorrow morning if the look on Ruby’s face was any indication, so Emma thinks she might get a little time to sit down and breathe for a moment, watching different events on TV. She could go watch them, but she doesn’t think her legs will carry her there.

Until her phone buzzes with a text that she quickly answers, and not three minutes later, there’s a knock at her door.

Emma quickly opens it, pulling him inside, and Killian kicks the door closed behind him as he cups her cheeks and kisses her, long and slow but with enough heat simmering below the surface that Emma knows there could be a promise of more later.

She’s seen him nearly every day for the past week, but she’s missed him.

She’s missed this.

His mouth moves expertly over hers in a rhythm that’s been practiced to perfection, and she feels dizzy with his kiss and holds onto his hair to keep her standing up. The Brazilian summer air wafts through the room, coating it in a thick heat, but Emma doesn’t pay any attention to that as heat curls between her thighs, warming her more than the air ever could. Her legs ache from the match, her arms feel heavy, but Killian makes her forget those things as he lays her down on the bed and kisses every inch of her body, spending time with his dark head of hair buried beneath her thighs until she can no longer speak.

Until she can scarcely breathe as well.

She manages to laugh, though, when he pulls out one of the condoms that has the Olympics logo on it, and she and Killian makes jokes about it as he slides into her, a thick sheath of heat that she never gets used to. It’s slow at first, a gentle rocking that keeps her teetering on the edge, but their bodies are tired and worn, and soon, it’s a race to the finish line.

Emma comes in first, not that it matters.

(But it does feel good to beat him.)

(They’re both competitive asses.)

(Even when they shouldn’t be.)

After, they’re both slick with sweat that doesn’t go away as their bodies press together on the small twin bed. Emma almost wishes she had rented a house outside the village like David and some of the other coaches did, but she doesn’t want to give up the experience. And it’s fine, especially as Killian shifts behind her and lets her settle into him, her hips pressing back into his as his arm wraps around to rest on her stomach, fingers occasionally searching out for her breast.

Emma is exhausted, but this is the best she’s felt in weeks.

(She definitely couldn’t walk to any of the events now, and she did want to see Phelps swim.)

“You played bloody fantastic in your doubles match today.”

“Not my singles?”

“I played at the same time as you. I didn’t get a chance to watch.”

Emma hums and leans further back into him. She’s glad Killian did most of the work because just thinking about how much she’s got to move again tomorrow is making her sore. “I played well there too. Straight sets.”

“Atta girl.” His lips press into her neck, stubble scratching across the skin. “I’ve been thinking…”

“Oh, that’s always dangerous.”

Killian laughs but nudges his knee into her, which really only settles his cock between her ass, but she’s too tired to think of doing anything else. “I’ve been thinking,” he continues, “that I’m going to withdraw from Cincinnati and fly home instead.”

“To London?”

“To Palm Beach. I think it might be nice to have a calm week between tournaments to spend time with my girlfriend.”

“Oh really? You’ll have to tell her your plan. I’m sure she’d like that.”

Killian tickles her stomach, making her squirm, before he lightly pinches her side. “Mhm. I thought we might also like to spend time with our daughter since FaceTime isn’t cutting it for me anymore. I swear she’s grown three feet since I last saw her.”

“Four, I think. She’s basically a full-grown adult now with all that walking and talking she’s doing.”

“Has she said any new words I’m not aware of?”

“Nope. She still can only say the three.”

“Good. I’m glad I didn’t miss anything else.” Killian kisses the side of Emma’s neck again, and she twists around, wrapping her arms around him and pressing their noses together as she stares into blue, blue eyes that aren’t diminished by the darkened room. “I think we should bring her to New York with us. Hopefully at least one of us will be there for three weeks, and that’s just too long to go without her.”

“We’re staying in a hotel in New York. In two separate suites, I might add.”

“But we don’t have to.”

“Killian…”

His hand brushes down her side, warmth permeating from the rough fingertips, before it rests on her hip, thumb moving in soothing circles. “I’ve already called and seen if they could give me the Penthouse. It’s an entire floor with private entrances and a private elevator. Our teams can stay with us or they can stay in the original suites we were designated. I know you bring her with you when you can and that I sneak in visits, but I want to be able to stay with my daughter.”

This isn’t the first time they’ve had this conversation, and if she doesn’t say yes to it, it won’t be the last.

Things between she and Killian are complicated. They’re relationship isn’t, not anymore. At first, she couldn’t stand him, thought he was genuinely this cocky asshole from the way he talked in matches and in off-court interviews, like he was God’s gift to the sport or something. Then they ended up both winning in Australia four years ago, and while doing press together, she saw a different, kinder side to him that she hadn’t previously seen when they worked together in Nike promotions.

Fast forward through a lot of early morning calls, late night rendezvous in their hotel rooms, and a heck of a lot of texts and FaceTime sessions, and somewhere along the way, the impenetrable Emma Swan fell in love with the impossible Killian Jones.

They kept it secret, the both of them knowing how vicious the media is to athletes that date each other, especially since Killian was going through a wrist injury that was somehow his fault according to the pundits and that he was getting hounded pretty hard at the time. They didn’t know if it was going to work, neither of them having stellar relationship records, but they figured eventually they would be okay with the world knowing.

Then came the positive pregnancy test, and Emma’s entire world shifted.

She was at the top of her game, at the top of her world, and as hard as it is for her to admit now, she didn’t want Olivia. She wanted to keep living her life the way it was. That was a possibility but not one she was willing to take, so she stopped playing but kept training as she and Killian figured out how they were going to do this.

They’re never home, rarely together, and they were both way out of their leagues. It would have been easier to tell the world they were together, that Killian was the father, but Olivia’s protection is worth more than their ease.

Now, though, looking at the crease between Killian’s brow and the sadness pooled in his eyes, she wonders if they’re doing the right thing.

“I know. I’m sorry. I – ” Emma’s lips quiver, and she nearly cries. She’s exhausted beyond belief and doesn’t know what to do, so she buries her face in Killian’s neck and wraps her arms around him. “Can we talk about this on the plane ride home?”

Emma says home as if they’re going to the same place after this. They’re not. But maybe she should listen to Killian and take the break she’s been craving.

“Aye, love, if that’s what you want.”

She nods and feels his lips ghost over the crown of her hair. “I want to lay here with you and not think about tennis or make hard decisions.”

“You want to talk about how bloody uncomfortable this bed is?”

Emma laughs. “It really makes you miss those awful ones in Paris.”

“You had to ask for a new one.”

“It was so worth it.”

-/-

They FaceTime Olivia in the morning. Mary Margaret has her in a matching outfit to Emma’s uniform, and Killian scoffs that she’s representing America instead of Great Britain.

Emma thinks it’s the best thing in the world, and it reminds her who she’s playing for.

It’s not for her country, not for herself. It’s for her daughter.

Their daughter.

-/-

The next two days drag by and yet she has a difficult time keeping up with them. Her practices are long, recovery longer as her shoulders are massaged and legs are iced, and Ruby has to drag her out onto the court for doubles when all she wants to do is sleep. She’s not used to playing this many matches in such a short period of time, and while having Ruby on court with her helps lessen how much she runs, her legs are still aching.

She’s almost to the finish line. She can make it.

“Those legs are too pretty for you to be dragging them like that,” Ruby jokes as they sit down during a changeover in the third set of their quarterfinal match. Emma reaches for her energy drink and takes a sip before biting into a banana while Ruby shakes her legs.

“I can’t make them move.”

“Yes, you can,” Ruby insists. “You already won your singles today, and we’re four games away from winning this match. I will kick your ass if we don’t win this.”

“Can you kick my ass if it’s already kicked?”

“I can indeed.” Ruby pats Emma’s knees and smiles. “Come on, hot mama. We’ve got this.”

And it’s tough, but they do.

Emma and Ruby go through recovery, and when Emma checks her watch, she sees that Killian’s match is just about to start.

“Do you want to get a bus across the grounds and go watch swimming?” Ruby asks her as David massages her calf. It’s not his job, so he obviously can’t stop complaining about doing it.

“I think I want to watch Killian’s match. Can we get seats in the stadium? Is his box empty?”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” David asks her as her muscle spasms.

“If we all go, it won’t be suspicious. He’s playing Sam, so they might think we’re supporting the Americans.”

“Aren’t we?”

Her eyes roll. “Not in this situation. Come on. Text Rob and see if we can get into Killian’s box.”

David levels her with a stare, and she knows he’s going to say no, that it’s a bad idea. But then he releases her leg and pulls his phone out of his pocket.

They end up going still dressed in their match clothes, and Emma puts on a sweatshirt, a cap, and sunglasses to hide herself as much as possible. She knows it won’t work considering she’s literally wearing the outfit she has worn all week, but she can at least try. It’s been years since she’s gotten to watch one of Killian’s matches from somewhere other than the locker room or her hotel room, and she’s missed the magic of watching him play. He’s fluid with his motions, even if they are slower than they used to be, and his groundstrokes are powerful from the baseline. She knows from the moment that she sits down that he’s winning this match. She can tell by the way he’s carrying himself and the determination in his eyes. She grabs her phone and snaps a picture just as he looks her way, brow raised in question but a smile on his lips.

-/-

Killian wins his match, and she finds him in the tunnel afterward, his team creating a wall around them, and wraps her arms around him, not caring that they are both disgustingly sweaty or around other people.

“I love you,” she whispers.

“And I you.” The corner of his lips brush against her temple. “You’re amazing, Emma. Bloody amazing.”

“You too, my love.”

-/-

Emma wins the semifinals of both of her matches.

Killian wins his.

They’re both playing in gold medal matches – Emma definitely brags about how she’s playing two while Killian is only playing one – and she wants to vomit.

Holy shit.

-/-

“Say hi to your mommy,” Mary Margaret tells Olivia as Olivia keeps smacking her hand on the screen. “Your mom and dad are there trying to talk to you, Livvie.”

Emma leans her head onto Killian’s shoulder as they both stare into the screen waiting for Olivia to move her hand. She does with some help from Mary Margaret, and then bright green eyes show up. She has Emma’s eyes and dirty blonde hair that’s thick and wavy, but everything else about her screams Killian, especially her smile. Emma has missed that smile.

“Hello, little love.” Killian waves and tries to get her attention, but she couldn’t care less. “Don’t you want to talk to us?”

She makes a noise that isn’t a word, and Mary Margaret sighs. “I’m sorry. She’s been asking about you two, but now that you’re there, she doesn’t care. I tried to tell her what a big deal the two of you were, but she doesn’t care.”

“I’ll have to tell her how incredible her mother is later. She’s going to be the first women to win two singles golds in a row as well as the first mum to do it. And she’s going to have two more medals than me. Showing me up in every category.”

“That’s assuming you win, Jones. I could have three more gold medals than you.”

“I do love a challenge.”

Olivia starts giggling, Emma’s favorite noise on the planet, and she tries to memorize it to keep with her always. She knows Killian does too.

-/-

Emma’s gold medal matches are the day before Killian’s, and she’s jealous he gets a day off to rest. He tells her he’s going to spend the entire time training, sneaking in and out of other events, and watching her matches. She rolls her eyes at his texts because she’s sure he won’t have time to do all of that.

And yet he does.

She sees him in the stands during her doubles match. Ruby points him out when they’re in the middle of discussing serving spots, and Emma laughs at her calling him “lover boy” in a horrible British accent. She always calls him a ridiculous name, and of the few people who know of Emma’s private life, she’s glad Ruby is one of them.

Even if she’s still laughing and double faults on an important point.

It doesn’t matter, though, because within an hour and fifteen minutes, their shortest match of the tournament, she’s on the court’s floor with Ruby sobbing because they won a fucking gold medal.

She gets so little time to savor it, however, because the medal ceremony happens so quickly that she can barely take It all in. She also has press to do, and David has to practically force her into the media room where she and Ruby are hounded with more questions than congratulation as they clutch onto their medals. Ruby handles it like the pro she is while Emma’s nerves start to get the best of her as more people start talking about what she has on the line.

To be the first man or woman to win two gold singles medals in consecutive Olympics.

To win another gold medal for her country.

To be the first mother since Clijsters to win a major tournament.

To win her first big tournament since her comeback.

To have the possibility to win another gold medal in Tokyo in four years if she’s still playing.

It’s a lot, and she knows it. She’s been thinking about all of it every day this week, and her track record of choking in finals lately is pushing at the forefront of her mind.

She doesn’t know if she can do it.

And yet she does.

She laces up her sneakers, pulls her hair back, and takes a deep breath as she blocks everything out of her mind except for her game plan. She knows how the game is played. She’s been playing since she was twelve years old, and even though that’s a late start compared to most people, it’s gotten her here.

Emma walks out of the tunnel as her name is announced over the speakers, and even though all she can hear is the cheer of the crowd, she lets her mind go back to Olivia’s laugh, Killian’s smile, David’s pep talk, Ruby’s ridiculous texts. She thinks of all the things that push her when she wants to stop, and she reminds herself that no matter what happens, she’s done her best.

She could have given up the moment the stick said “pregnant.” She could have packed it all in, but she didn’t. She’s here, and she’s better than any excuse she could come up with not to be.

People have tried to tell her who she is her entire life, but she’s pushed back and said, “no, this is who I am.” Emma still has to do that now, no matter how many times she has proven herself.

The ice bath in Montreal where she wanted to quit seems years away when it was only eight days.

-/-

Emma looks to Ruby then David then Killian as she takes a deep breath on match point. Killian smiles and gives her a subtle nod, and then she raises the ball in the air, ready to toss it.

-/-

Game. Set. Gold freaking medal.

-/-

Afterward, she falls to the ground, her knees aching as they hit the asphalt, and her body can’t stop shaking with her sobs. She doesn’t know what she feels or how she feels or even where she is, and she only gets up from the ground when she hears her family calling for her. She slowly rises from the ground, runs across the court to congratulate her opponent on playing a good match, and then she’s running to the stands and climbing up with David’s help. She embraces him first. She wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him. he’s been her rock for her entire life, and he keeps her steady. Then it’s her physio and her agent and Ruby. Then, over to the side, is Killian, and their conversation from a few nights ago comes back to her.

She loves him. She’s proud to be with him. They shouldn’t have to hide their family anymore.

They haven’t exactly been doing a good job of it this week anyway.

So Emma very literally pounces on him, her legs wrapping around his waist, before she remembers that he has a match tomorrow. She can’t miss his back up. He’d never let it go if she did. Her feet fall to the ground, but her arms stay wrapped around Killian’s neck as he whispers words of encouragement and congratulations that she’s always going to keep close to her heart, right next to the necklace with the initials O-S-J on them.

Two people thousands of miles apart were brought together by chances, a whole myriad of them. If Ruth hadn’t adopted Emma and David, they never would have picked up a racket. If Emma had never picked up a racket, she wouldn’t have found her purpose in this world. She wouldn’t have a job or a daughter or a man who loves her in spite of how hard she is to love. There was so much that could have derailed her, both good and bad, and while she could say none of it matters, in some way, it all does.

Because it led her here.

And she doesn’t want to be anywhere else even if she would give anything to be able to hug Olivia right now.

“You did so good, Swan,” Killian whispers, his voice the only one she hears.

“I know.”

He pulls back, and there are tears in his eyes that mirror her own. “So, I guess I have to win tomorrow so your bragging rights don’t get too big.”

“Oh, Jones, you are never catching up with me now,” she teases, all of the exhaustion melting away. “I’m miles ahead of you, but you better win. Olivia doesn’t need to be embarrassed by her dad.”

“Pretty sure that’s my job.”

“Right now, your only job is to help me back down onto the court and then go win yourself a gold medal.”

“Don’t tell the presses you’re rooting for a Brit.”

Emma shrugs as Killian thumbs away tears underneath her eyes. “I don’t care anymore, and I’m definitely going to be sitting in your box tomorrow, cheering louder than anyone else.”

-/-

When Killian wins the next night after a torturous four hours, his fall is almost identical to Emma’s. Though, when he climbs into the stands to get to the box, he immediately goes for Emma, cupping her cheeks and kissing her for the entire world to see.

“I guess I’ll have to figure out a way to embarrass our daughter in another way.”

“I think her parents making out on international TV might do just that.”

-/-

Two days after they get home – they spent the entire first day sleeping and holding Olivia – Emma puts on her three gold medals, Killian puts on his one, and they hold Olivia in between them, her toothy smile brighter than the gold as the photo is taken.

Olivia Swan-Jones has a pretty cool mom and a dad who has some catching up to do in the gold medal department.

It’s Emma’s most liked picture on Instagram, not that she cares about any of those things, and it’s the biggest news story for three days straight despite the literal Olympics still happening.

All Emma cares about, though, is that she has a week off – she opted out of Cincinnati after all, despite David’s protests – she can spend with her family before she and Killian are off to New York where the pressure will be the highest it’s ever been and the media will most likely be losing their shit over Emma and Killian’s announcements.

Olivia will be with her, Killian too, and in the end, that’s all that matters.

Oh, that, and the fact that Emma Swan is officially back, and it feels damn good.

-/-

Thanks for reading, my friends! Can’t wait for those 2021 Olympics 🤞and learning about sports I’ve still somehow never heard of. And if you want to talk to me about tennis, I’m fully here to talk about Rafael Nadal’s biceps and how his game is underrated despite being one of the most dominant athletes of all time 💚😂

#walking the baseline #cs fic #cs ff #cs fanfic #cs olympics #captain swan fanfic #captain swan ff #captain swan fic #captain swan #csow

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thejollyroger-writer · 4 years

Text

Where Your Heart Will Fly on Wings - 1/2

Part One: A Ship, A Map, and A Secret

A Neverland arc (season 3A) rewrite where the gang doesn't meet Captain Hook until they get to Neverland to rescue Henry. Most of the end of s2 ("Second Star to the Right..." "... and Straight on' Till Morning," the last two episodes of the season) are the same: Greg and Tamara kidnap Henry. With Killian not present, I imagine that David succeeds in wrestling a bean away from Greg. They go to Rumple for help, and though he refused before, Blue's potion worked in giving Belle her memories back and he changes his mind. Somewhere in his shop, there is a ship in a bottle, and he removes this ship, docks it in the harbor, and leads Emma, Regina, Mary Margaret, and David through a portal that takes them to the waters surrounding Pan's island.

Also on AO3

Special thanks to @shireness-says my forever beta who only makes my life (and my stories) better, and all the ladies on discord who answered all the little questions I struggled with while writing this. Thanks, ladies. ( @kmomof4 @hollyethecurious @donteattheappleshook @elizabeethan @stahlop ) Written for @neverlandnewyear. Some other interested pals: @thisonesatellite @darkcolinodonorgasm @scientificapricot @carpedzem @superchocovian @itsfabianadocarmo @regi-writes-stuff @allons-y-to-hogwarts-713 @winterbaby89

The ship touches down on the waters, the portal disappearing from around them — but what they find is no better. Fat, cold rain drops pelt them from above, and below them, the waves begin to toss the dilapidated ship in every direction.

“Great job, Gold!” Regina yells, wrapping one of the ropes around her wrist. “You landed us right in the middle of a storm!”

“Believe it or not, dearie, my powers do not include the ability to control the weather, and certainly not in this realm!”

"We don't have time for this!" David chimes in, helping Mary Margaret keep her footing on the quickly-dampening deck. "If we're even going to make it onto the island, we have to get through this storm together!"

"And how do you expect we do that?" Regina chides. "This ship is barely more than a pile of old boards, it's not going to survive this storm."

"Then maybe we should work together to try to make it through this!" Mary Margaret yells.

"What do you expect us to do?”

"Well, we can start by trusting each other!"

Regina scoffs. "You think trust is going to get us through this storm? Is your trust going to keep us from taking on water?"

"No," Emma mumbles, looking down to her feet, and the water that she finds there makes her realize just how much trouble they're in.

And that's when something rams into the side of the ship. And again. And again.

"What the hell was that?"

"Sharks?"

"Afraid not," Rumple mumbles, trying to plant his feet on the slippery deck to keep control of the helm.

Regina looks over the railing, conjuring a fireball in her hand. "Mermaids."

"Mermaids?" Emma repeats. "They're real, too?"

"Does that really surprise you anymore?" Regina asks.

"We have to do something!" Mary Margaret yells over the wind.

"I am not being capsized by a fish!" David sloshes across the deck to a small cannon, which he loads a length of chain into before firing it into the water.

Mary Margaret picks a large net up off the helm, tossing half of it to Emma. “Help me get this into the water!”

“What are you going to do, catch one of them?” Regina tosses a fireball towards the surface of the water — which, surprisingly, works, and a mermaids around them back off the ship.

“Yes!" Mary Margaret stops for a moment to glance at Regina before tossing the net into the waves. "And ask her to help us.”

“Mermaids aren’t going to help you, dearies!”

“Obviously you’re also not going to help us, either!” Regina crosses the deck and throws out another fireball, clearing the starboard side just as she did the port. “There.” She wipes her hands on her soaked slacks and smiles at the fact that the storm also seems to have left with the mermaids. “They’re gone.”

“Not all of them!” Mary Margaret says, grunting as she and Emma struggle to pull their fishing net back onto the deck. “What about this one?”

With a flick of Regina's hand, the creature is out of their net and sprawled on the boards of the deck, her hands bound in front of her and her shining tail flopping into the inches of water that have settled onto the boards of the deck.

But her presence on the deck only causes an argument to break out between them, each offering their own way to deal with her — to ask for help, to kill her, to let her go. With every question they ask her, she offers them a vague but threatening answer, and the storm that Regina thought was over slowly begins to reform around them. Even after Regina turns her to wood with a whoosh of her magic, they continue to argue amongst themselves, the storm surging around them — all except Emma, who realizes the mermaid’s plan was to set them against each other to be destroyed by the storm. With no other option, she tries to get their attention, screaming across the small ship towards them, but nothing works — and she dives into the sea.

Quickly followed by a piece of metal rigging, pulled off by the winds into the water behind her and making hard contact with her head, immediately knocking her unconscious.

Without a second thought, David moves to dive in behind her, but Mary Margaret’s hand tight around his arm stops him. “No! You could get pulled under, too!”

“Not to worry!” A voice cuts through the rushing wind and water, another ship appearing out of the darkness of the storm. Within moments, it is close enough for the man to follow Emma into the water, a rope tied around his waist.

For a few long, terrifying moments, nothing happens. The storm still surging around them makes it impossible for them to see into the water, and they can only hope that the mysterious man can save her before it's too late.

After what feels like forever, a head breaks the surface of the water, Emma's bright hair a strong contrast to the dark waves, and the other man follows.

"Pull me up, Scarlett!" he calls, facing away from their small ship, and the man just visible on the deck of the nearby ship does as asked, pulling the man with Emma in tow. David wants to oppose, beg the man to bring Emma back to their ship, but just the feeling of Mary Margaret's hand on his arm keeps his mouth closed.

"Can you get us over there?" Mary Margaret asks, turning towards Rumplestiltskin. He rolls his eyes, but twirls his hand in front of him anyway, taking them all onto the other ship's deck in a wisp of smoke.

"Is she okay?" David asks as soon as he finds his footing, kneeling beside where Emma is laying on the deck — just as she spits out a mouthful of seawater and rolls onto her side. Mary Margaret drops to her knees on the deck beside her daughter, wrapping her arms around Emma's shoulders.

"Perhaps we should give the lass a moment? A bit of space?" the man who rescued her says, leaning against the bannister behind him, his arms crossed behind his back.

"Oh, come on !" Regina cuts him off, raising her hand towards the wave, moving ever-closer to their ship. "We don't have time for all this."

"Alas, she's right. I'm afraid we'll have to save the pleasantries until after the dashing rescue," he says, striding to what can only be his rightful place behind the helm and leading them quickly away from the waves, away from the storm. David helps Emma to her feet and they all watch as their old ship crumbles beneath the waves, after which the storm around them seems to disappear at an alarming rate; within mere minutes, the sun shines down from a cloudless sky and the soft wind blows lightly on the sails.

The man locks the helm into place and holds his hand out in a welcoming gesture. "This seems a much more appropriate time for introductions. Welcome aboard the Jolly Roger. "

"Okay,” David says, crossing his arms across his chest. "Who are you?"

"Captain Jones," he says, mimicking David's position -- which only draws attention to his left arm, which is blunted just shy of the elbow, replaced with a shining, metal hook. "But most people have taken to calling me by my more colorful moniker—"

Rumple laughs, cutting him off mid-sentence. "You've really owned up to your ailment, haven't you, Captain Hook ?" he says, spitting the last two words between his teeth.

The man turns around, noticing Rumple standing behind him for the first time. "Oh, now that's just my bloody luck, innit?" He pushes his dark, wet bangs off his forehead with his wrist and lets out a small laugh. "All I was expecting was a few damsels in distress," he says, turning towards Emma for a moment and waggling his eyebrows at her before returning his attention to Gold. "Yet it appears I've caught myself a crocodile."

"Like, Captain Hook Captain Hook? Waxed mustache and perm and Peter Pan?"

"Well, love, I must admit I'm uncertain about the first two, but I'm glad to hear that you know who we're going up against."

"Up against? I just want to save my son."

"Why do you think they brought him here, dearies?" Rumple asks, flourishing his hands to conjure a whisp of purple smoke, revealing a new outfit of dark pants and a black, reptilian-scaled vest. "Pan is the one behind it all, I have no doubts about that. And he is a far more powerful foe than any of you are able to go up against."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Regina bites back, but Rumple is gone in another wisp of smoke before the question even leaves her lips.

"It appears that even after all these years, he is still as helpful as he's always been," Hook says, his jaw obviously tight with tension.

Emma's head is spinning. She's spent months trying to wrap her head around everything about Storybrooke and her life, around the idea of true love and fairy tales and everyone's stories intertwining — but this, running into handsome, one-handed pirates in Neverland that have a history with Gold, goes beyond all else.

"Wait, you know Mr. Gold?" Mary Margaret asks, voicing the question they all seem to be thinking.

"Aye, " he says, wrapping his hook around one of the spokes of the helm, where his attention is also focused. "though he was not known by that name. Before he became the Dark One as well, if the rumors are to be true."

For once, Regina seems interested in what he has to say." But he's been the Dark one for —"

"Lifetimes, aye," he says, cutting her off, but turning his eyes down to where she is standing on the lower deck.

No one knows how to respond to him, so the deck stays silent. For the first time, Emma looks around, taking in the small crew that stands around them. There are five that she can see, not including the captain: another tall, dark-haired man standing against the railing, arms crossed over his chest; a stout man with a red beard and an even redder hat; a fierce-looking woman with a mess of dark hair piled high on the top of her head, her dark orange tunic and black pants having seen better days; and two dark, brooding young men, no more than twenty, on the far end of the deck.

"What brings you all to Neverland?" the woman asks. Emma is not surprised that she is the one who tries to make conversation, though she vaguely remembers something about women being bad luck on ships.

"They took my son," Emma and Regina say simultaneously, and none of the ship's crew are able to keep their immediate reactions off their face.

The dark haired man leaning against the railing behind David barks out a laugh, but when Regina turns her glare in his direction, he snaps his mouth shut.

"What could Pan want with your son?" Hook asks.

"Does it matter?" Emma spits back. "We need to get him back."

Hook holds up his hands in a gesture of reluctant surrender. "Of course, of course, you're right." He turns to the man still leaning against the railing, who pushes off to his feet when he sees the look on the captain's face. "Prepare for a return to open waters, I would like to dock at Pirate's Cove before dinner time, Mister Scarlett."

Emma expects a salute, given the rest of the captain's countenance, but the man — Scarlett — just nods and walks away.

"Dinner?" Regina asks, her voice dripping with anger. "What part of ' we don't have time for this' don't you understand, pirate?" she spits.

"Can I ask you how many times you've visited this island, your Majesty?" he asks, the same fire in his voice.

She's taken aback for a moment, but answers nonetheless: "Never."

"That's what I thought. I, however, have been here for longer than any of you can even imagine, which gives me the kind of knowledge you could use on this type of quest. Are you really going to turn that down?"

To this, Regina has no response.

"Now, the beaches at Pirate's Cove will prove much more useful to your mission here, and by sailing around the island, it will rid you of the necessity of walking either through or around the Dark Jungle, which I can assure you is something you do not want to do. So, yes, we are going to chance the few hours it will take to sail around the island to hopefully cut days off of what it would have taken you on foot, and then we will be closer to Pan's camp and it will hopefully prove easier to find your boy."

This time, it's David who is angered by his response: " We ? What do you mean 'we'?"

Captain Hook practically rolls his eyes at this, which almost pulls a laugh out of Emma. “Do you expect to navigate the island yourselves?"

Emma intervenes, trying to calm the tension while also ensuring they stay focused on rescuing Henry: "He's right, David, we could use his assistance."

He winks at Emma. "I had a feeling I was going to like you."

Though she knows she should be resting, bunking with Regina, David, and Mary Margaret belowdecks, Emma instead finds herself drawn to the crew of the Jolly Roger , and spends the next few hours chatting quietly with them as the ship makes its way across the surprisingly quiet waters surrounding Neverland.

Especially the woman — Tiger Lily, Emma learns. Something about her keeps Emma interested in their whispered conversation, and it does not take her long to learn that, like her own, the woman's background is full of sadness and sacrifice. She tells Emma how she sacrificed herself to try to stop someone from turning evil and spending the rest of her magic to get to this island after exiling herself; tells her about being found by Pan and working for him in return, only to learn how evil and twisted his ways are, stealing boys from their families and never allowing them to leave. (" And there's something deeper and darker behind it all, something that he only mutters about with his second in command, a Dark Magic that keeps the island alive — I believe with the sacrifice of the boys who decide they want to leave." ) And Captain Hook, saving her as she tried to escape Pan, though she knew it was impossible — or, well, improbable.

"And I've been in his service ever since. He was working with Pan for a while, too, and able to leave this realm. He asked every time we docked somewhere if I wanted to leave, to live a better life, but I've enjoyed the time I've spent with him as my captain. I've never known a better man."

"Oh, is that so, Lily?" the very man appears behind them, a smile covering his dark features — except his eyes, Emma realizes. His eyes are the brightest blue she has ever seen, the same color as the soft waves moving in the sunlight.

"Now, come on, Captain," she laughs, and the way she sets her hand on the captain's arm sends an unwanted shiver down Emma's back. "You and I both know you're nothing if not a man of honor."

"Yes, but you're not supposed to divulge that knowledge to our new guests just yet."

"And why not?" Emma asks, knowing that her crossing her arms over her chest is a defense mechanism, but that only makes her pull them closer to her.

He wags his eyebrows across his forehead, then winks at her once more. "Can't go around telling everyone that Captain Hook is a big softie. I have a reputation to uphold."

Emma rolls her eyes and walks away, if only to save herself from any more unwanted shivers or repressed feelings.

Their mission is to save Henry. Henry comes first and everything else has to wait.

"Well, what are we going to do once we're ashore?" David asks, hunched over the Neverland map spread across the desk in the Captain's cabin.

"Pan's camp is only a short distance from the Cove, remember?" Mary Margaret adds, the focused planner and adventurer that Emma has only seen glimpses of. "We can sneak up on him and—"

"Nope," Hook says from where he has planted himself in the corner, one boot crossed over the other and his arms crossed over his chest. "There's no way to sneak up on Pan."

Regina's eye roll is practically audible. "You keep saying that but offering no helpful advice."

"And you keep saying that but not actually listening to what I have to say."

"Hook is the one with the knowledge of the island, Regina," Emma reminds her.

"And I'm the one with the knowledge of magic, maybe we should just give that a try!"

"What are you suggesting?" Mary Margaret scoffs. " Poof ing yourself into the middle of a camp on a magic island you've never visited before?"

"What do you suggest, Hook?" David asks, if only to keep Mary Margaret and Regina from fighting. It's obvious that the last thing he wants to do is take advice from a pirate, but even David realizes that they are left with very few other options.

"There is no way to plan what is going to happen once we reach those shores. Everything we do, everywhere we go, Pan will know about it and will always be steps ahead of us."

"How have you spent all this time in this realm and not learned even a few tricks that could help us?"

"Most of my years here have been spent on this ship, provided with rations by the very demon himself. Before that, he and I had an agreement that made us more comrades than foes, and all the time I spent on the island was for his own doing."

"Oh, that's helpful," Regina mutters, leaving the cabin without another word.

"So, let me see if I understand this," Emma asks, knowing that neither David nor Mary Margaret will be able to be civil about this. "Your plan… is to not have a plan at all?"

Hook nods. "There is no other option in Neverland. It's Pan's game there, and he makes all the rules. Best we can do is be ready for whatever he throws at us."

"I don't like this," Mary Margaret mumbles, and David wraps his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to press a kiss against the top of her head.

"It's what we have to do to get Henry back, and that's all that matters," he says, a princely tone of finality in his voice, and the room falls silent.

"Can I ask you something, love?" Hook asks, his eyes leaving the horizon for just a moment to look at her (again, though she has only noticed a few of them) where she is sitting against the railing on the starboard side of the ship.

"I'm not your love," she bites, looking up from one of Hook's maps that she's borrowed from his quarters.

"I've had my share of run-ins with the Crocodile, and I've even crossed paths with the Evil Queen once or twice. The other two, that's Snow White, the princess, right? And her husband?"

"And how do you know that?"

He pauses, trying to chose his words carefully. He knows that if he says the wrong thing, he'll lose the small amount of ground he's made with them trusting him. "I've been… through an agreement with Pan, I can leave these waters every once in a while, as long as I fulfill some of the things he asks of me."

"You work with him," she says, but her face fails to give away any of what is going through her head.

"In a way, aye. But I've been to the Enchanted Forest, and I know what happened to it. How is it that you got here?"

"Well, there was a curse."

"Aye."

"And I — I broke the curse."

" You broke the curse?"

"Yeah, I — I'm the Savior , apparently, because I — I'm their daughter."

"Snow White's?" He's not nearly taken aback enough. "And the Prince."

She nods. So does he. Somehow he is wrapping his head around all of this much easier than she did. Maybe once you're alive for a few lifetimes, things like this are a lot less surprising than they were for Emma.

"How is it that you and the Evil Queen share the same son?"

Emma can't help but laugh. Where does she even start? "No offense, Hook, but it's a very long story that we don't really have time for."

"Aye, that I can understand." He lifts his hand off the helm to scratch his beard before moving his hand behind his ear and to the base of his neck. "But do you — you know — live together?"

"No, no, it's more like… joint custody."

"Come again?"

Right. "Joint custody," she says again, even though the centuries-old pirate knows nothing about the ins and outs of child custody. "We, uh… share him, I guess. Take turns."

"And what about the boy's father? Is he a part of this taking turns ?"

His question turns her blood to ice. Neal. Where does she even begin? For a moment, she's angry — at Neal, at herself. "No." How dare he. How dare Hook to even ask about Neal, he has no right —

He has no idea. It was an innocent enough question, there's no way he knew the still-gaping wound that a question about Neal would inflame.

"He's — dead."

"Apologies, love, I didn't mean to stir up any unwanted emotions."

"Stop calling me that."

"I'm afraid it's more of a habit than anything."

She has no response to this and turns her attention back towards the map.

"Bloody hell," Hook mumbles, though Emma and Smee, his first mate, are the only ones close enough to hear him. At first, they don't see whatever the problem may be, but as the ship continues to approach the shore, Emma sees him leaning against one of the trees just on the other side of the shore.

Pan. Emma can sense it somehow — her motherly instincts, maybe, or something like that, but she can feel that the man on the shore is Peter Pan.

No. No, not man. Boy , with a pudgy teenaged face and dark hair that falls down to his eyebrows.

"That's him," Emma says. She means for it to be a question, but it does not come out that way.

"Aye." She turns to him just in time to watch the edge of his jaw tick as he grinds his back teeth together. "That's the demon Pan."

For a moment, Emma is unsure how she feels about all this. Hook's plan to take them around the island has already taken hours of their precious time, and all under the guise to keep them from Pan — only to have him waiting for them right where Hook brought them to shore. What if Hook had been playing with them the whole time? Giving Pan time to plan ahead while he wasted time sailing them all around the island?

But then she looks at him again, sees the rage obvious on his face, and she almost feels bad for questioning his motive even though she has every right to.

"Bested us again," he mutters, but then straightens his back and looks out over the ship. "Prepare for docking!"

Pan watches, unmoving, from the shore as Hook and his crew lead the Jolly Roger to the dock — and, still unmoving, as they come ashore. Finally, he speaks. "Thank you for bringing our special guests ashore, Captain," the boy leers. "Good to see you're still good for something."

"You know I can't pass up the opportunity to give assistance to a damsel in distress, nonetheless three. And Dave." There's a joking tone in his voice, but it's not present anywhere else in his body.

"Ah, yes," Pan says, pushing himself away from the tree. "Welcome, your highnesses. I hope you find Neverland as welcoming as you have spent all those years hoping your Enchanted Forest would be. And you, Regina, you and I have more in common than you may want to believe."

Regina rolls her eyes, conjuring a fireball in her left hand. "Oh, please," she spits. "Let's do this the easy way: give me my son back and I won't burn your whole island down."

Pan just laughs. "No, I’m afraid that's not going to happen. You're on my island now, and you're going to play by my rules."

"Do you think this is a game?"

"Oh, your majesty , that's exactly what this is. So, Emma, I'm going to give you a map." He pulls a folded piece of parchment out from under his tunic. "A map that will lead you straight to your son."

"If this is some kind of trap," she starts, taking a step towards him with her hand on the sword on her hip.

But Pan's soft laugh stops her. "I may not be the most well-behaved boy on the island, but I always keep my promises. The path to finding Henry is on this parchment."

"Why are you giving it to me?"

He chuckles again. "See, it's not about finding Henry. It's about how you find him. And, Emma," he says, placing his hand on her wrist as she reaches out to take the parchment. "You're the only one who can."

She takes it from him, then unfolds it — only to find it blank, save a pattern around the outside. "It's blank."

"You sound surprised," Regina bites, but no one pays attention to her. All eyes are on Pan.

"You'll only be able to read that map when you stop denying who you really are."

Emma looks down at the map once more. Everyone around her looks at it.

And when they look up, Pan is gone.

As they follow Hook's lead through the jungle, Emma's focus is on the map. She thinks of all she can: her background, everything she's learned since coming to Storybrooke. She even attempts to admit that she's the savior during a short break, but nothing works.

Regina, angry and impatient and nothing if not motivated, takes it from her, insisting on magic, despite the arguments from the rest of the group. It works — to a point, leading them not to Pan's camp, but to an ambush by a group of Lost Boys. It does not last long, the heroes quickly overpowering the boys, but David gets nicked with a Dreamshade-tipped arrow — a secret he tries to keep from the rest of the camp.

Hook sees it, though, the one in the group that really knows how deadly the poison can be, but he, too, keeps it to himself.

He leads them away from the ambush, towards a cliff that looks out over most of the island. From there, he insists, they can plan a route through the jungle and maybe even scout out Pan's camp. But by the time they get there, the sun has set, and all they can see is shadow. "Now that you've seen what Pan can do in just a few short hours, we need our strength. I suggest we make camp."

Regina, unsurprisingly, is against his idea. "You want to sleep while my son is out there suffering?"

"If you want to live long enough to save the boy, yes," he argues, and no one has a comeback for this. Regina is first to walk away, huffing knowing that Hook is right. Hook is second, closely followed by David, who barks an order about finding firewood, leaving Emma and Mary Margaret looking out over the jungle.

They are silent for a moment, Emma obviously worrying about something, but Mary Margaret has learned not to push. And after a few moments, Emma does say what's on her mind:

"Regina's right, Henry's out there somewhere."

But Mary Margaret is ready with her positive comeback. "And Hook is right. We have to survive if we're going to get him."

"I know. I just hope we're not too late."

Mary Margaret leaves her there, knowing that sometimes, her daughter just needs her space to think. She stands there as the others build their camp, her attention turned once more towards the blank parchment — the map , removed from her pocket.

Though he does not mean to, Hook startles her with his approach. "I opted for first watch so you and the others could get your rest."

Emma just shakes her head, starting towards the campfire, needing the monotony of the crackling fire to slow her mind down. "There's no way I can sleep here without solving this map."

"Then it appears you and I will be not sleeping together, love," he jokes, waggling his eyebrows at her with a smirk on his face.

Emma just rolls her eyes. "Listen, Hook. I am here to save my son. The very last thing I'm going to do is get distracted."

His smirk is gone, not even a trace of a smile left on his features. "Of course, Swan. I meant no insult."

They sit in relative silence, the rest of them falling asleep quickly — or, at least, staying quiet. The sounds of the Jungle seem to grow louder in the darkness, almost deafening. But Emma's attention is still on the map.

"Nothing I can think of is working," she groans, dropping the map to the ground beneath her feet.

"None of those are what Pan is looking for. What have you been avoiding? What have you been hiding from, love?"

She is already on edge, and his endearment only makes her angrier. "I am not your love, Hook. Why are you helping me, anyway?"

He's been wondering the same, so he's quick to answer. "I've been searching for a glimmer of hope when it comes to defeating this demon for as long as I can remember. If finding your lad and ruining his plans takes his power from him, then helping you is the very least I can do."

"But why? What did Pan ever do to you?"

He's silent for a moment, trying to decide how much he wants to divulge to her, and he maks a quick decision. "It wasn't me personally," he lies. "But it's the principle of the thing. He preys on boys who think he's taking them to a better life, but all he's doing is taking them from their families. Growing up alone is the worst thing that could happen to a boy, and Pan thrives on separating families."

"Sounds like something you know a lot about." She doesn't mean to be so forward, but once it's out, there's No taking it back.

"Pardon?"

"Only someone who grew up alone would talk like that."

Now it's his turn to get defensive. "And how would you know that? You're the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. What can a princess know about growing up alone?"

She knows that there is no way for him to know otherwise, to know the truth about her childhood, but his assumptions about her still make her a little angry. "You have no idea what you're talking about," she grits, trying not to let her anger get the best of her. "My parents sent me through a portal when I was only a few hours old. I grew up alone , spent my whole life alone . I was an orphan, too, Hook. Or, at least, I grew up believing I was."

"I'm — I'm sorry, Swan, I shouldn't have assumed—"

"No, you shouldn't have."

"You're right though, love. I, too, spent much of my life alone. My mum was sick and passed when I was a boy, and my father took my brother and I on a ship to a far-off land. Until one day, we woke up and he was gone. He left us there to settle a debt and we never saw him again."

Silence settles between them for a moment, and then he smiles. "It seems you and I have quite a lot in common, then, love," he chides, but Emma barely hears him. She's too distracted by the parchment in her hand, which has revealed a map at some point in their conversation.

"Hook—" she tries, but he cuts her off.

"Apologies, I know, you're not my love ."

"No, Hook, that's not it."

Finally he looks at her, trying to find what she is talking about on her face, following her eyes down to the parchment in her hands. But there is something else that has changed, too, something about her . He can't quite put his finger on it, but he thinks he maybe sees a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

#csnlny #captain swan #neverland new year #my writing #cs fics #ouat #neverland rewrite #really just a bunch of headcanons in one little story

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spartanguard · 4 years

Text

even death won’t part us now (1/?)

Summary: Two covens, both alike in dignity, / In fair New York, where we lay our scene, / From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, / Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes / A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; / Whole misadventured piteous overthrows / Do with their death bury their sires' strife. (Captain Swan + West Side Story + vampires. But not as sad. Probably.)

rated M | AO3 | 1.2k words

A/N: So this story has been in the works for quite some time and been through numerous variations. I was originally going to do it for @cssns last year, but couldn’t get it to work. When things got going for this year’s event, @kmomof4 asked if I’d give it another shot and...it clicked this time! It’s been fun to work on (and see how many Hamilton references I can squeeze in). Hopefully you all enjoy it!

thank you to @thesschesthair for that GORGEOUSSS banner!! she’s made some incredible pieces for this and I can’t wait for you all to see them! and thank you to the best beta ever @optomisticgirl for looking this over!

for your listening pleasure

part one—overture

There's a lot of romanticizing when it comes to vampires. The eternal youth, the perfect looks and body, the heightened senses—all are excellent perks.

But no one mentions the absolute mania when a vampire is new. Suddenly, everything is brighter, sharper, clearer, louder, smellier, more detailed than before, and it's a sensory overload—it's impossible to hear your own racing thoughts over the cacophony of everything else.

So you try to run, but that's a whole other revelation—where to run when you never tire? When adrenaline is pumping so hard that it would probably be easy to scale a skyscraper? (At least it would be quiet up there, right?) And when your new instincts are telling you to find people—to find food—but the thought of being near all those scents and sounds is enough to turn your stomach and make you lose your last meal as a human.

(Except you already did that—when you somehow managed to fight back against the asshole who turned you and accidentally shoved him into the jagged point of the wood that used to be your dresser and watched him bleed out in front of you until nothing was left but gore and dust.)

Which brings you back to running, but it doesn’t take you far—not until you’re crashing into a pair of arms that are far too strong (inhumanly so) and are somehow connected to a pair of unnaturally blue eyes that you briefly drown in so deep that nothing else about this individual registers. And the whole thing is so surreal you wonder if it’s even real, or just a mania-induced hallucination.

Regardless, you somehow end up at the doorstep of who might be the nicest people who have ever walked the earth (and they’ve walked it for quite a while, and people probably isn’t the best description, not anymore) and memories of your ocean-eyed savior get pushed to the back of your mind. Because, in case you hadn’t figured it out yet, this couple confirms what your wildest thoughts were telling you:

You’re a vampire now.

Welcome to eternity.

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★

2005

Killian Jones let out a completely unnecessary sigh as he watched the door close behind the fledgling. Honestly, he was lucky he got there when he did; any later, and the newbie would have likely gone full mad, risking not only the safety of any mortals nearby, but also exposure of their world.

That, and Gold probably would have killed him. For real this time. (It had been threatened often enough that it was likely empty, but after nearly 250 years, Killian knew what the beast was capable of—what had put him in this position in the first place—and therefore knew not to write off the possibility completely.)

It had been a fairly routine assignment: take out Walsh, one of the most conniving members of the Coroza coven with a penchant for turning his mortal girlfriends, and take out said girlfriend if he had turned her.

Killian hadn’t managed to get there in time to prevent the transition—Walsh’s paramour, one Emma Swan, apparently didn’t want to be found—and by the time he’d arrived on the scene, the freshly-turned vampire had already managed to kill the idiot, but was in shock.

He caught her in the alley behind the apartment building; despite their hysteria, new vampires are relatively weak compared to elder statesmen like him, so it wasn’t hard to subdue her.

And he should have ended her right there. He had a blade on him; it would have been incredibly easy to put it through her heart and let her wither away.

But there was something in those bright green eyes of hers—something behind the fear and anger and madness—that made him stop. It was familiar, but like a long ago memory; he couldn’t place it, but it was enough for him to second guess her elimination.

He couldn’t bring her back to Aurum, though. He’d spent too many years working his ways up the ladder to be accused of succumbing to a pretty face and disobeying direct orders from Gold. If he could hide her, though…

He knew a couple from Coroza who lived not far away. Despite being on different sides of this rivalry, he knew them to be respectable, and wouldn’t turn away a new vampire in need of some stability.

It was hard to tell if Emma was aware of it, but he quickly scooped her up and ran the few blocks to the Nolan’s Hell’s Kitchen townhouse, depositing the girl on the front stoop, buzzing the doorbell, then dashing off across the street as fast as possible (the blink of an eye to the average mortal). He was deep in the shadows of an alley when he saw the door open, Emma guided in, and then both the door and the case were closed.

Which only left one thing: what to tell Gold. Outright lying wouldn’t work; but perhaps a white one would cover it.

That was what he went with when he returned to the man’s penthouse in Chelsea. “It’s all taken care of, Mr. Gold,” he’d assured his boss—a rather reptilian man he’d long ago started referring to as “Crocodile” in his head and had somehow managed not to slip in the ensuing centuries.

“Fantastic; always good to hear, Mr. Jones,” Gold said, rising from his throne-like chair in his office. “I know that it’s a bit soon, but I do have another assignment for you, if you’re amenable,” he continued. (It was a bit sadistic for Gold to act as if Killian had any choice in the matter; it was nigh impossible to go against an order from your sire, though Killian had long ago figured out how to work the system—and Gold’s typical vagueness—in his favor; this order might be too direct for that, though.) “It’s in England, and I want you to go tend to some business of mine. It might take a while. I don’t trust anyone else to handle this; please go and be my representation.”

“Of course, sir,” he answered respectfully, having figured out how to hide the resentment in his voice many decades ago.

“Splendid. I’ll see to it that your affairs here are tended to in the meantime. Enjoy your trip.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Not an hour later, he was at LaGuardia (because apparently Gold was too much a cheapskate to pay for him to fly direct out of JFK), in line with luggage, passport, prosthetic hand, and one-way ticket to London. One perk to never sleeping was that taking a red-eye flight didn’t affect him much; but that didn’t make getting through security any less painful—thus, the false hand rather than his preferred hook. (Also annoying: having a layover in Chicago—in the opposite direction, seriously; he should have paid himself.)

He at least let himself zone out once they were off the ground at O’Hare; he didn’t actually sleep but he could at least rest.

He let the sounds of the plane lull him into something of a hypnotic state, but one thing persisted in his mind’s eye: those green eyes, and whatever it was that sucked him in.

(They would do that often over the next several years.)

It wasn’t until he was lumbering up the jetway at Heathrow that he realized what it was: the look one got after being left alone. It’d been years since he’d seen it, but it used to stare back at him in his own reflection. (Which, as the polished metal of the luggage carousel reminded him, he hadn’t seen in centuries.)

Hopefully, she wouldn’t have that anymore. Too bad he couldn’t (ever) say the same.

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★

thanks for reading! short intro, but longer chapters from here. tagging some peeps (let me know if you want on/off the list!) @kat2609 @xpumpkindumplingx @shipsxahoy @amortentia-on-the-rocks @mryddinwilt @cocohook38 @annytecture @shireness-says @ohmightydevviepuu @profdanglaisstuff @wingedlioness @word-bug @distant-rose @wellhellotragic @welllpthisishappening @let-it-raines @pirateherokillian @bleebug @its-imperator-furiosa @fergus80 @killianmesmalls @sherlockianwhovian @ineffablecolors @laschatzi @ive-always-been-a-pirate @nfbagelperson @stubblesandwich @lenfaz @phiralovesloki @athenascarlet @ilovemesomekillianjones @whimsicallyenchantedrose @snowbellewells @idristardis @scientificapricot @searchingwardrobes @donteattheappleshook

#cs ff #cssns20 #cssns 2020 #cs vampire au #even death won't part us now #my ff

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shireness-says · 4 years

Text

The Set-Up Scam

Summary: They’ve always been friends first and foremost - Emma and Killian, Killian and Emma - until suddenly, they’re something a little more too. But with a $600 betting pool on the line about when they’ll actually get together - well, maybe there’s incentive to keep the good news a secret. ~5.5k. Rated T for language. Also on Ao3.

~~~~~

A/N: Merry Christmas, @nevertothethird! I was delighted to be your pair for @cssecretsanta2020. It’s been wonderful chatting with you, and I look forward to a full stalking. ;)

You said you liked secret dating, friends to lovers, and characters being forced to work together - so I, like a fool, tried to include all three. I hope you like the result!

Special thanks, as always, to my beta, @snidgetsafan - the greatest treasure under any tree.

Tagging: @ohmightydevviepuu, @welllpthisishappening, @thisonesatellite, @let-it-raines, @kmomof4, @scientificapricot, @thejollyroger-writer, @superchocovian, @teamhook, @optomisticgirl, @winterbaby89, @searchingwardrobes, @katie-dub, @snowbellewells, @spartanguard, @phiralovesloki, @profdanglaisstuff

Enjoy - and let me know what you think!

~~~~~

They’re friends, first and foremost. Best friends, really - Killian and Emma, Emma and Killian. Partners in crime and two peas in a pod and every other cliché there is (and Killian would definitely know all of them). It’s been that way since the very beginning, when Killian let her peek at his attendance quiz answers in that awful intro to astronomy class in college. Their relationship had grown from there: late nights in the library and each others’ dorm rooms, studying or watching movies or chatting, all the way through graduation and eventually grad school. They get each other in a way that usually doesn’t happen for Emma, both coming from rough backgrounds and determined to make the world a better place because of it. Hell, they even work together now at Misthaven County Middle School - Killian as an English teacher, and Emma as a guidance counselor.

And all that time, it’s been strictly platonic.

It’s not like Emma hasn’t looked. He’s an objectively good looking man, and smart and sweet and funny. But he’d been in some “it’s complicated” situation with a grad student when they’d met, and then Emma was in that weird period where she and Graham gave it a shot, and by the time they were both available… well, by that time, they’d been Emma and Killian. Killian and Emma. A collective, a pair, absolutely entwined every way but romantically. He’d become her person, and it wasn’t worth risking that. There was no guarantee a romantic relationship would work out, anyways - or that Killian felt the attraction too.

The thing, though, is that they’re Emma and Killian. Killian and Emma. Always together, always in each other’s stories, two birds of a feather. People constantly think that they’re together - or should be.

Emma doesn’t really mind, most of the time. She and Killian usually think it’s pretty funny, trading stories back and forth on his or her couch. Where it gets annoying is when each and every one of their friends are determined they should be dating. It’s been years of meaningful looks and hints about “so why aren’t you seeing anyone, Emma?” - but the last straw is the stupid, stupid bet.

“I just don’ unnerstand why you and Killian aren’t a couple!” slurs Mary Margaret, assistant principal and friend, at her yearly end-of-summer bash. “You’re ovviously in loooooooooove.”

“Sure we are, Mary Margaret,” Emma placates.

“But why haven’t you yet?” she demands. “You made me lose the pool!”

That draws Emma up short. “I’m sorry, what?”

The little pixie-haired brunette frowns. “Don’t you know? We’ve had a betting pool going for ages about when you’d get together this year. I thought for sure it’d be the Fourth of July.”

It’s a good guess, actually - Ruby throws a famously boozy bash every year at her grandmother’s diner, conveniently situated right below the inn. It’d make sense for them to get drunk and take things upstairs - except for the fact that none of this is rooted in sense in any way, shape, or form.

“That obviously didn’t happen,” Mary Margaret frowns sorrowfully, staring down into her plastic cup full of god-knows-what. It doesn’t last long, though, as she perks right back up. “But they let me make a new guess! I’ve got my money on the Friday after your birthday.”

“How much money are we talking here?” Emma can’t help but ask. It’s like a compulsion, one she doesn’t like or understand.

“Five hundred and fifty dollars.” At least that’s what she thinks Mary Margaret says; the slurring gets particularly bad on the f-sounds. It’s an astounding sum. Truly stupid.

Kind of tempting.

“And everyone bet that it would happen this year?” she makes sure to clarify.

“Yup!” Mary Margaret pops the p-sound and then giggles to herself about the noise.

“Then I’m putting fifty dollars on it not happening this year. That Killian and I won’t get together.”

———

She means it at the time, too. Because yeah, there’s sometimes that niggling little what if?, but they’ve known each other for eight years. Emma and Killian. Killian and Emma. It’s not going to happen - honestly she’s not even sure she would want it to.

Until.

It’s not the Friday after her birthday, when they’re all going to hit the bar, but it’s the night before her birthday - a Tuesday. Killian comes over to grade vocab quizzes and eat greasy pizza, and stays to drink beer and watch stupid baking shows with her on the couch. Honestly, in so many ways, it’s a night like any other: two friends, just enjoying each other’s company.

Until.

Maybe it’s the beers. Maybe something’s been building for longer than she ever thought. Maybe it’s just that they’re both feeling good and, well, it is her birthday. But Killian kisses her - or she kisses Killian - they kiss each other and it’s like something slots into place. Like of course this was going to happen - they were just waiting for the perfect moment. It makes sense, in a way that Emma hasn’t let herself think about; he’s the person she trusts most, the best man she knows, probably the most important person in her life. Her best friend - and, probably, something more.

“That was…” he gasps, some indeterminable amount of time later. Somehow, he’s wound up on top of her on the couch - not that she’s complaining.

“Only the beginning,” Emma completes, smirking in a way she definitely picked up from him.

Now that this has started, she has no intention of stopping.

———

“Ok, don’t kill me - or, like, run away immediately - but I need a favor. A huge one,” Emma says much later, both of them naked and sated beneath her sheets.

Killian laughs beside her, peering up from the pillows with a smile. “After that, darling, I’m predisposed to give you just about anything you want.”

“And I’ll give it to you again,” she quips back, mostly to make him keep laughing. It works. “But seriously. Did you know that everyone’s got a bet going on us?”

That pops his head up. “I’m sorry, a bet? I… What? Who?”

“Seems like pretty much everyone. Ruby, Mary Margaret, David, Robin, Belle… I could go on and on. A six hundred dollar pool on when we get together.”

“Typical,” Killian mutters - though Emma catches a fond note in his tone. “Who’s the lucky winner, then?”

“Ok, this is where the favor comes in.” Hopefully this isn’t a breaking point for him; Emma would hate to have this taste of them, only to have it ripped away from her. “See, Mary Margaret told me about this when she got trashed at the back to school party, and I’d had a few too and was all hopped up on righteous fury or whatever, and I kind of… put fifty dollars in the pot that we wouldn’t get together this year at all.”

Killian stares at her for a moment, and Emma’s frankly scared that he’s going to get out of bed and go - but instead, he bursts into a near-hysterical cackle. “So you want to keep this a secret until the new year, so you can win the pot?”

Emma grins, knowing she must look like the cat that ate the canary (or however that weird-ass saying goes - again, English is Killian’s thing). “Exactly. We could spend it on a weekend getaway or something.”

“I’m in, then. Under the radar.”

“It’s just two months and change,” Emma says. “It’ll speed by. How hard can it be?”

———

Turns out - their friends are determined to make it as hard as possible. Even if they don’t know it.

Things are fine, at first. In fact, nothing really changes: Emma and Killian still show up at each others’ doors most nights, and Killian comes to hang out and grade papers in her office during his free periods most days. It’s just that their evenings are now filled with kisses and touches, and those afternoons in her office with all kinds of promises of things to come. It’s thrilling, in a way, to put on the front of normality for everyone else while only they know the truth. It’s nice, too, to be able to get their feet underneath them in this relationship without so many prying eyes watching them figure it all out.

Just because they don’t know, though, doesn’t mean their friends stop trying. There’s a bet on the line, after all, and their friends have never exactly been ones to step back and let things naturally run their course. Not for those busybodies; not with six hundred dollars and Emma and Killian’s supposed happiness on the line.

(The fact that they’re right - that the two of them really are happiest together - is irrelevant.)

David, of all people, is the first to start meddling.

“Do you guys want to get dinner?” he asks out of the blue one day - calls Emma up on her phone and everything. “You and Killian and me and Mary Margaret, I mean.”

Emma’s antenna raises immediately. “What, like a double date? C’mon, David —”

“No! No,” he says hastily - a little too hastily, Emma thinks. “No, a cousin of mine - Kris, you’ve met him - he’s opening up his own restaurant. Some place with Scandinavian food, I guess?”

“That’s actually a thing?”

“I guess. I don’t know, he studied abroad in Norway in college. Anyways, he could use a little business, support or whatever, so Mary Margaret and I figured we’d bring some extra people along. You know, help him out. And maybe Scandinavian food is good after all.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

The line sits silent for a moment, before David breaks. “So… you in?”

And as much as Emma suspects this is all some elaborate set-up - well, it’s supposed to be to help someone else. David’s cousin, who she has in fact met and is really a good guy. And so she reluctantly agrees. “Yeah, I’m in. One of us will have to check with Killian if he’s available —”

“What, he’s not right there with you?”

(He is, his lips kiss-swollen and pulled into a delicious smirk, but that’s not the point and none of David’s business.)

“ — but yeah, I’m down.”

In the week between the call and the dinner, Emma actually finds herself starting to look forward to it. Yeah, it won’t be a real date - not with David and Mary Margaret there - but it’s still a chance to wear a pretty dress that’ll make Killian’s eyes bug a little. She’ll have to pick something he’ll have fun taking off of her later, once they’ve pretended to go back to their own homes.

Emma’s just pulling into the parking lot, however, when her phone rings, David’s name popping up on the screen.

“We’re not going to make it tonight,” he says without preamble, followed by the most fake-ass cough Emma’s ever heard in her life. “We’re sick.”

“Yeah, sick off your own lies,” Emma mutters. “Alright, well, I guess we’ll go another time —”

“Oh no, I insist you guys still have dinner. You and Killian deserve to have a night off!”

“David, c’mon, don’t play dumb —”

He ignores her. “Besides, you’ll be doing me - and Kris - a huge favor. I already told him to charge whatever you guys get to me. Splurge a little, have dessert and a bottle of wine. It’s all on me.”

Killian climbs out of his own car as David pleads his case, cocking his head in confusion at the no doubt frustrated look on Emma’s face. He looks like he wants to kiss it better; Emma wishes he could actually do so.

“Fine,” she caves. “If you’re sure. But I’m running up the bill.”

“You say that like it’s a surprise.”

Emma takes particular glee in ending the call. She should have seen this coming. “Looks like David has come down with a possibly fatal cough, so he and Mary Margaret aren’t coming tonight,” she tells Killian, rolling her eyes. No need to resist that particular urge.

He snorts. “Ah, liar-itis. I thought he might be coming down with a case.”

“Complicated by meddler’s cough. Don’t forget that.”

“Of course not.” He dips down to capture her lips in a gentle, lingering kiss - another urge they don’t have to resist with none of their friends around to see it. “You look lovely tonight, Swan.”

She smirks back. “I know.”

“Of course you do,” he laughs. “I’m sure you wore that just to torment me through dinner. Now, shall we?”

“We shall.” Emma slips her hand through his offered arm. “Dinner’s on David, by the way.”

“I’d expect nothing less.”

———

“So, how was dinner?” David asks the next day, his cough mysteriously cleared up.

“Good,” Emma replies, knowing exactly what he’s digging for. “Your cousin’s got a good lingonberry cheesecake. Don’t worry, Killian and I totally ran up the bill. Kris has been well supported. You’re welcome.”

“And?” he demands.

Emma makes sure to play up her confusion. “And… what? It was a great dinner, might even go back if I ever have a date, and then I went home. Honestly, what did you expect to happen, David?”

Even through the phone, she can almost hear him audibly deflate. Something like a sigh, or perhaps the sound of his entire plan collapsing in on itself. Personally, Emma thinks it’s hilarious.

(It’s especially funny when she vividly remembers the way Killian had stripped her out of that dress, can still feel the scratch of his beard on her inner thighs.)

(But again - those are things that David doesn’t need to know.)

———

The set-ups multiply like rabbits, and Emma starts to notice her and Killian being forced into more and more situations together, just the two of them. Fuck only knows why they think these clumsy attempts will work; after all, Emma and Killian held out for 8 years of each other’s company before finally getting together (without anyone’s help, she might add). Still,

Trivia night is a weekly tradition for them all, down at the Rabbit Hole. Some weeks, the turnout is good; sometimes, not so much. They usually meet up at someone’s house and carpool from there because there’s not a ton of parking spots outside the bar, and it’s always worked well - two, maybe three cars instead of a half dozen or more. It’s a good time, and Emma always finds herself looking forward to Thursdays.

Tonight, they’ve met at Robin’s, Killian’s former roommate. It’s a good crowd tonight, too - Robin and his fiance Marian, Mary Margaret with David, Belle the librarian, Ruby and Mulan, even Graham and Lance and Tink. The gang’s all here, probably trying to let loose a bit before holiday obligations set in, and they’re raring to go - all twelve of them.

Emma hopes that it’s not planned - that there just happen to be two cars and then some worth of people here - but it’s more likely planned. Robin probably twisted their arms to come, just for this.

“Emma, would you mind checking the door one more time?” he calls as they congregate in the driveway. “I’m sure I locked it, but I’ve just got that niggling little feeling…”

“Sure, no problem.” And it isn’t - it’s checking the damn door. Except it’s actually winding down his stupidly picturesque front garden path to the front door, and then having to maneuver around the always-unlocked outer glass door to make sure that the real door is locked, and then maneuvering and winding and everything back… and by the time Emma makes it back, everyone’s already piled into Mary Margaret’s station wagon and Robin’s little SUV, even the middle seats everyone usually hates, leaving just the conniving man himself and Killian standing on the asphalt.

“Sorry, looks like the two of you will be riding together,” Robin says, not seeming remotely sorry. “This is convenient anyways! I know how much time you two spend together, if you decide that it’s easier to crash together afterwards… it wouldn’t be a problem for the extra car to stay here overnight.”

“Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t be,” Emma grumbles. “I don’t suppose you have any underlying motive here, do you Robin? Say, to the tune of six hundred dollars?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he responds cheerily. “I just really, really want you to know that you can keep your options open. And, you know, other euphemistic things if the urge moves you.”

Asshole.

(Emma does not leave her car at Robin’s overnight - but that doesn’t stop Killian from meeting her at her place afterwards.

“This euphemistic enough for you, love?” he teases as Emma pulls at his shirt, trying to tug the cotton tee over his head.

“How’s this for a euphemism: fuck me.”

“That’s not exactly how that word works, Swan.”

“I could not possibly give fewer shits about semantics than I do right now, Killian, unless it somehow relates to you getting your pants off.”

Somehow, even in the midst of their frantic stripping, he manages to laugh. “As you wish.”

She’s always preferred straight talking anyways.)

———

“Thank god I found you both!” Mary Margaret declares, bursting into Emma’s office a little too dramatically for her tastes. Until now, she and Killian had been having a wonderful lunch together, but that’s obviously a thing of the past now.

“That seems a little extreme for a Friday,” Killian comments mildly as he sets his cafeteria burger back down on the styrofoam tray. Personally, Emma thinks the cafeteria food is disgusting, but Killian’s got a real fondness for the cheeseburgers, and especially the french fries. No one’s perfect, she guesses. “What terrible impending tragedy can Emma or I save you from, Mary Margaret?”

“Kathryn’s father is in the hospital, so she and Fred can’t work their assigned booth at the Winter Carnival tomorrow.” Storybrooke County School District’s charity carnival is a tradition every winter - one Mary Margaret takes very seriously. Something that’s clearly about to come back and bite them all in the ass. “Would you two be able to cover tomorrow? You’d be doing me such a huge favor…”

Killian raises a single eyebrow as he turns to meet Emma’s eye - that eyebrow that always seems like a dare. “My schedule’s clear this weekend. Count me in. What do you say, Swan, think you can find room in your schedule to save Mary Margaret from the tragedy of all tragedies?”

Emma rolls her eyes at the way he’s putting it on thick, but truth be told, her only plans had been spending the day with Killian. Might as well. “Sure, what the hell,” she says, reaching for another bite of her microwave pizza. “I don’t have anything else going on.”

In retrospect, Emma realizes that Mary Margaret could have done something terrible with this - assigned them to the kissing booth or something. God, she hopes that there’s not a kissing booth at a middle school carnival, but it feels like just the kind of thing she’d pull. Thankfully, they’re set up at the ring toss game. It’s not strenuous in the least; they don’t even have to take money, just paper tickets. Really, the only questionable thing is that they’re crammed right together in the box formed between the booth walls and the counter and the table of bottles behind them. Maybe that’s something that would have bothered her a few weeks ago, back when they were Emma and Killian but not Emma and Killian. Now, it’s just an excuse to get right up in his space and enjoy all those little touches, right under everyone’s nose.

(Maybe, every time they have to duck under the counter to retrieve poorly-thrown rings, Killian takes the opportunity to steal a quick kiss while no one else can see. And maybe - just maybe - Emma uses those same opportunities to steal her own kisses right back.)

“Soooooo, how’s it going?” Mary Margaret chirps when she pops up out of nowhere mid-afternoon. It’s like she thinks she’ll find them making out in the middle of the carnival or something. Which… fair. The urge is there. But they’re professionals - and Emma wants that money, dammit. She’s not caving here.

“Just fine, Mare,” Emma replies. “Nothing worth reporting.”

“There’s not? You two are looking awfully cozy in there… nothing to report?”

“Well, you’re the one who set up the booths, so…”

“Aye, just making the best of it,” Killian helpfully adds.

Emma almost feels guilty about the way that Mary Margaret visibly deflates.

“You know this was another ridiculous set-up, right, love?” Killian asks once their friend has walked away. “She probably never even needed our help. It was all a ploy.”

“I see it now,” Emma sighs. “I had just weirdly hoped she’d be above all that bullshit.”

Killian quirks that eyebrow yet again. “Mary Margaret? Infamous meddler? Of course not. It’s cute that you thought that though, darling.”

“Oh, shut up.”

(“Mary Margaret told me to take the weekend off, that they’d over-scheduled,” Kathryn tells Emma later when she tries to ask how the other woman’s father is doing. “Was that not the case?”)

(Fucking figures.)

———

Ruby, frankly, is not a surprise. In fact, if there was one person Emma would figure would be pulling this bullshit, it’s Ruby. The girl’s too competitive for her own damn good - not to mention that mile-wide chaotic streak running through her soul.

“Pucker up!” she crows, thrusting what Emma assumes is a sprig of mistletoe over her and Killian’s heads. They’re at Ruby and Mulan’s place for… some party; it’s probably, maybe holiday themed, but Ruby’s never needed an excuse to throw a party. Anything to get them all drunk and laughing and forgetting about the stresses of the week.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Emma demands. “Ruby, don’t be stupid. This isn’t college anymore.”

“Oh, like we ever did this in college,” Ruby scoffs with that devious twinkle in her eye. “Besides, college shenanigans are a state of mind. And I’m not giving that up. Now c’mon, no weaseling out of this.”

“It is the rules,” Mulan points out, appearing to slip her arm around Ruby’s waist and drop an affectionate - if slightly tipsy - kiss on her shoulder.

“Yeah, you hear that? Smart half says it’s the rules. So go ahead and pucker up and kiss him. And then go make out for a while and maybe bone each other so I can win the pool.”

Killian blushes a little bit at the phrasing - something that’s surprisingly cute on him, knowing how often he usually tosses around the innuendoes and exactly how dirty a mouth he has when they’re alone. Before Emma knows what he’s doing, he leans in to press a gentle kiss to her cheek, and then another, smacking one for good measure. “Who are we to deny the great, determined Ruby Lucas?” he proclaims grandly. “One kiss: delivered.”

Ruby’s face gets a bit mutinous; it’s the only word for that particular storm cloud, really. “No it isn’t! That’s cheating!”

“Eh. Technically, it was a kiss.” God bless Mulan for being the only one willing to go against Ruby when she’s got a plan; perks of being the girlfriend, Emma supposes.

“And more importantly, Rubes, that’s all you’re going to get from us.” And that’s Emma’s last word on the subject.

(“Happy Christmas, darling,” Killian whispers into her neck later once they’re back at her place, dangling his own sprig of mistletoe over their heads. “How about it? C’mon, give us a kiss.”

Emma is more than happy to comply.)

———

Emma wouldn’t say it’s common for her to get calls from the school librarian, Belle, but it’s not unusual either. So when Belle calls her up in mid-December, shortly before Christmas break, Emma doesn’t think twice about it.

“The new Scholastic catalogs are here,” Belle informs her. “I haven’t started sending them to classrooms yet, but if you want to take a look now…”

“I’ll be right there.” Yes, the catalogs are full of books for middle school students, but Emma still loves those things. They’re chock-full of nostalgia.

“I haven’t even taken them out of the box yet,” Belle explains when Emma meets her at the check-out desk. “They’re all still in the back room. Here, I’ll let you in.”

That should have been Emma’s clue here. Why would a box of new catalogs, just arrived in the mail, already be shoved into the storage closet? But Emma’s too excited about the prospect of those newsprint magazines to think about it. By the time Emma realizes there’s nothing in this little closet but printer paper and old yearbooks… Belle’s already closed and locked the door, trapping Emma inside.

So it’s yet another set up, most likely. It’s a good thing she’s not claustrophobic, at least.

Sure enough, not five minutes later, Emma can hear Killian’s voice outside the door.

“How many boxes did you say it was, Belle? I’m happy to help haul, but I’m just wondering if we should get a hand cart to assist.”

“Oh no, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Belle’s voice responds. “Just a few trips for each of us. Right in here…”

And suddenly, Killian’s in the cramped little closet too, and the door is shut and latched behind them. Gee, what a surprise.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Emma comments dryly. Somehow, probably on some kind of ridiculous romantic instinct, Killian’s hands have already found their way to her hips. It’s nice, really, ignoring the circumstances.

His face is adorably confused, looking around the room and back to the door and then to Emma’s own face and all over again. “Did she just lock us in here?”

“Yeah, keep up, Jones,” Emma teases. “I assume another stupid set-up effort.”

That makes the confusion disperse alright, a smirk full of promise creeping across his face instead. “If that’s the case… we’ll just have to make the most of it.”

“Oh no you don’t,” she warns. “There’s a camera in here.”

“So? It’s not like she’s watching the monitors.”

“So, Belle recently started dating Will Scarlet in IT. You want to take the chance she locked us in here, and forgot to have her boyfriend monitor us?”

“Fuck,” Killian swears, dropping his head back in dramatic emphasis. “They’re really going overboard, aren’t they?”

“I’ll make it up to you later. I promise.”

Thirty minutes later, when Emma and Killian have done nothing but talk and try to find some little extra space in the crowded closet, Belle finally lets them out, just in time for the end of Killian’s free period.

“I’m sure you have no idea how that happened,” he comments, sarcasm dripping from every word.

“It’s just the weirdest thing,” Belle agrees.

Well, that’s one way of putting it.

(Emma makes it up to him, several times over, at her place that night, with a take-out pizza to boot.)

———

After what feels like an eternity, it’s finally here: New Year’s Eve. As long as they make it to midnight and the new year proper without anyone finding out, this whole ridiculous farce is over, and they can be the couple they’ve technically already been since October. Emma and Killian, Killian and Emma - but more than they had been before.

They’d spent Christmas together - not that that was anything unusual. With everyone else going to visit family, the two of them often spend the day together, eating take-out Chinese and watching holiday movies. Killian’s got a brother back in England that he makes sure to call, and some years Liam will fly over, but Killian usually saves his visits for summer vacation, when he can stay in whatever little English hamlet his brother calls home for weeks at a time. There’s always something nice about spending the holidays together, just the two of them, but it was extra special this year. Who knew Emma was the kind of girl who wanted to trade kisses under the Christmas tree between swapping gifts?

(Killian, apparently - but then again, he’s always claimed to know her better than she knows herself.)

“Just a few more hours,” he murmurs against her neck, twining his arms about her waist from behind as Emma carefully brushes on mascara. “Few more hours, and then it’s all in the open.”

“Thank god for that, too. After all the PDA we’ve gotten from certain people all these years, I’m looking forward to rubbing it in their faces a bit.”

They carpool to Mary Margaret and David’s, just like they do every year. It’s routine, really; Emma always crashes at Killian’s after the annual New Year’s Eve party so that someone is there to help her with the hangover in the morning. Killian makes better hashbrowns than anyone she knows - even Granny - and they always manage to pull her out of the worst of her misery. He’s good about taking care of her, too, with water and Advil and making sure to shut all the shades as tightly as possible. They even share a bed a lot of years; it’s just that tonight, Emma knows there will be a lot fewer clothes involved.

They drink. They eat. They mingle. Sometimes, they’re together, carefully not touching, and sometimes they drift apart. That’s how this party usually works, after all - and Emma is nothing if not committed to seeing this entire thing through, pretending nothing is different this year, that she and Killian definitely aren’t together. Nothing to see here, folks.

God, she’s so fucking lucky he didn’t cut and run once it became obvious just how much of a competitive lunatic Emma is.

Finally, though, it’s the moment - less than a minute left. Killian is already waiting for her by the patio doors, just like he promised. Emma is only too happy to wind her way over there, grinning when she finally finds herself in front of her boyfriend - about to be secret no longer. Behind them, the assembled drunken crowd loudly counts down the last seconds of the year. They keep their hands determinedly to themselves - just as agreed, so no one can try and claim anything happened before the strike of the new year - but Killian still looks at her with that twinkle in his eyes and wiggling eyebrows. It’s anticipation, and excitement, and a good bit of joy - knowing that soon, this will all be out in the open. No more keeping their hands to themselves.

“You ready for this, love?” he says just loud enough for her to hear as the clock hits ten seconds.

“Hell yeah,” she grins back - because she is. She so is. This has been a long time coming - years in the making, really - and you know what? The whole secrecy may have helped her wrap her head around the whole thing, as well as win her the pot, but she’s ready to take it public. Maybe rub it in everyone’s faces just how happy she is and how she did this on her own schedule. Why the hell not?

Cheers erupt all around them, and Emma’s grin stretches to something that almost hurts her face. Killian looks much the same. “Happy New Year, love,” he says, finally pulling her towards him by the hips. “I think it’ll be our best one yet.”

Fireworks are going on outside, lighting up the snow on the ground, but Emma can’t be bothered to pay attention - not when Killian attacks her lips with purpose, grinning happily into the kiss before she insistently deepens it, slipping her tongue into his mouth to play. It’s just another in a series of kisses, they know - but it’s more than that. It’s a display, in the best way, declaring them them.

Emma and Killian. Killian and Emma. A pair, a unit, a couple.

“HA!” shrieks someone across the room as their make-out finally gains attention. Emma thinks it might be Ruby - though, at this point, it might be Mary Margaret. Maybe both. It’s definitely Ruby who materializes just as Emma and Killian finally break apart with a laugh. “It’s about fucking time!”

“Yeah,” Emma agrees - something that seems to short-circuit Ruby’s brain for a moment, if that look on her face is anything to go by. “It really was. And you know what else?”

Ruby shakes her head mutely, that twist of her eyebrows demonstrating that she’s still trying to get her bearings about what the fuck is happening here.

“It’s the new year. That pot is mine.”

“That’s my girl,” Killian whispers in her ear.

Best. New Year’s. Ever.

———

On January 1st of the new year, Emma and Killian - Killian and Emma - they, them, a pair, a unit, a couple take their six hundred dollars in winnings and treat themselves to a goddamn massive lunch at Granny’s. Together. In public. Because they deserve it.

Grilled cheese has never tasted so good to Emma - especially the crumbs off the corners of Killian’s lips.

#csss20 #cssecretsanta2020 #cs ff #captain swan #cs fanfiction #my writing #the set-up scam #secret dating #friends to lovers #oh my god and they were ACCOMPLICES #happy holidays everyone!

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searchingwardrobes · 3 years

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She Dreams in Color: 5/6

Are you ready to meet Emma and Killian's baby? Will it be obvious who the father really is? I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it! There's a scene with Liam that I wrote when I first started this fic and shared it on the discord chat. It got a chuckle on there, and I hope you enjoy it too. Let's just say it will become more difficult for our lovers to keep their affair a secret.

Much thanks to all of those following this fic, to @shireness-says for organizing the @cshistfic event, and to my beta @aerica13.

Summary: Emma’s life is drab and colorless, and not just because of the Dust Bowl that has stripped the land bare. Married to a man she does not love and never has, Emma lives for Tuesdays. That’s when the iceman brings cool relief from the unrelenting heat and fire to her unsatisfied longings. Perhaps they won’t go unsatisfied for long …

*Yes, this fic depicts infidelity. I am in no way making light of people who cheat on their spouses - it’s just a story, ya’ll.*

Rating: M

Length: 6 chapters, complete

Updated each Thursday

Chapter One | Two | Three | Four

Also on Ao3

Tagging the usuals: @snowbellewells @whimsicallyenchantedrose @kmomof4 @xhookswenchx @let-it-raines @bethacaciakay @tiganasummertree @shireness-says @stahlop @scientificapricot @spartanguard @welllpthisishappening @resident-of-storybrooke @thislassishooked @ilovemesomekillianjones @kday426 @ekr032-blog-blog @lfh1226-linda @ultraluckycatnd @nikkiemms @optomisticgirl @profdanglaisstuff @ohmakemeahercules @carpedzem @branlovestowrite @superchocovian @hollyethecurious @vvbooklady1256 @winterbaby89 @delirious-latenight-laughs @jennjenn615 @snidgetsafan @itsfabianadocarmo @lassluna @distant-rose @courtorderedcake @winterbythesea @thestateofardadreaming @killian-whump @thisonesatellite @batana54 @it-meant-something @xsajx @therooksshiningknight @gingerchangeling

Chapter Five: No One Else Who Needs to Know

It wasn’t Tuesday, it was Sunday, and Killian had no coal in the back of his truck. There were no deliveries on Sunday, after all. However, he felt an overwhelming, intense desire to see Emma. It wasn’t just that he longed for her every moment of every day. It wasn’t that their relationship had deepened even more since Emma’s heartfelt confession. She loved him; the baby was his. The tenderness they shared was the deepest intimacy Killian had ever known, both physically and emotionally.

Still, it had nothing to do with any of that. No, this was something more, something that defied explanation. It felt almost supernatural in its intensity.

Relief surged through him as his truck came closer; he saw no basket of red flowers hanging on the porch. He parked, and a sense of foreboding filled him at the quiet surrounding him. Ominous gray clouds filled the air, and if Killian wasn’t mistaken, they portended snow.

Killian opened the back screen door tentatively. The inside of the house was even more eerie than the outside.

“Emma?” he called hesitantly.

No answer. Emma wasn’t in the kitchen, and the stove was cold. She clearly hadn’t made breakfast today. He continued to call her name as he went into the parlor. Then a faint voice caught his ear, and he followed it to the stairs. He called her name again, and he could finally hear her answer in a strangled voice.

“I’m up here!”

It came from her bedroom, and he rushed towards it, flinging open the door. He found Emma still in bed, her knees drawn up to her chest. Her hair was wild, her face was contorted in pain, and sweat drenched her. Killian blanched and felt his knees wobble.

“I’ll get the midwife.”

Emma shook her head, whimpering. “I can’t afford the midwife.”

If he thought his knees wobbled before, they turned to jelly now. He cursed himself for his weakness in a moment when Emma clearly needed him.

“I’ll get Anna, then. She’s done this before.”

Emma reached a hand out towards him, her eyes wide with terror. “No, don’t leave me!”

How could he refuse such a request? Despite the fact that he didn’t have a clue how to deliver a baby, he would never leave Emma’s side if she wanted him there. He thought he was supposed to boil water, though what for, he had no clue. There was no time to boil water, however. There wasn’t even time to fully prepare himself. Emma pulled her knees closer, and Killian could see that the baby was coming, whether they were ready or not.

“I can’t hold back,” Emma wept, “I need to push.”

“Just do what your body is telling you,” he encouraged her, though he knew he wasn’t the best source of childbirth knowledge. But women had been doing this since the dawn of time, right? He figured it should be some sort of instinctual thing. He hoped so, anyway.

Emma screamed as she took his suggestion and bore down. What he saw coming out of her would have been terrifying if he hadn’t also seen what was clearly a baby’s head with wet, dark hair plastered to its tiny head.

“The baby’s coming, Emma!”

She let out a whimpering sob, and he looked into her terrified green eyes.

“You can do this, Swan, keep pushing.”

She pushed again with another accompanying scream, and the baby’s shoulders were out. Killian cradled the tiny one’s head and felt tears of his own leak from his eyes. He didn’t have to instruct Emma further, and her next few pushes didn’t seem to require as much agony, though she did cry out in obvious pain. Then there he was, a slippery, bloody, squalling baby boy.

“It’s a boy, Emma!” he cried, the tears falling freely now.

“You have to cut the cord,” Emma told him, her voice thready with exhaustion. “Anna told me that much. You can use the ones in my sewing kit over there.”

In the meantime, Killian snatched a stray blanket from the floor and wrapped the baby up in it. He would clean him up later, but right now he needed his mother. He handed the boy to an exhausted Emma, then went about following her instructions. When he finished, he cleaned up at the wash basin, then knelt at Emma’s side. He was a bit concerned about the look on Emma’s face. She was pale and seemed overwhelmed.

“Swan? Are you okay, love?”

His words caused the damn to break, and without warning Emma was sobbing as she held the baby tight against her breast. The child seemed content and even happy in his mother’s arms and did not protest her embrace. Slightly alarmed, Killian squeezed into the bed next to her and put his arms around her. After a few moments, her tears subsided, and she spoke.

“He has your eyes.”

It wasn’t what he had expected her to say. Was that the reason for her tears? Did she fear her husband’s reaction when he saw the tufts of dark hair and the bright blue eyes? He brushed a kiss to her temple, wishing to ease her pain in what should have been a moment of pure joy.

“All babies are born with blue eyes,” he told her, “that’s what Anna said when Rolf was born. Her mother was a midwife.”

Emma turned her face to look at him, and for the first time, her face was clear and her cheeks were rosy. She smiled at him in a wistful way that was tinged with joy. “Well, I still say he looks like you.”

Killian grinned back at her before capturing her lips with a quick kiss. They needed to clean the tiny boy up, but for now Killian and Emma just wanted to look down at their son in awe. In that bubble of happiness, they refused to consider the trouble that could lay ahead.

*************************************************

Neal Gold came home the day after Emma gave birth, which meant that Killian went a week without seeing his son. It brought a cold dose of reality; another man would be raising his son.

Henry. That was the lad’s name. They cleaned the tiny babe up, then had snuggled in bed, counting his fingers and toes. When Killian had asked her what they should name him, she said that Henry sounded nice. Killian agreed. Henry David. A fine name. Henry David Gold, actually. That was another hard, cold truth. His name wouldn’t be Jones. It couldn’t be.

The Gold farm hadn’t needed coal every week in this mild winter, so Killian headed there in his delivery truck the second Tuesday after the birth of his son. He cheered inwardly when he saw that there was no basket of flowers hanging on the porch.

“Got your coal!” he called as he entered the back door with his large iron bucket. He discovered Emma at the kitchen table, sobbing into her hands. He set the bucket down with a thud, caring little about the black circle of soot it would leave on the floor, and rushed to Emma’s side.

“What is it, my love? Are you okay? Is Henry sick?”

She shook her head, lifting her tear stained face to his. “No, he’s fine, he’s upstairs. As for me, I’m . . . I don’t know!”

In addition to her crying, her face turned the deepest shade of crimson he’d ever seen. She looked beyond embarrassed; she was mortified. He’d seen this woman in glorious throes of passion, was intimately acquainted with the most private parts of her anatomy, and had even seen her give birth. What could possibly make her so uncomfortable?

He had to tread carefully, so he spoke gently. “Are you running a fever perhaps?”

He remembered Anna running a fever after Rolf’s birth, and he and his brother had been frantic with worry while Elsa had laughed hysterically. When she explained that her sister’s milk had simply come in, the two of them wanted the floor to open up beneath them.

Emma shook her head. “My mother is in Canada, and I don’t have a woman to ask about . . . about this.”

Emma’s eyes were wide and pleading as they looked into his. He could clearly understand what she wasn’t saying. Whatever her ailment, she wasn’t about to breathe a word of it to him. He nodded.

“Okay, why don’t I get Anna for you? I’m sure Elsa would come too, but both of them could be overwhelming and since Anna is a mother -”

“Just Anna,” Emma interrupted him. “I know their mother was a midwife, but I seriously doubt anyone talks about this unless they’ve been through it.”

There went her blush again. He frowned.

“This isn’t about . . . um,” he hesitated, scratching behind his ear. “That is to say, Neal isn’t demanding anything, is he? Because I know that you can’t . . . you know, for a while.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “God, no. Neal found me revolting pregnant, and he finds me just as revolting now. I mean, he loved my . . . um, new bosoms - at first. Until he saw me feed the baby. He told me, and I quote, that’s disgusting, cover up.”

Killian’s jaw clenched. The man was an absolute caveman. He wanted to put Emma and Henry in his truck, drive away from here, and never look back. However, he knew that had to be Emma’s choice. So he let out a long, calming breath, and swallowed down the biting remarks he wanted to make.

“He wouldn’t hurt me or the baby,” Emma insisted.

Killian wasn’t so sure. Nevertheless, he promised to get Anna and return as swiftly as possible.

***************************************************************

Emma sat on the settee in the parlor as Anna paced the floor, cooing over Henry. Emma wriggled a little, trying to get comfortable. It was a useless cause. She hadn’t been able to sit comfortably since Henry was born.

“So,” Anna said, still gazing down at the baby in her arms, “what’s going on?”

“Well,” Emma answered, and was surprised when no words would come. She grew up on a farm, for God’s sake! She’d seen the miracle of life - and the disgusting parts. Why was this so hard? Emma blew out a breath as realization washed over her. She wanted her mother, that’s why this was so hard.

“It must be hard with your mom so far away,” Anna said, as if she could read her mind. She sat on the other side of the settee, giving Emma an understanding smile. “I missed my mom like crazy through my entire pregnancy. I mean, Elsa was great and all, but it hurt, you know? I don’t think I’ll ever stop grieving her in some ways, and it's even worse now that Rolf is here. There are so many times I wish she were here to ask questions: What the hell is that in his diaper? What the hell is that in my underwear? Why can’t I stop crying?”

Anna’s completely un-ladylike burst of words had Emma laughing, and it was the first time she had done that in over a week. Anna laughed too, and reached out to take Emma’s hand while her other arm still cradled Henry.

“At least my Mom is still here,” Emma told her, “or will be here eventually. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose both of your parents like you did.”

“It hasn’t been easy,” and for the first time Emma had ever seen, the redhead went silent. After a moment or two, however, she looked back up at Emma with a small smile. “So when is your mom coming?”

“That’s part of it,” Emma sighed, “they’re snowed in. They won’t be able to get out until spring.”

“I’m so sorry, Emma.”

“That’s life, especially these days.”

“So, what’s your question then? I mean, I’m no expert like my mom was, and I’ve only done this once, but I’ll try to help if I can.”

Emma bit her lower lip, then finally just blurted it out. “How long does the bleeding last?”

“Oh, God,” Anna groaned, “I thought it would never stop!”

“I know!” Emma exclaimed, relieved that she had someone who understood to commiserate with. “And was it a lot of blood for you? I’m scared I’m hemorrhaging to death!”

“No, you’re not,” Anna encouraged her, squeezing Emma’s hand. “It does seem like a lot, and it’s just awful, but it does start to taper off. You’re only less than two weeks from delivery, right?”

Emma nodded her head.

“Just give it time. I bled for about six weeks.”

Emma wrinkled nose. That sounded terrible! She licked her lips again, nervously. “And can it sometimes look -”

“Like parts of the slaughter house ended up in your panties? Yes.”

Emma was shocked at Anna’s blunt words at first, then she burst out laughing. She laughed so long and so loud that tears ran down her cheeks and Henry woke up.

“That’s my cue, I think,” Anna laughed. She kissed the baby boy on the top of his head, then handed him back to Emma. As Emma got situated to nurse, Anna got to her feet, but before she turned to go, she said, “Emma?”

“Yes?”

“You’re like a sister to me and Elsa. Please let Killian know if you need us, even if it’s just to talk.”

Emma blinked back sudden tears. “Thank you.”

“Oh, and that’s normal too,” Anna laughed, “the constant crying. The baby cries, you cry, it’s this whole wacky cycle.”

Anna left Emma then, the room still filled with her laughter and encouragement.

*******************************************************

Anna came down the porch steps of the Gold farmhouse and slid into the passenger seat of the ice truck. For once in her life, she was absolutely silent, and it made Killian extremely irritated.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“How did it go?”

Anna just stared at him - and what was that smug smile on her face?

“Come on, Anna, is Emma okay?”

Anna waved her hand. “Oh yeah, she’ll be fine.”

Killian let out a relieved sigh as he put the truck in drive and started towards home. When Anna spoke again, he almost drove right off the road.

“And I was so excited to hold my sister’s nephew.”

He managed to get the truck back under control, then tossed Anna a shocked look. She arched a brow at him - ah, so that was the reason for the smug smile.

“So,” she asked him, “are you going to tell Liam? Or should I?”

**********************************************

“I can’t believe this!” Liam shouted, his face mottled red with anger.

He paced back and forth, his hands occasionally going to his hair. Killian had known his brother wouldn’t take the news well, but at this rate, Liam would pull all his hair out. He stopped pacing and railed on Killian once again.

“You had to make the iceman stereotype true! I knew you were far too charming.”

“So which is it, Liam? You can’t believe what I did, or I’m so charming it doesn’t surprise you? Cause it can’t be both.”

Liam glared at him. “I should have made the deliveries and had you keep the books.”

Killian flashed a roguish grin. “I like to use my hands and get out and see people.”

“Poor choice of words, little brother.”

“Younger,” Killian muttered automatically, “and she was lonely and sad.”

“There’s a depression going on! Are you going to sleep with every sad and lonely woman?”

Killian grinned cheekily. “Just seeing me usually does the trick. Emma just needed my full and prompt attention.”

The parlor door opened, and Elsa breezed in, leveling them both with a look colder than the ice they delivered. Killian almost chuckled at the way Liam straightened his spine like he was on a naval ship again.

“Would you two stop going at it like children?” she snapped. “Killian, at least have the decency to apologize for your behavior.”

Liam arched a brow at his little brother, but before he got too smug, Elsa turned and lit into him as well.

“And you. Liam, did you seriously not see this coming? Anna and I knew Killian had fallen for her the first time he brought her up.”

“That’s beside the point!” Liam protested. “Do you know how much it could hurt our business if word of this gets out?”

Elsa rolled her eyes. “I’m far more concerned about the worldwide depression when it comes to the business. Whose knickers Killian is getting into is neither here nor there.”

“Elsa!” Liam, ever the Puritan, admonished his wife. Killian did laugh then. Until Elsa leveled him with a glacial stare.

“I hope you know what you’ve done. The Golds aren’t a family you want to mess with. I hope for your sake, and Emma’s, that they never find out you’re that baby’s father.”

Killian’s face drained of its color and his heart lurched in his chest. He knew Elsa was right.

God help them all: he, Emma, and Henry.

Especially Henry.

#cs ff #cshistfic #cs hist fic #cshistfic2021 #cs historical au #cs depression au #sexy iceman fic

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thisonesatellite · 4 years

Text

everybody knows -- CH1

SUMMARY : In Killian's world there are neither heroes nor villains.

There are only those who give and those who take, and you better not be the former.

He's a taker, has spent his entire life being a taker, because if you're a taker, there is never a price to pay.

Until there is.

AKA: The paths towards love and the meaning of life are twisted and tangled and full of detours, and some of those roads aren't paved.

AO3

A/N: Oh, my dears - here we go again.

i have never worked so hard for a first chapter, ever. Or any chapter, really. The problem with writing about a con is that what you reveal when and how becomes incredibly important. So much setup! So much dialogue! And plot boas galore right out of the gate -- it’s just unfairly hard! Who ever thought of this bright idea? (Yes, i know, i’m yelling at myself, but i’m having a righteous rant moment, leave me be. 😂)

Anyway.

Eternal thanks to @profdanglaisstuff for making me kill my darlings and slash and rewrite nearly 3K words. She was right to do so, and you should all thank her, because without her there would be no story. None.

To @ohmightydevviepuu for making me go over every square inch of my premise, and making me think and re-think and re-think again until i had a handle on it.

Thank you both so much for forcing me to live up to my potential. Or at least fail upwards to the level of my incompetence. 😂💕😘

And to @anxioussquirrel, @killianjones-twopointoh, and @katie-dub for filling my life with joy. 💖💖💖

i’m using the regular tag list, i hope that’s OK. Please let me know if you want to be added or removed.

@mariakov81 @stahlop @thejollyroger-writer @snowbellewells @captainsjedi @toomanyfandomstochoosefrom @xarandomdreamx @tiganasummertree @mayquita @ohmightydevviepuu @sals86 @karenfrommisthaven @kmomof4 @kday426 @superchocovian @jennjenn615 @facesiousbutton82 @suwya @spartanguard @capnjay21 @shardminds @carpedzem @girl-in-a-tiny-box @ilovemesomekillianjones @lfh1226-linda @artistic-writer @teamhook @katie-dub @shireness-says @qualitycoffeethings @cluttermind @fragilebeautifulchaos @optomisticgirl @klynn-stormz @winterbaby89 @ethereal-madnesss @scientificapricot @fragilebeautifulchaos @anxioussquirrel @killianjones-twopointoh @captain-emmajones

PART I

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

-- Oscar Wilde --

CHAPTER 1

“I’ve got your next mark.”

Neal leans back in his office chair and tilts his head at Killian.

The way Neal occupies space is reminiscent of bad 80s primetime soaps. There is something desperately oligarch-esque about the way he reclines, puts his left boot on his desk, and hands Killian a manila envelope. It’s painfully suave. Especially in this office, full of beaten-up furniture from a long-ago heyday, and ancient neon overheads that flicker more than shine.

Killian sits down and takes the envelope. “Who is it?”

Neal’s eyes narrow. “Society girl with her hands on a vast fortune.”

Killian pulls out the file and his brow furrows. “Fortune? It doesn’t look like she’s worth anything.”

He looks up. Neal is scowling -- unusual for a man who prides himself on his indifference, especially when it comes to business matters.

But when he answers, his voice is devoid of inflection. “She’s just slumming, trying to make it in the real world without her parents’ money. But look at her last name.” He pauses to let Killian scan the first page again, and then says, “In reality she’s the heir to The Archer Group.”

Killian whistles sharply. “Archer Holdings? Archer Enterprises? Archer Real Estate? That Archer Group?”

Neal smiles darkly. “The very same. We can fleece her hard.”

“You know my rules.”

Neal scoffs. “Yes, Killian. I know your ‘rules’. But no matter how much we take from her, her daddy has much, much more. He will bail her out. This time we take it all.”

Killian frowns and holds up a printout. “This bank statement says she has 498 bucks in her checking account. What exactly do you want to take her for?”

Neal smiles again, even darker this time. “I have it on very good authority that she has a savings account with a million dollars in it. Starting-out money from her parents. She’s just not touching it. So I say we take every last penny.”

Killian leans forward, his eyes hard, and slowly shakes his head.

Neal exhales in a huff. “Which part of ‘her father will just give her more’ do you not understand?”

It is in those moments that Killian realizes how much he hates Neal. And how much he wishes he had never entered this partnership.

Well.

Entered is not the right word -- it implies free will. Coercion had been the name of the game, but then again, Killian had gotten into that situation all by himself. The kind of situation where saying ‘no’ was no longer an option, and now he is stuck with Neal.

Killian sighs, but stays quiet.

Neal stares back for a long time, before his lips widen in a smirk.

“I’ll void your contract,” he says. “Do this job and you can go back to conning cougars.” He leans forward. “Cougars anywhere but this state, you understand?”

And there it is.

Temptation.

Killian sighs. Sighs and closes his eyes and resigns himself to the fact that when the very thing you’ve wanted for years, years , is finally within reach, the word ‘principles’ is just that.

A word.

Neal is dangling freedom on a hook, and Killian can’t resist the bait, line and sinker be damned. Principles, it turns out, aren’t worth much.

Not much at all.

“Fine,” Killian says. “Let’s take her for everything she’s got.”

Neal smiles a smile of pure satisfaction and Killian feels as dirty as he ever has. He gets up.

“I need something more than a promise, Neal,” he says. “I do this and I’m out. I need a guarantee.”

“My word isn’t good enough?”

“You’re a con artist. Of course it isn’t.”

Neal’s eyes narrow. “So are you. You run the best long con in the tri-state area and I take you at your word.”

Killian raises his eyebrows and doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. Killian has rules and Neal does not. Everybody knows this.

And cons are certainly not Neal’s only enterprise. He has his dirty fingers in a lot of dirty pies. Rumor has it his father runs the East Coast Mob from Atlantic City to Boston, which is how one Neal Cassidy has ended up with enough clout to coerce Killian into this ‘partnership’. That, and a few spectacularly bad decisions Killian made in at least three casinos. All of which had to do with him doubling down when he should have walked away.

But he’s not losing this staring contest.

“All right,” Neal says, and scribbles something on a piece of paper. “Here,” he hands Killian the paper after he signs it. It says,

After the completion of the Archer Group heiress con, Killian Jones is released from his obligation to me.

-- Neal Cassidy

“Good enough?”

Killian nods, staring at the note. At the potential it implies.

“What are you staring at?” Neal sounds impatient. “Still not satisfied?”

Killian knows that Neal’s impatience is about to turn into anger, and he does not want to be here for that. The man has thinner skin than a white-guilt socialite.

“Simply admiring your penmanship,” he smirks, and just like that, Neal grins.

“Get out of here,” he says and Killian nods and gets up.

When he walks out, Killian sees that now the warped office door is guarded by two heavy bouncers -- both of them pure muscle, no brains. In the lobby two nervous men in ill-fitting suits sit on a dilapidated pleather sofa, waiting to be called on. They look sweaty and nervous and like they can’t pay whatever vig they owe.

Killian leaves swiftly without looking back.

-/-

Killian takes his time with the recon. He cannot screw this up.

He doesn’t assume for a moment that Neal’s note is worth the paper it’s written on -- Neal is a scumbag and a liar and he bends the world to his will, backed by the rumor of his father’s might. He might as well have handed Killian a lollipop.

But.

The note might mean something to Neal’s father.

Killian knows very little about the mysterious Mr. Gold, but a handwritten piece of paper, a handwritten signed piece of paper, may just be old-school enough for him. So he puts it in his safe-deposit box and hopes for the best.

Then he starts his recon and hits a snag right out of the gate.

The heiress works for a private investigator. It’s a small outfit, just two PIs, dealing mostly with cheating spouses and alimony issues. It looks like she runs the office and the clerical side of things - paperwork and bills, mostly. She does not have a PI license. As a matter of fact, she’s not really certified for anything, not even accounting.

There’s a puzzling and worrisome lack of information on her background and schooling.

If she’s an heiress, even one who’s determined to make it on her own, there should be evidence of an expensive education. But her school records are a diploma from William Cullen Bryant Public High School in Astoria and two semesters from Queens College in Flushing. Who fakes community college dropout records when they most likely have an Ivy League degree at their back?

What kind of heiress works for ten years doing clerical odd jobs? There are a few freelance fact-checking gigs on her resumé, mostly for the ghostwritten autobiographies of mid-level entrepreneurs who fancy themselves tycoons, but the secretarial far outweighs anything else. Her career, if it can be called such, has ‘front office’ written all over it and that is alarmingly puzzling.

Is she shunning her upbringing or trying to actually disappear? Because there’s ‘making it on your own’ and there is ‘stuck in a dead end for a decade’ and she is doing the latter. There has to be a very good reason for that, for the fact that she doesn’t just call home and have herself rescued.

There is also an absolute lack of relationships. Of any kind. He can’t find a shred of a lasting connection between her and anyone. Her entire life is saying Keep Out and he shouldn’t be doing any of this.

She is a hard mark.

But also the most lucrative he’s ever gone after, if Neal is right about that savings account.

With a sigh Killian thinks of his freedom, thinks of no longer being beholden to a psychopath, and pours himself a generous shot of rum. Then he digs into the lives of the parents, the Archer Group CEO and her husband.

There is an abundance of information on their charitable works and their environmental initiatives, markedly less on their various ventures and companies and virtually nothing on their private lives.

Their private lives are actually private.

They do not travel society. They don’t run the circuit, don’t attend ten-thousand-dollar-plate fundraisers, don’t rub shoulders with the glitterati, don’t walk down red carpets, don’t shake hands with the famous. They don’t summer in the Hamptons, don’t winter in St Moritz. Their main residence is a roof-terrace condo bordering Central Park and an old newspaper clipping mentions property not far from Aix-en-Provence, but that is all. All other candids and society page mentions are from before they were married, more than 30 years ago.

They do have a child. It is not mentioned by name anywhere. As a matter of fact, there is no information on it at all, none, neither gender nor age nor name, no matter how deep he digs.

He foregoes the shot glass, takes the next two pulls straight from the bottle, and stares at the wall for a long, long time.

-/-

The bar is crowded and dark and the music is loud and Emma’s date doesn’t show. Which is just as well. She’s mostly here because Ruby threatened to start setting her up with every guy in her building if she ‘didn’t get back out there’, and Emma cannot think of a single thing more humiliating than being set up on blind dates by your boss. So she went on the first dating app she could find and now she’s stuck at this bar, waiting for someone who is never going to show.

Then again, the music isn’t bad and the beer is on tap and cheap for the Village, and she’s not stuck in her apartment. And she doesn’t have to talk - she can just enjoy being out for a change.

She smiles to herself, turns to the bartender, and orders another.

Two hours later the bar has emptied considerably and Emma is feeling weightless. She gets in one last order under the last call wire as someone pulls up a stool on the far side of the bar and orders a shot of rum and a beer. The bartender rolls his eyes and complies with a stern warning that this “has to be the last order” and the man nods and smiles and then turns to Emma.

“You get stood up, too?” His vowels stretch a little wider than normal, but he’s not slurring his speech.

Emma nods. She’s too tired to lie and she has never cared about saving face. Besides, she had a night out. With beer.

“Yep,” she says, pleased her own speech is not diminished in the least.

The man raises his glass. “Fuck ‘em,” he says. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

Emma nods again and drinks to that.

The man moves to the bar stool next to her and Emma feels a small spike of worry, but his gaze doesn’t linger near her breasts or anywhere else it doesn’t belong, including her face.

Instead he smiles, takes another sip, and says, “It doesn’t really matter anyway. Blind date, you know the drill.” He looks around. “It’s not a bad bar though. To be stuck in, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Emma says. “It’s my first time here, but I kind of liked it.”

“Same here.” He smiles again, open and honest and offers her his hand.

“I’m Killian,” he says.

“Emma,” she replies. His handshake is nice and very firm. You can tell a lot about a person from their handshake.

“Excuse me for a minute,” she adds, and starts to make her way towards the bathrooms. It’s a thing she does, whenever she meets anyone new. Let them wait a few minutes, see if they stay or move on.

Many, many men move on. It’s good to weed those out right at the top.

When she comes back from behind a door that says WE DON’T CARE, JUST WASH YOUR HANDS he’s still there, calmly sipping his beer like it’s not ten minutes till closing, and then looks at her and shrugs.

“Are you hungry?” he asks.

She looks up, surprised.

“I’m starving,” he adds.

She can’t help but laugh. “Seriously?”

“What?”

She rolls her eyes. He’s a piece of work for sure, but he hasn’t looked at her breasts once. “Is that how you do it? Go to a bar to meet one girl and when she doesn’t show you just pick up a substitute?”

He grins. “I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve tried it.”

Emma shakes her head. “I bet it is.”

“Look,” he says. “I’ve had a crappy night and a lot of beer and now I really need some food. The greasier the better. There’s a diner down the street.” He gets up from the bar stool. “I’d love some company, but I understand if that’s not your thing.” His eyes narrow. “You look rather like a person who prefers to be alone.”

That trips her up. Because it’s very, very true.

She sighs. “Do you think they have grilled cheese?”

He chuckles. “If they don’t, we’ll sue them. For taking the name ‘diner’ in vain.”

She pulls on her jacket. “In that case, yes. I’m starving. But don’t get any ideas.”

“Ideas?”

“Ideas.” She slides off the barstool, steadies herself for a brief moment. “Yes, we both got stood up, but this is not a date. Are we clear?”

He gives her a very serious nod and says, “Crystal.” and she can’t help but laugh.

-/-

“So where are you from?” Emma pulls her grilled cheese halves apart slowly and looks up to find him watching her with a small grin on his face. “I love cheese,” she clarifies.

“Clearly,” he says, and his grin widens. “Bournemouth.”

“Uh, what?”

He laughs. “You asked where I’m from. The answer is Bournemouth.”

“Huh,” she says, and takes a bite. God it’s so good . Her eyes nearly roll to the back of her head. But she cannot place Bournemouth. “Where’s that?”

He leans across the table, picks up the ketchup. “South of England. On the coast.”

England. England? But---

“You don’t have an accent,” she says.

“Accents don’t stay.” He holds the ketchup out to her, but she waves him away. As if she would ruin her lovely onion rings with that. “We moved here when I was 13. I lost my accent years ago.”

“Huh,” she says again. Apparently she’s a sparkling conversationalist tonight. “I never would have guessed.”

“Yeah,” he says, and pulls a face as he tries a fry. “Expressions stay though.”

“Expressions?”

He smiles. “I am rather fond of the words ‘love’ and ‘bloody’.”

It’s self-deprecating, the way he says it, with a playfully raised eyebrow. Whatever he’s doing, he’s not aggressively trying to flirt his way into her pants. He’s entirely too good-looking and he definitely knows it, but for the moment he seems to be content to simply have a conversation. Emma appreciates that, no matter his intentions. She hasn’t had a real conversation with a person who wasn’t Ruby in forever. And she can always shoot him down later, if he does decide to advance.

“Love and bloody. What an odd combination,” she says. “Why those two?”

“ Love is what my mum called everyone.” His smile turns wistful. “Everyone.” He clears his throat and then grins. “And bloody is sometimes just better than going fuck all the time. Although I must admire the word fuck for its versatility.”

“I know.” She laughs out loud. “I had a foster father who once used it in every part of a sentence. He said, “‘Fuck - this fucking fucker’s fucking fucked!” Which meant, ‘damn, the lawnmower is badly broken. I am not pleased.’”

He doesn’t laugh. He starts to, and then his face falls and gets very, very serious and a small warning light goes off in Emma’s head. This looks like baggage, and she’s not here for other people’s baggage. Not sitting in a diner at 2 AM with a perfect stranger at any rate.

“Not as funny as I thought, I guess,” she says, trying to gauge whether to cut bait, and he shakes his head.

“Sorry,” he says, and his hand comes up to scratch behind his right ear. “It was funny. You’re funny.” And he gives an odd look as he says, “I just--- did you say foster father? Were you in the system?”

“Yeah.” She shrugs. Noncommittal.

He looks exceedingly puzzled. Like he’s never met a system kid before. Or maybe like---

“Do you have experience with--- that?” It’s out before she can stop herself.

He looks at her for a long, long moment before he sighs and says, “Yeah.” He shrugs. “I have lots of experience with that.” His voice is quiet. “None of it good.”

It could be a game. It could all be for the sake of making a connection with her, if not for two things:

Nobody in their right mind would work this hard for a hookup. Like there aren’t a thousand girls spilling drunk and high out of hundreds of clubs all over the city right now, ready to be plucked.

And also, he’s telling the truth. She knows about lies. This is not one.

“I see,” she says, just as quietly. “I guess it takes one to know one.”

He lets that sentence hang in the air, thousand-yard-stare in his eyes, and she pushes her plate at him. He raises a questioning eyebrow and she grins.

“You’ve been staring at my onion rings since we got here,” she says. “And eaten none of your fries. I can put two and two together.” She points at the plate. “Help yourself.”

This time his laugh is helpless. “Do you want the fries in return?”

“After the face you pulled when you tried the first one? Not on your life,” she grins, and his eyes flash. Then he takes an onion ring with the air of a general who’s surrendered the battlefield as she waits for the waitress to refill her coffee.

“So,” she says as she picks up her mug. “Who were you really waiting for at that bar?”

“What do you mean?”

She leans forward. “There is no way---” her eyes narrow--- “no way a guy that looks like you was waiting for a date. Or got stood up.”

He grins. It’s ridiculously obnoxious. “Are you saying I’m handsome?”

“Oh please .” She gives him a full body eyeroll. “You know exactly what you look like. And you know how to use it, too. Your charm’s so polished I can see my reflection in it.”

“Touché.” He laughs. “But I can still get stood up. I mean - you’re gorgeous and you got stood up.”

Oh no you don’t. You don’t slip a compliment between the lines just to change the subject.

“But you didn’t, did you.” She can feel that there is more to his story, a lot more. “Why were you at that bar?”

“Fine.” He sighs. “I wasn’t waiting for a date.”

“I knew it,” Emma says.

He gives her a long, measured look. Then he takes a deep breath and says, “I was waiting for a mark.”

“A mark?” She finally says. “Like-- ” Her voice trails off.

“Like a con man, yes,” Killian answers.

“You’re a con man.” He shrugs, and she sputters. “ You’re. A con man .” He laughs. “Yes.”

Now that’s just ridiculous. It’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard.

“That’s insane.” She shakes her head. “I thought those only existed on bad TV shows. Or my email spam folder.”

Again with that damn eyebrow. “I’m quite real.”

“I can see that.” It’s still the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard. Also the most creative. No one has ever used a line like that on her.

“I can see you don’t believe me.”

Why isn’t he laughing? He should be laughing. She should be laughing.

Emma frowns instead. “You cannot possibly be serious.”

“And why not?”

A hundred thousand reasons, starting with, this is the most ridiculous thing ever. But most of all--

“You’d never tell me. Why on earth would you tell a perfect stranger? Over onion rings and coffee?”

There’s a pause, a very long pause, and then he says, “ Because you’re a stranger, of course.”

God dammit . It’s the truth, all of it, so far he hasn’t lied to her once, and fuck. Fuck . What the hell is going on and what the fuck is she still doing here?

He leans forward, slowly, and his face is thoughtful.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I can see this is a bit much, and I apologize. It’s just--- you’re a person in a diner. You’re lovely company, don’t get me wrong, but you’re inconsequential. I can spend a few wonderful hours with you and then walk out of here and never see you again.” He lifts up both hands in supplication. “My line of work does not lend itself to forming attachments or having confidantes. Sometimes it’s nice to just have a normal conversation. You know-- one where you’re not trying to achieve a certain outcome.”

Emma laughs. “ Achieve a certain outcome? You mean, one where you’re not actively playing someone?”

“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds----”

“Like the truth?”

This time he laughs, and it’s genuine and self-deprecating and warm . “Yeah. I guess it is.”

“OK,” Emma finally says when they’re done rolling their eyes at each other. “In that case, tell me all about yourself.”

“That I cannot do, love,” he says, and the word love sounds odd and foreign to her ears. “To keep my true identity hidden is paramount, you understand.” The way he wiggles his eyebrows should be illegal.

“How very secret agent of you,” she says, and his eyes flash in amusement.

“Well, I am a criminal. You can see how I’d want not to advertise said fact.”

It’s surreal, all of it.

“How do you know I won’t call the police right now and have you arrested?”

His hand flies to his heart in mock despair. “You wound me, Emma. You would do this to a man who’s just trying to have a bit of conversation?”

She shrugs and he laughs again.

“Oh, you’re what my father would have called a tough lass for sure . ” His eyes shine. “But I don’t think you could have me arrested. I haven’t done anything.” That eyebrow. Again . “Well, not anything in your presence to witness.”

“Damn,” Emma says. “There’s a flaw in every perfect plan, isn’t there.”

Killian’s eyes turn unexpectedly serious for a moment as he nods. “There certainly is.”

“So tell me something else. Anything else. About being a con man.”

“Well,” he says. “Everyone does it differently. There are hundreds of cons and hundreds of ways to run each one. But the hard and fast rule for citizens is that you should never give money to a stranger.”

“Do people really give money to strangers?”

He exhales, slowly. “You’d be surprised. As jaded and callous as people think they are, most of them are soft-hearted in the end. All you need to do is give them a good reason and they’ll practically throw their fortune your way. When really, you should never give anyone your money. Least of all a recent acquaintance. You at least have to know the person since grade school.” He shrugs. “If people followed this one simple rule, I’d be out of a job.”

Emma chuckles.

“What?”

She grins unrepentantly. “The way you describe your work as a ‘job’. Like it’s a legit way to make a living.”

“Screw legit,” he says. “Some people have too much money and I liberate a bit of it. If I took Jeff Bezos for a hundred billion dollars, a hundred BILLION , he’d still have a hundred billion left. That’s a one with eleven zeroes. Eleven . You and I and everyone else on this planet, including Jeff himself, by the way, cannot picture that amount of money. Nobody should have that much money.” His eyes grow hard. “There are 195 countries in the world and more than half of those have a GDP of less than that. And they’re by no means just ‘poor countries’ on continents nobody cares about. Some of them are in Europe. Some of them are Portugal . Imagine that.”

“Oh. So you’re Robin Hood.” Her tone is snide. His sudden intensity is true in its indignation, but false in its compassion, she can feel it. “Did you rehearse that speech much?”

He bursts a laugh.

“You’re right,” he says. “I’m certainly no Robin Hood. I steal from the rich. Those who can afford it. Those who have so much money that they hardly feel it when I take some. But I do keep it for myself, that’s true.”

A yawn suddenly overtakes Emma and she realizes that it is late. Very late. It’s past 3AM, her coffee and her food are gone, and she’s having a conversation about wealth distribution with a self-proclaimed con man. She’s tired, and she’s had enough absurdity for one night, entertaining though it was.

He smiles at her. “Sleepy?”

“Yeah.” She nods. “I will say that this has been a very interesting evening. Unbelievable , actually.” She waves at the waitress, mouths the words, “Check, please.” and turns back to the man across from her. “But I really have to go home now. I can hear my bed calling me from all the way across town.”

The last sentence is a test. But he makes neither joke nor innuendo, and his eyes never leave her face.

“Will you be all right to get home? Can I get you a cab?”

A cab ? What decade is he from?

“I don’t use private ride companies that subcontract and exploit their workers.” His face is dead serious, and it’s simply too much for Emma. She starts to laugh and finds herself unable to stop.

This is the most bizarre evening she can ever recall spending. With anyone . And that includes being stuck in a New Jersey holding cell with a self-proclaimed reincarnation of Nikola Tesla who lectured her on quantum harmonics for more than two hours.

She has to wipe her eyes as she tries to calm down, and protests as Killian simply pays for them both, but he waves his hand at her.

“I had a really good time with you,” he says. “The least I can do is pay for our meal. Especially since I ate half of yours.”

Emma erupts in a fresh burst of laughter and realizes that she is skirting hysteria. Fatigue and surreality and a witty deadpan delivery are doing her in, but Killian doesn’t seem put off by any of it. He hands her fresh napkins to dry her eyes and somehow organizes a glass of water without getting up, and just waits for her to rein herself in.

“Sorry,” she says, when she finally manages to calm down.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “You have a nice laugh.”

She fixes him with a glare, but he holds up his hands again.

“Objectively speaking,” he says. “I am not hitting on you, I swear.” He gets out of the booth and hands her her jacket. “I’m just trying to make sure you get home OK, that’s all.”

They go outside and he studies her gait, but she’s pretty much sober by now and he nods.

“I guess you’ll be all right,” he says, and she raises her arm, but the cab she’s trying to hail blows straight past her.

“I’ll be fine,” she says, squinting down the avenue for another one.

“I believe you,” he answers, and they both watch the next cab pull up to the curb.

He opens the door, waits until she gets in, and then leans forward.

“Actually,” he says, and she thinks, here it comes . But he makes absolutely no move to get into the cab with her. Instead he hands her a small white card.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m not trying to get in your pants, I promise. But I would like to ask you a favor.”

-/-

37 minutes later Emma falls into bed, her pajamas inside out, her makeup barely cleaned off, and her curtains still open, which will prove unfortunate right around sunrise. But it’s not yet sunrise. It is almost four o’clock in the morning and Emma is fast asleep.

On her nightstand lies a small white card.

-/-

The text from Neal comes in at 3:59AM, just as Killian is turning off the lights.

Is it done?

Killian sighs and picks up his phone and types two words.

It’s done.

THANK YOU ALL FOR READING!

#cs fic #cs fic rec #thisonesatellite #everybody knows #fun and heartbreak and angst #and a massive happy end #but kids #they're going to go through some stuff before they get the HEA

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